ヒットマン3は、無意味なレイトレースがどれほど重要であるかを示しています

Nvidia and AMD revealed at Computex 2022 that _Hitman 3 _would receive support for ray tracing and both Nvidia and AMD’s supersampling technologies, following an announcement from developer IO Interactive late last year. The update is here and I’ve had a chance to try it out, but I wasn’t left salivating over all the visual glitter like I expected.

• Hitman 3 doesn’t need ray tracing
• Ray tracing can look much worse
• Hitman 3のレイトレースタンクパフォーマンス
• レイトレースの悪いショー

コンテンツ

• Hitman 3 doesn’t need ray tracing
• Ray tracing can look much worse
• Hitman 3’s ray tracing tanks performance
• A bad showing for ray tracing

Ray tracing can certainly make visuals more realistic, but in this game, it proves that adding ray tracing to all games isn’t necessary — especially when it tanks performance without adding much in terms of noticeable benefit. Hitman 3 is a reality check, especially if you think ray tracing is the be-all and end-all of graphics.

Hitman 3 doesn’t need ray tracing

Hitman 3 has very little to gain from ray tracing, and spending some time with the new update only confirmed that for me. The update brings ray-traced reflections and shadows, which you can toggle on individually. But after playing through several missions and capturing around 50 screenshots, it’s hard to see the benefit.

You can see an example of that from the Dubai level above. The ray-traced version (left) shows the beam that Agent 47 is climbing cast slightly more shadow, but these two scenes are almost identical. If they weren’t side by side, I wouldn’t be able to tell you which one is using ray tracing, certainly.

That’s not to say ray tracing isn’t doing anything, just that it’s not doing very much. I noticed the reflections most on semitransparent reflective surfaces (mostly glass), where ray tracing shows reflections that wouldn’t normally render. You can see an example of that in the Maldives level from Hitman 2 below (ray tracing is on the left).

I captured another example in the Miami level (below), where you can see the ticket booth window reflecting the people in line with the ray-traced version (left).

The issue is that these comparisons only hold up in one-for-one screenshots. While playing, they’re hard to notice because Hitman 3 already has fantastic reflections and lighting. In many cases, you’re getting ray-traced reflections even without ray tracing turned on, which both the Maldives and Miami levels confirmed.

For the window in Miami, it showed the wonderful ray-traced reflections from a distance, but that reflection quickly shifted once I took a few steps toward the window. Hitman 3 already uses screen-space reflections, and even with ray tracing turned on, it will default to these reflections when you’re up close. Below, you can see how the middle and right images (ray tracing on and off, respectively) look identical despite the ray-traced reflection in the left image.

In this scene, ray tracing is helping the shadows more than anything else. They look fantastic, but that wasn’t my experience through all of the levels I looked at (more on that in the next section).

In the Maldives, I found similar shifting to the default reflections. The windows on each hut (below) look much nicer from a distance with ray tracing turned on, but they have the exact same reflection when you get up close to them.

There are some visual benefits to turning on ray tracing in Hitman 3, but the vanilla build offers much of the same experience, especially concerning details you’ll actually look at. Unfortunately, the pros of ray tracing in Hitman 3 are massively outweighed by the cons.

Ray tracing can look much worse

Hitman 3 wasn’t designed with full-on ray tracing in mind, which leads to some awkward scenes where turning ray tracing on actually makes the game look worse. I was especially disappointed in the neon-dripped Chongqing level, where I expected ray tracing to shine the most.

In the ray-traced image (above left), you can see the left wall doesn’t hold a reflection like the image without ray tracing. The ray-traced image is certainly more realistic — a rain-soaked wall in an alley wouldn’t reflect lights that are a mile or more away — but does it look better?あまり。

It’s a case of expectation versus reality. IO Interactive clearly designed this scene so that it was drenched in the neon glow of a Chinese city, which means bending the rules of how light behaves to achieve an artistic vision. Turn on the ray tracing switch, and those intentions are lost.

Chongqing was disappointing, but the Miami level was downright shocking. With ray tracing on, some shadows showed nasty interactions with the highly detailed surfaces in the game. You can see the streaking and aliasing present on Agent 47’s back in the ray-traced image (below left), which isn’t present with ray tracing turned off.

上記のセクションでマイアミのスクリーンショットが表示されるように、Ray Tracingは、そうでなければゲームにないだろうシャドウをレンダリングします。それは特典ですが、画面のかなりの部分を占有する影がはるかに悪く見える場合は、優先順位を付けます。

私はここで_hitman 3_をノックしていません。それは美しいゲームであり、ゲームPCのパワーを披露するのに最適なゲームの1つです。問題は、レイトレースが、画質をあまり犠牲にすることなくパフォーマンスを節約する優れた照明実装であることに加えて来ていることです。

パフォーマンスは、フレームレートを絶対にタンクするため、_hitman 3_でレイトレースの重要なメトリックです。

Hitman 3のレイトレースタンクパフォーマンス

あなたは疑問に思っているかもしれません：だから何？レイトレースは完璧ではないかもしれませんが、それでもいくつかの視覚的な利点を提供します。ただし、パフォーマンスがミックスに持ち込まれたとき、_hitman 3_でレイトレースを正当化することは困難です。レイトレースを回すと、フレームレートがオフになった状態で達成したものの約3分の1にタンクしました。

Ray Tracingはそれをサポートするゲームで要求しているため、それは驚くことではありませんが、AMDのFidelityFX Super Resolution（FSR）とNvidiaのDeep Learning Super Sampling（DLSS）は問題と戦うのに十分ではありません。 FSRの最も積極的なパフォーマンスモードであっても、Ray Tracingは36フレームです。同様に、レイトレースなしの実行はネイティブ解像度であることに留意してください。

FSRとDLSSは、最も攻撃的なモードでも見栄えがよくありません。上記のベルリンでその例を見ることができます。 DLSS（中央）およびFSR（左）の画像は、左下の水たまりに厄介な洗浄を示しており、両方とも照らされた壁にきらめきとちらつきが背面に向かっていることを示しています。

レイトレースの悪いショー

レイトレースはゲームの外観を高めることができますが、それは保証ではありません。 _hitman 3のような比較的遅いサードパーソンステルスゲームでは、_レイトレースは、今日利用可能なリフレクションと照明のオプションと、レイトレースのパフォーマンスコストとのバランスをとっても意味がありません。

NVIDIAのRTXマーケティングと現在の将来のコンソールの主張に反して、Ray TracingはAAAビデオゲームの重要な機能ではありません。多くの場合、それは不要であり、_hitman 3_はその模範です。