Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition - An RT only experience

Metro Exodus will be getting an Enhanced Edition on May 6 with DLSS 2.1 and whats essentially RT 2.0. Move over Cyberpunk, a new king is in town.


The biggest standout feature is unlimited light bounces where an unlimited number of rays are procedurally generated and cached to generate a fully ray traced game world instead of being limited to X number of light bounces.

 

The comparisons between the previous version of RT and this new one are pretty incredible.

https://d2skuhm0vrry40.cloudfront.net/2021/articles/2021-04-28-13-54/ME_1_002.png

https://d2skuhm0vrry40.cloudfront.net/2021/articles/2021-04-28-13-54/ME_2_002.png

 

Yeah, it will be the best RTX ON experience. I hope I could pick up Metro Exodus with a good price during next sales.

OT: Well, Crysis Remastered also just updated with so called 'Experimental Raytracing Boost” haha

 

I do not want to
OLD metro + mod GAMA for real dark
absolute nice game !!
,..,at least it made sense to recharge the night vision and flashlight

 

also noteworthy mention is you can play metro exodus on geforce now at 1080p if you dont have the hardware and or money because its free to stream just need to buy the game.

 

Very nice, I never did finish this game but I really liked what I did play. Nice time to jump in and run through all the content.

IMO one of the biggest features is DLSS 2.1. Without that, good luck running it acceptably. This is a total win and what I've been waiting for.

 

Good thing Exodus is in this month's Humble Choice selections.

 

Is this going to be a separate new release? Like one would need to buy it again, or it will be a big update?

 

It’s a free update for existing owners of the game.

 

Never finished it; one of those games I was enjoying but for some inexplicable reason, stopped playing. Guess I'll be revisiting it.

 

Yes, its free for existing users but it will come as a separate game. Think Metro last light and last light redux

 

Anyone try it yet? I'll be mostly using it on my laptop with a Max P 3070 but I just know it will probably perform terribly

 

It actually runs equal or faster than the original ray traced version, while sporting substantially improved visuals, plus it supports DLSS 2.1.

 

Agreed. I was just playing it for a bit, it runs extremely well even on a "lowly" 2070. The lighting is sublime. It's definitely exceeded the expectations I had by far. They are setting a nice bar for a game that looks and runs well. Hopefully it's the new normal.

 

It wouldn't be lowly if you got off your buttocks and upgraded!

 

Its a little slower actually in the benchmark without DLSS

Here are my runs

Extreme Preset


Extreme Preset - Ultra Shading


Extreme Preset - Ultra Shading - Hybrid reflections


Note:

• The new Extreme Preset uses Extreme shading as well, if you want to compare it to your old rtx preset result, set it to Ultra.
• The results page is a little bugged atm, regardless if you set reflections to Raytraced or Hybrid, it will show hybrid in the results page.

Edit: Tested on older drivers, will update with game ready driver results later.

Edit: Updated, no difference lol

 

And you are using a 2080 max q? If so, my very overclocked 3070 max p may handle this game better than I thought. My only issue is after playing other shooters at 150 to 300 frames, even 60fps for a single player, slow paced shooter will kill me and feel sluggish. I hope they tweaked the frame latency so 60fps actually feels smooth and not jittery.

 

This is without DLSS, with dlss I get 70+ on extreme - ultra shaders

Do share your benchmarks. I'm interested to see how my GS75 stands up to newer hardware.

 

Will do, I'll benchmark this evening. For DLSS im assuming you are using the quality setting?

 

Ingame yes, benchmarks no

 

lol. Not in this market... Game runs fine I can wait for sane pricing.

 

For Exodus? Just buy this month's Humble Choice bundle. Easy work.

edit: oh you mean a new laptop LOL nevermind

 

Well.. the new laptop the pricing isn't actually that bad, but I'm waiting for H45. Now.. new GPU for the eGPU, 3080, no.. not spending that money, I could I guess, but that would be idiotic at the scalper prices, and I'm just don't care enough at the moment to bother trying to fight for one with bots.

 

Here's the 150W 3080 in the legion 7. Default Extreme Preset at 1080p with no DLSS.

 

O̶n̶l̶y̶ ̶1̶0̶f̶p̶s̶ ̶h̶i̶g̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶n̶ ̶m̶i̶n̶e̶?̶ ̶S̶e̶e̶m̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶b̶i̶t̶ ̶l̶o̶w̶.̶

Nevermind 54 vs 42 is 29% faster. Sounds about right

Still pissed nvidia sells a 3070 die as a 3080 mobile

 

This is what NVIDIA came up with lol. The GA104 die being called 3080 mobile is a disgrace. They should have just put in a lower wattage GA102 die. Besides, I wish there was an easy way to push this thing to 200W rather than being capped at 165W. It barely crosses 74C even after hours of gaming, so there is headroom.

 

100% agree

I can guide you through shunt modding if you'd like.

 

Unfortunately I will sell it in a year for minimal loss to buy something better lol. It’s harder to sell a modded laptop where I live. Thanks for the offer though.

 

Dang it... Downloading; just cant resist having a look.

 

its more true to life but doesnt per se look better

 

I'm much further in the game now than the original playthrough I abandoned for some other game, I can't even remember anymore. It's so good (I'm just starting the "forest" area you travel to on the train). There's been countless times I've just sat there and marveled at some of the lighting for a bit. Control was good, but I think we can finally say the future is now with this ground up rework of Metro Exodus. If I can run it this well on a 15W 4-core CPU and a 2070 eGPU the future of RT is looking pretty good.

 

Just got it installed and played a small part of the training section. Werewolf thingies were killing me with the little tutorial thing saying to press "E" but that did nothing and I died several times in succession. Yes; I'm saying I died in the tutorial. *Facepalm*

 

Mash `E` repeatedly, you'll see the border of the icon start progressing

 

Attached is my Extreme Preset benchmark on a stock 3070 in my m17 R4. Game doesn't scale well to more powerful hardware. My 3080 in my GE76 barely scores higher in this game yet it owns the 3070 in every other game and benchmark. My 3070 notebook scores 12k GPU in timespy and my 3080 notebook scores 14K GPU, yet in this game its barely a difference. Weird

 

Anyone else notice that when outside in open areas, the CPU and GPU usage tank and framerate dips? Most apparent in the snowy outdoors after getting off the train in the beginning. The original game had the same issue and it's disappointing they didn't fix this.

 

Never could get afterburner osd working on dx12 games so not sure

 

I really liked the original and it looked fantastic with all of the settings cranked up. I honestly have not been able to identify any difference in image quality with the enhanced version. I would need to install the original again, play it for a bit, then relaunch the enhanced version. Or, I'd need to run the original on one system and the enhanced on a second and look at them side-by-side.

Of all of the recent AAA titles I have owned and played, Metro Exodus would be at or near the bottom of the list of titles that needed to look better graphically. It almost seems like a waste of resources when there are other titles that would have benefitted a lot more than Metro Exodus.

Perhaps they just needed something new to sell to folks that did not already own the original and this was a low overhead path to a new revenue stream.

 

Hah, no way man. The lighting is so realistic now. Granted they did do a good job as they are competent dev and it was already RT GI to begin with, but the nuance while playing in some of the dark areas is so much better than before. Not to mention it just runs better as well.

And the software engineer in me is feeling some empathy toward them for it giving them a much better workflow without having to spend time on lighting hacks to try to approximate realistic behavior.

 

I will have to play it longer, or better yet, run them next to each other on my two desktops to see if I can see the improvements. So far I'm not spotting anything remarkable, but I also didn't play for a long time. I stopped at the point in the first chapter where they rescued Artiom from the beasts attacking him and carried him away on a stretcher. Maybe the enhancement is more evident in other parts of the game that I didn't see so far.

 

It won't be obvious in the earlier levels but in later levels with more indoor scenes it gets more obvious.

That said, the way the lighting looks so real makes it look natural instead of wowing you with fancy lights like cyberpunk does.

 

I did it the first time (at least as far as I got) with a 1080gtx; this time I've got the bells and whistles and yeah, it's mo purty.

 

It seems I fall into the " hard for me to tell" camp that is actually pretty common. (Probably common more than NVIDIA would care to admit.) I am also not very sensitive to things like screen tearing unless it is severe. I'm sure I could tell in a hard side-by-side comparison if I were to carefully measure and analyze it, but in the heat of the battle, it's not going to matter too much in the grand scheme of things. I am probably more likely to be in tune with the action taking place than I am the eye candy. If it looks good overall, chances are great that I'm not going to pause the action to inspect the shadows and reflections to see if they are truly a photo-realistic rendering or be overly obsessed with graphic perfection. As long as it looks nice, I'm probably not even going to care all that much. It won't be any more or any less fun for me to play with RTX On versus RTX Off. If a performance hit is evident, I am far more likely to notice and be bothered by that than being impressed by the slightly better image quality.



I think we need to keep in perspective that a lot of this, while very real and legitimate technology, is driven more by marketing hype than meaningful end-user benefits. The mere introduction and heralding of a special feature will cause people to pay closer attention. So, it is far more likely to get noticed and appreciated than it would be if it were silently introduced and never mentioned. A few people would notice, but most would be more into the game and may never even become aware of those enhancements. They are both remarkable and subtle at the same time. If it were truly to die for and something nobody could live without, there would be almost no demand for GTX and Radeon GPUs among gamers.

 

I agree with most of that; based on talking with others and what I read here and elsewhere, I'm not as sensitive to frame rate, screen tearing, and that sort of thing as (some) others. On the other hand, like many things for me; this likely falls into a category where I don't notice a big difference when an improvement is enabled but miss it when it's gone. Like when going to blurays from DVD; I didn't notice the bluray being much better when I upgraded but really noticed the downgrade when going back to DVD. Fast-forward to now and DVD is almost unwatchable for me; I notice immediately that it's well below par. When gaming first went 3D it was huge, a completely new thing. Once we started climbing that ladder though I usually thought the next thing was both better, but also, a bit meh, for lack of a better word. On the other hand going back in time by playing an old game (I've done this recently) I immediately disliked 800x600 and not having the eye candy my brain expects nowadays. That's without having to play at 30 fps or whatever it was back then.

There are a couple thoughts blended together there: I think RT in hindsight and removed from the hype will be seen as a beneficial part of the graphics rendering package that was available in this time rather than any sort of leap on its own. I also think a future version of me would probably notice something is missing without it, even if it doesn't seem like much now.

 

Yes, I agree. That totally makes sense. Great analogy with the Bluray vs DVD, too.

 

FYI, this is 70% off on Steam, if there's anyone left who didn't buy it yet

 

It should be free to anyone that already owns the original Metro Exodus. It did not cost me anything. At least that is the case on the Epic client. Wasn't this a title that a bunch of folks got upset about because it was supposed to be released on Steam and in the 11th hour it became an Epic exclusive? Or, was that another title I am confusing with Metro Exodus? If I am remembering right, some people were acting very irrational about it and were super angry... wanted to burn Epic to the ground with their crazy misguided hate and discontent.

 

No no, I mean the whole Metro Exodus is 70% off. The patch is included and free for anyone who owns it already.

 

I pre-ordered mine before it was pulled off steam.

 

i wish i had a rtx gpu but from the images i say it looks ok if maybe a little better.....sometimes just because somethings more realistic doesn't nessessarily make it look per se better

 

Attached is the benchmark at 1080p Extreme with the scar 17 (155w 3080 vbios). This is with the internal screen so I also have a Optimus hit.