Thank you for the kind words

Ty domino. All areas are reconfigured for fit/finish and playability as well. With playability taking most priority

Ty bill :)

DS2LE - Path tracing is now in Public Beta. You can try it from discord only currently. After some Beta bake time then I will upload to Nexus. Enjoy the mod and the game.

Power point presentation.

Yeah, Right now it uses LightBVH importance sampling, any mesh can become emissive, it shoots 16 rays per bounce into this for both Cache and Main passes. Searching for emissive hit, So the light count can be quite a big number before it becomes a bottleneck. As the ray count is fixed.

RTX 5090 can easily do 8 paths at 1440p or 2 paths at 4k. Here is a sample of 4paths at 1440p, with plenty of GPU of spare as a sample

Brute force Path tracing on RTX 5090. As an experiment this is using Ultra-performance (480p) upscaled to 1440p. No denoiser only DLSS-SR. Doing 120 paths per pixel at 50FPS. Here is the video. Thanks to discord user Perhapsy for doing the testing.

Thanks Srsen, I have made some compromises i.e bvh mostly has baked vertex colors instead of textures, but the lighting is always correct, DS2/3 do not have super reflective surfaces. Let's see how things progress. It was always built so I can run it on my machine no matter what shortcuts I take.

Professional tools like NSight are current not possible as the mod hooks all the dx device api so are tools like render doc. So this is the next best option currently. Atleast I have not figured how to get both working together.

GPU Performance metrics using queries. Long overdue, but better late than never, For DS3LE - PT the variable parts are GI Render trace and GI Cache update(not as impactful due to lower resolution update). The denoiser times/scene bvh build times should be similar to DS2LE - PT

Metro 2039 Tech First Look: What We Learned From 15 Minutes of Footage The "early ray-tracing pioneers" return.

Metro 2039 has surfaced - and we're very excited by it. Here are our thoughts: www.digitalfoundry.net/news/2026/04...

PT fun features. 1st/2nd show there is no difference in lighting between main view and reflections, even though the color data in bvh is low frequency. LE does use GBuffer color data where possible . 3rd shows basic glass simulation providing different hues for environment,

Here is DS2 vanilla for comparison

Path tracing adds shadows to everything which is also indirect bounce light shadows. You can see as my character walks through the mansion, the shadows and the reflections on armor have no leaks and always correct.

Anvil Engine - YouTube

In this video series, the team and I dive into some of the tech behind Assassin’s Creed Shadows, and what powers the Anvil engine.

We cover Atmos, Large-Scale Rendering, Micropolygon, and Ray Tracing.

#Anvil #AssassinsCreed #AssassinsCreedShadows

www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

RT sun shadows can produce pixel accurate shadows(Other post) as well as diffuse - overcast shadows. PCSS has a limit how much it can be blurred based on distance as its an image space technique, while RT shoots a randomized ray based on sun angle. Left is PCSS, Right is RT

Meshes are rendered with culling disabled, but still there are going to be some leaks like this due to having to bias. CSM requires friendly geometry. RT is very accurate and can even product pixel perfect shadows. Right is when sun is treated as a source with zero diameter.

The best thing of RT shadows is that it plugs all light leaks. DS2 has lots of Geo which is just one sided(Paper thin walls). Left is CSM, Right is RT Shadows. RT costs around 1 to 1.5ms on a 3060ti at 960p(DLSS Q 1440p).

Added RT Sunshadows feature. This is seperate from PTGI as sun is always calculated if enabled. First is Basic CSM, Second is PCSS - CSM, Third is RT Sun shadows. PCSS is pretty decent stand in but RT shadows have excellent contact hardening, enable it if you have the perf.

DS2 Vanilla vs SOTFS, I get a ton of questions asking about Majula brightness. Here is a good shot of what scholar does to the image. Saturation, Contrast and Brightness have all been dialed up. I played vanilla so thats the game I remember

4/4 Pursuer Pathways

3/3 FOFG Ballista Room, you can get by without a torch as light penetration is captured as much as possible, but there is a torch nearby, 3rd shot is entry after soldier ambush in FOFG.

2/2
Licia Tunnel light penetration. You can proceed to heide without torch, but to get to copse you need a torch as there is a dark pathway.

As PT mode gets closer to Beta. A word about DS2 Level design and torch placement. PT mode allows correct torch without overburdening the player on always torch usage. Examples below
Light penetrates this far here to proceed further you need to backtrack a bit and lit a torch there
1/1

Thank you :)

Thank you for the kind words

FOFG Entry from river

FOFG River area now with water reflections

Thanks Alex. Yeah Drangleic castle is awesome, Its bleak atmosphere. There are no sconces here at all, all the lighting needs to be pushed and captured from the moon and sky, which is also so little, I have placed a ton of light portals at doors to importance sample them.