At CitizenCon 2953, Cloud Imperium revealed some cool Ray Tracing Global Illumination (RTGI) effects that are on the way to Star Citizen and Squadron 42. And, we’ve got a video to show you these effects in action. In the video, you’ll see lots of scenes with RTGI and without it. This will give you a good idea of what to look forward to.
Unfortunately, we don’t have any direct-feed version of this video. And, since this is X/Twitter, its overall quality is sub-par. Despite that, you’ll immediately notice the areas in which RTGI can improve the game’s graphics.
Do you mean this? pic.twitter.com/lGdkrfgZ6X
— Denis Anfruns (@HunkStalker) October 22, 2023
At CitizenCon 2953, Cloud Imperium also shared an impressive StarEngine Tech Demo video that you should all check out. Do note though that this video does not have the RTGI that is being showcased in the video above. And then we have this video that shows off 25 minutes of in-game footage from Squadron 42.
Cloud Imperium has been criticized by a lot but both Star Citizen and Squadron 42 look better than most other triple-A games. Both of them have a huge scope, and both of them feel like next-gen experiences. Yes, they have been in development for a while, but their tech is beyond what most games can accomplish, even in 2023.
Lastly, Cloud Imperium has not shared any ETA on when these two games will come out. My guess is that we’re looking at a 2026 release date for Squadron 42. The developers claimed that the game is future-complete and that they have entered its polishing stage. So, two years for polishing such a huge game seems reasonable. Add to it one additional year and there you go. Obviously, we are simply speculating but I don’t really expect to see Squadron 42 earlier than 2026.
Enjoy and stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email
“You mean like this”
bunch of pixels because twitter video player sucks donkey balls.
Looks better without RTX to me.
RTX takes away from the game’s character, it hands over artistic decisions to an algorithm. RTX makes light bleed into areas where it ruins contrast, shadows are lightened, cast shadows that used to have character now have very soft feathered edges, the game loses character.
If movies used flat realistic lighting and didn’t use film lights on set, every moviegoer would complain that the movie looked cheap, as if it was shot on a smartphone. If you take away the artistic touch and hand it over to a computer, lighting looks boring.
” it hands over artistic decisions to an algorithm.”
Couldn’t be further from the truth.
Thinking the limitations of older lighting models were actually artistic control is a strange form of Stockholm syndrome.
Artists will still have plenty to do with raytraced lighting. It just won’t be as flat and boring now.
This area had character and mood. RTX completely ****ed up that scene. Light started bleeding into every corner, contrast was lost and the area no longer feels interesting.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fe5bb84a83c7c36a2c7e25240c85d4d5973f270021bf37f02d713410fb9e4023.png
i have not seeen one game with rtx that looks better than scripted prebaked lighting.
Metro looks really bad with normal lighting in comparison. It “works” pretty well in Witcher 3 cus it has a day night weather cycle so the lighting is never the same anyways.
metro exodus looked and run amazing for me.
Then I’d suggest sell your PS4 and get yourself something that supports RT
everyone praised how good the lighting looked in dead island 2 despite old tech.
Alan Wake 2 uses full path tracing yet somehow it doesn’t look like there’s a conflict with devs artistic vision. Also it didn’t look like RTGI was conflicting with anything in Metro Exodus’ or Control’s artistic expression.
Lighting is always handed over to a computer called a GPU ….. It’s all a digital simulation
CitizenCon? LOL.
Con /kɒn/:
verb: persuade (someone) to do or believe something by lying to them.
noun: an instance of deceiving or tricking someone.
LOL Even after release, the same haters/naysayers will shoot: “this is a scam because…)
.
Because SQ42 is going to be released dude, whatever your uneducated guess about the meaning of game development 🙂
“Lighting looked rough”
No it looked ten times better than all games that have lumen that’s essentially a downgraded ray traced global illumination which won’t even run better than actual ray traced global illumintion
Too much bloom, I always turn off this effect, it ruins visuals just like motion blur, godrays, chromatic aberration, depth of field. They all are unnatural. Games look much better without this crap.
Bloom = light hitting a glass camera lens …. chromatic aberration and depth of field are also camera lens effects ……
They all annoy me too but the worst of all are “Lens effects” like water droplets or blood splatter on a camera lens which looks ridiculously unrealistic