Watch Dogs Legion Ray Tracing and DLSS RTX 30 Performance

Brent_Justice

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Introduction



Thanks to NVIDIA and Ubisoft we received early access to Watch Dogs: Legion so that we can bring you this Watch Dogs Legion Performance preview today.  Watch Dogs: Legion will launch on October 29th to the public and is the next big game in the Watch Dogs franchise, the previous game was Watch Dogs 2 released in 2016, and the very first Watch Dogs was released in 2014. Watch Dogs: Legion is an action-adventure game with single-player and multiplayer.  It is developed by Ubisoft Toronto and published by Ubisoft.  The game is set in an open-world environment this time based in London.  This game uses the Disrupt game engine and supports DX12.  The game notably also supports DXR Ray Tracing and NVIDIA DLSS 2.0 support.  It is these two features we are going to focus on in this...
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hubaduba said:
****, maxing out 8GB cards already. It'll be very interesting to see how the 6800 with 16GB compares to the 3070.
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Maxing out 8GB cards today was precisely why I'm concerned the 10GB RTX 3080's are a bad bet long term. They just don't have enough VRAM. Fine today, but if you are the kind of person that keeps your GPU's three and four years from now, it won't be all that great. Granted, I usually have a top end GPU in my rig, but I've felt the burn of older, higher end GPU's with enough GPU power but insufficient RAM in the past.
 
Brent, love how your articles flow, always have. Not sure what to make of RT in this game, looks fine for 1440p game play if higher fps is not a concern to the player. Also for 8gb cards just don't max every setting out and you should be fine. Nvidia said RT adds 1-2gb more vram usage so those ram amounts are concerning but if the game play is smooth then I would conclude there was enough vram how ever close to being not enough.

I hope you come back and test with the texture pack as well as AMD RNDA2 cards which do not have DLSS type options at this time. Get back to the best playable experience take I hope. Still one can render at a lower resolution and upscale pretty easy with AMD as well, would be interesting of any quality differences which I would expect would be the case.

From what I read, if I had a 3080 and played this game, I would use RT, 1440p, HDR (this adds mem too from my experience), DLSS quality mode, high res texture pack. AMD???
 
Phew... With my 2080ti I should be able to lock in 4k60 ultra with quality DLSS. I was quite concerned because watch dogs 2 has issues maintaining 60fps even at 1440p medium/high and I'm not cpu bound.
 
HDR doesn't use extra vram. Technically ALL games are rendered in HDR and then converted to SDR right at the end of the pipeline.
 
why do all rt games have to look super shiny and uber reflective?

Even the pavement looks like a mirror for crying out loud, doesn't look realistic at all. Some of the screenshots I've seen actually look better with RT off.

BTW where are the IQ comparisons? actually any screenshot.
 
d0x360 said:
HDR doesn't use extra vram. Technically ALL games are rendered in HDR and then converted to SDR right at the end of the pipeline.
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The 'end' of the pipeline, i.e. the frame buffer, would be where I'd expect extra VRAM to be used, but we're probably talking about a megabyte or two, so yeah. More likely is an increase in bandwidth usage to move that slightly larger frame buffer data around, but it's still miniscule I'd think.
Armenius said:
They're only using ray tracing for reflections? Wow, the one thing about ray tracing I care the least about.
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I don't even... know what that means. Like mirrors? Water? How do you do just those with RT? Granted crappy reflections are pretty immersion breaking, so I get it in a sense, but still.
Stoly said:
why do all rt games have to look super shiny and uber reflective?

Even the pavement looks like a mirror for crying out loud, doesn't look realistic at all. Some of the screenshots I've seen actually look better with RT off.
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I've maintained that good RT implementations should be exceptional in how they aren't exceptional, until you turn RT off. Stuff like color and shadow gradients that we mostly just learn to ignore today that will stand out like a sore thumb once we get used to them being done properly.

Making everything 'shiny' isn't at all what it's about :)
 
LazyGamer said:
The 'end' of the pipeline, i.e. the frame buffer, would be where I'd expect extra VRAM to be used, but we're probably talking about a megabyte or two, so yeah. More likely is an increase in bandwidth usage to move that slightly larger frame buffer data around, but it's still miniscule I'd think.

I don't even... know what that means. Like mirrors? Water? How do you do just those with RT? Granted crappy reflections are pretty immersion breaking, so I get it in a sense, but still.

I've maintained that good RT implementations should be exceptional in how they aren't exceptional, until you turn RT off. Stuff like color and shadow gradients that we mostly just learn to ignore today that will stand out like a sore thumb once we get used to them being done properly.

Making everything 'shiny' isn't at all what it's about :)
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That is the primary issue with ray tracing at the moment. They are trying to market it, but it isn't easy to show people the difference through video and still pictures. Reflections are the easiest thing to market. As you say, when ray tracing is done right it won't have that immediate "wow" factor due to how it will trick your mind into believing it's real and nothing extraordinary. The real power of ray tracing is in global illumination and how that leads to realistic shadows and lighting occlusion. Remember that in rasterization we are still limited to 7 point lights that are supposed to illuminate the entire environment, if I remember correctly (it may have increased in DX12).
 
IMO Control has the bet RT implementation yet. Its the most complete, AFAIK it uses RT for reflections, shadows and global illumination. I think its the game that gets the best WOW factor yet.

It doesn't seem to overuse reflections except for the water puddles (what's with the water puddles is most RT games anyway? doesn't water evaporate?) plus the shadows and lighting look awesome.

This is the trend other games should follow. No mirror like pavement please. :rolleyes::rolleyes:
 
The thing is, you can absolutely have puddles everywhere and mirror-like pavement; these are photogenic elements that photographers and cinemaphotographers leverage all the time.

The trick is to use them tastefully!
 
Wolf YB is nicely done too.

There are a ton of reflections in life. For a photographer/cinematographer managing them is an integral part of the craft.

Why they can appear overbearing in a videogame is simply because unlike real life we havent accustomed ourselves to tuning them out yet in that environment.

Years behind a lense and also in theatre/special events has made me very aware of them, but mostly because I needed to actually make them less noticeable....than they actually are. I also grew up in a capital city and think that people who didnt don't really see reflective surfaces on the same level.
 
Auer said:
There are a ton of reflections in life. For a photographer/cinematographer managing them is an integral part of the craft.
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You are right. From where I sit this second, I see reflections in a lot of windows and other glass surfaces.

Not so many puddles or rainslicked roads though.
 
Thought you all would like to know, I applied the latest patch that was released on Friday + the newest driver from NVIDIA, and the performance for me is unchanged on the 3070 and 3080. The results still match my results in this article. FYI. So no need to write an updated article.

I'll be on the lookout in the future for future updates.
 
Brent_Justice said:
Thought you all would like to know, I applied the latest patch that was released on Friday + the newest driver from NVIDIA, and the performance for me is unchanged on the 3070 and 3080. The results still match my results in this article. FYI. So no need to write an updated article.

I'll be on the lookout in the future for future updates.
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so what does the patch do?
 
I've been concerned about the 8gb on 3070 and you're testing helps confirm it's already a problem... I figured if the new consoles have 16gb, games are likely to exceed 8gb usage in common scenarios. If I remember right the new xbox caps you at 10gb fast, 6gb slow, which should make the 3080 much safer, but both make me uncomfortable. But AMD's recent video card launches (polaris, vega, navi) have been bad with various driver and hardware issues, and I run the occasional CUDA workload, so I'd rather get an nvidia card. But I think it's unrealistic that nvidia will do a refresh sooner than next summer so I think we're stuck with the current choices.
 
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