Earlier this week, we informed you about a new Reshade that aims to bring real-time ray tracing Global Illumination to pretty much all DX9, DX10 and DX11 games. And today, some users shared videos and screenshots from Batman: Arkham Knight, Yakuza Kiwami 2 and Quake, showcasing the alpha version of this Reshade mod.
The first video comes from YouTube’s member Rare and showcases Yakuza Kiwami 2. Now while the real-time ray tracing Global Illumination effects make the environment pop, it also comes with an annoying side effect. As you will notice, there is a shadow silhouette surrounding Kiryu that is more noticeable during lit scenes. I don’t know whether this can be fixed in a future version so here is hoping that Pascal Gilcher, creator of this Reshade mod, will be able to resolve it (or at least minimize the side effect).
The second video is perhaps the best showcase of the real-time ray tracing Reshade mod. YouTube’s ‘EiermannTelevision’ has used it in order to improve the visuals in the first Quake game and the results are actually pretty great. Quake does not feature any indirect lighting (or baked lighting) which is why the results are that good. However, I was not blown away the same way I was when I first show Tenebrae. Tenebrae is a mod for Quake that added stencil shadows and per pixel lights. Stencil shadows allowed for realistic shadow effects on every object in the game world and per pixel lighting allows you to have fine surface details correctly lit. These techniques were first used in Doom 3 and it was truly incredible playing Quake with these graphics effects.
Last but not least, Resetera’s member Rare shared comparison screenshots between the original/vanilla (left) and the Reshaded ray tracing (right) versions of Batman Arkham Knight. We strongly suggest opening the images in new tabs so that you can more easily see the visual differences.
All in all, this new Reshade can indeed improve the visuals of older titles. However, the visuals improvements in games that use baked lighting will not be that great. Not only that, but there are currently some graphical issues/artifacts with the way that the real-time ray tracing Global Illumination is being calculated. Furthermore, this Reshade comes with a significant performance hit (for example, an NVIDIA RTX2080Ti is unable to run Yakuza Kiwami 2 at 1080p with 60fps).
Here is hoping that the graphical issues will be at least fixed in the upcoming beta (or in the retail/public) version of this Reshade mod.
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.”
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