Crysis Remastered Tech Q&A - RT Cores Provide 5-9ms Performance Boost, DLSS Coming Later with an Update

Crysis Remastered is nigh hither later on the slight filibuster. Launching on Friday, September 18th for PC (Epic Games Store), PlayStation iv and Xbox One, the classic first-person shooter game will shine once more thanks to the graphics overhaul by Crytek and Saber Interactive.

We've been able to transport a few questions to Crytek for a detailed Q&A that goes into more or less all technical aspects. Below you can find the answers from Steffen Halbig, Project Lead for Crysis Remastered, and Theodor Mader, Technical Director for CRYENGINE at Crytek. Enjoy!

When did piece of work begin on Crysis Remastered? How many developers accept been working on it?

[SH] The piece of work on Crysis Remastered started in the summer of 2019. Information technology'south hard to say how many
developers in total worked on it but what we tin say is that Saber defended two of their studios
to the project. On our stop, quite a few CRYENGINE engineers were involved in helping to
implement visual improvements.

You've mentioned that this remaster focuses on the single-role player. Is the addition of multiplayer modes possible later on launch?

[SH] Crysis Remastered brings back the original entrada, and at that place are no plans to add together multiplayer.

Tin you lot go into a bit more than detail on the textures overhaul? Are the textures all upward to 4K resolution now?

[SH] We have improved a lot of textures up to 4K or 8K, where it makes sense. For instance, you
would not demand a 4K texture update on all pocket-sized foliage on the ground. We do it where we know information technology
will make an touch. It'south worth a mention that the Nanosuit itself will get an 8K texture update!

As starting time showcased in your Neon Noir demo, Crysis Remastered will feature software-based ray tracing. Can you describe in detail how your technique differs from the RTX/DXR based ray tracing that nosotros've seen so far?

[TM] Reverse to RTX/DXR ray tracing, CRYENGINE'southward ray tracing solution is entirely software-based. This ways that it is fully implemented in a standard shading language and that it can run on any contemporary GPU without requiring specialized ray tracing hardware. The great benefit of this approach is that it is fully customizable regarding the data layout and the embedded payloads, and that its operation characteristics can be tightly controlled for each use case. Nosotros can even offload some of the piece of work to the CPU in case the GPU becomes a bottleneck.

With PCs (on both existing NVIDIA RTX and shortlyhoped-for-launched AMD GPUs) and next-gen consoles featuring hardware support for ray tracing, do you program to take advantage of this for Crysis Remastered and by and large for CryEngine at some bespeak?

[TM] Hardware-assisted ray tracing is planned for the next CRYENGINE release and is already
bachelor in the PC version of Crysis Remastered.

Y'all've only mentioned 'hardware-assisted ray tracing being bachelor for Crysis Remastered at launch'. Can you get into a bit more detail? Is this using Turing and Ampere'due south RT Cores, and what kind of improvement have you seen past enabling them?

[SH] We are using the Vulkan extensions to enable hardware ray tracing on NVIDIA RTX cards.
This gives us a significant performance heave in the game. The differences you volition run into in the
game and the reflections of animated objects, likewise the principal grapheme, and performance.

Hardware back up gives u.s.a. a 5-9ms of rendering fourth dimension operation boost with ray tracing enabled. In areas where ray tracing is not 100% nowadays, similar on a wooden floor, you won't meet many differences in performance between software and hardware ray tracing, but for 95% on the game, you lot volition feel the functioning benefits.

Why did you lot opt to go with NVIDIA's Vulkan 'VKRay' extension for ray tracing instead of using Microsoft'south DXR API?

[SH] We developed the game with DX11 and our own CRYENGINE API in place. The Vulkan extension was a dandy fit for united states of america to build everything on top of our electric current solution to improve
operation.

When AMD's RDNA2 GPUs ship later this year with hardware ray tracing support, will you enable hardware raytracing for those graphics cards as well in Crysis Remastered?

[SH] We do not still know how and when we will support AMD'south RDNA ii.

Which furnishings, in particular, are going to be ray traced in Crysis Remastered, and will there be any differences in ray tracing between the various platforms?

[TM] Crysis Remastered will feature ray-traced reflections, and nosotros take enabled ray tracing
functionality on PC, Playstation four Pro, and Xbox 1 Ten. The raytracing configurations accept been tweaked for each platform individually to get the best balance of performance and quality
for the specific platform.

Which rendering resolution and frame rate are you lot targeting on the respective platforms for Crysis Remastered?

[SH] For Xbox I X and PS4 Pro, nosotros accept a quality mode with 4K 30FPS with dynamic resolution and 1080p lx FPS in performance mode. For the base of operations versions of Crysis Remastered on Xbox One and PS4, we deliver 1080p with 30 FPS. For the Nintendo Switch, we have 720p 30 FPS with dynamic resolution.

The original Crysis Remastered printing release mentions support for Temporal Antialiasing, too. Does that open up to NVIDIA DLSS two.0 support at some bespeak, given that the new version is based on the TAA framework?

[TM] We are currently adding Nvidia'southward Deep Learning Super Sampling technology to Crysis
Remastered, and nosotros volition ship it in an upcoming patch! Stay tuned for more. Still, there
are no definite plans for a generic DLSS ii.0 integration in CRYENGINE even so.

[SH] We only started to implement DLSS recently since we were focused on all the other
features in the game. Nosotros cannot give any results about the performance boost withal, but DLSS is
known for a significant performance boost.

Volition the game come up with a built-in benchmark tool on PC?

[SH] Yeah, we will have a built-in benchmark tool on PC.

Will Crysis Remastered have back up for the now ubiquitous HDR displays?

[SH] Yes! Crysis Remastered will back up HDR for Xbox One, PS4, and PC.

Beyond ray tracing, what exercise y'all think near the other DX12 Ultimate features? Are you going to add together support for those in Crysis Remastered and/or CRYENGINE?

[TM] DirectX 12 Ultimate brings heady features like variable-rate shading, mesh shading, and
sampler feedback in addition to ray tracing improvements. Unfortunately, nosotros will not be able to
leverage these features for Crysis Remastered at this point, but we are planning to investigate
them for future versions of CRYENGINE.

In our previous interview, you said SSD applied science would be the real game-changer for side by side-gen consoles. Many developers have now made the same comment. Does that mean PC games will beginning requiring SSD as well, though?

[TM] We have notwithstanding to see what the affect of fast SSD engineering science will exist on games for adjacent-gen
consoles. The near firsthand furnishings will probable exist improved loading times and improved asset
streaming, but farther down the line, there might be games that cannot part without the
impressive transfer rates of SSD engineering science in the next-gen consoles. I am optimistic, though,
that past that time, this engineering volition become widespread in the PC domain.

Do you think developers will tend to stick to 30 FPS games when developing for next-gen consoles, or will the requests for more 60 FPS games be answered at terminal?

[SH] The next generation will give usa much ameliorate performance compared to the current console generation. Because of that, in that location is a high chance that we will see more games in 60FPS.

What'due south your opinion on the newly revealed GeForce RTX 3000 series? Do you lot think information technology volition exist possible to run Crysis Remastered at 8K@60, RTX and DLSS enabled, with the new RTX 3090?

[SH] Ampere is a beautiful piece of technology, and we are happy to slide into the release of it!
It gives people the chance to experience Crysis in high resolutions with better frame rates,
especially in the new 'Can it run Crysis?' mode!

Thank you for your time.