RT in Elden Ring: Better for Screenshots than Gameplay, Says Digital Foundry

On March 23, 2023, FromSoftware released a patch for Elden Ring that, apart from balance adjustments and bug fixes, added ray tracing to the game. Thomas Morgan, a specialist from Digital Foundry, enabled ray tracing on all platforms to test and share the results for the game.

On console, according to Morgan, the impact of ray tracing in Elden Ring is most noticeable in the game's open environments, where it provides more natural shadows from trees and grass. It enhances the game's visuals with more realistic lighting and shadow effects, resulting in a more immersive experience for players.

However, Morgan noticed a trade-off between fidelity and animation rate for dynamic shadows. Specifically, he observed that enabling RT could result in a lower update rate for the animation of distant tree shadows, such as at the Stormhill gate location. Shadows that were previously animated at the game's frame rate were reduced to one-half or one-third of their original rate with RT enabled. Still, Morgan noted that this flaw does not apply to all of the objects in the game.

The RT upgrade in Elden Ring also includes ray-traced ambient occlusion (RTAO) which offers a more accurate simulation of shadows in certain spaces such as the corners of dungeons, grass tuft roots, and bushes.

Previously, console and PC versions used screen-space ambient occlusion (SSAO) as a standard which resulted in odd silhouette artifacts and low-quality ambient shading. RTAO mode in Elden Ring, according to Morgan, solves this issue and creates thicker and more consistent shading regardless of whether it appears within screen space.

However, RTAO in Elden Ring on consoles has a drawback – the technology is not functional during cutscenes.

Both the PS5 and Xbox Series X offer identical quality for ray-traced shadows. The dynamic resolution on both consoles is also the same, providing 1620p with drops up to 1560p. For comparison, when ray tracing is not enabled, the game runs at a 4K resolution.

On PC, players have the ability to select from four different ray tracing quality presets, unlike on consoles, where ray tracing is simply a toggle switch that can be turned on or off without further customization.

Even at its lowest setting, the ray tracing feature in Elden Ring produces more natural shadows compared to the standard mode. At "High" and "Maximum" settings, the shadows and self-shadowing effects become even more lifelike, even on objects that are located far away from the camera.

Morgan claims that the "High" setting provided the best balance between quality and performance impact. Additionally, while testing, he found out that the quality of RT shadows on both PS5 and Xbox Series X is equivalent to the "High" or "Maximum" ray tracing settings available on PC.

Enabling ray tracing on the PS5 can cause a drop in frame rate to between 30 and 35 FPS, in comparison to the "Quality" mode. The performance varies depending on the location, with some areas such as Caelid maintaining a frame rate of over 40 FPS, while others can experience drops below 30 FPS.

According to Morgan, the average frame rate on the Series X is around 5 FPS lower than that of the PS5, with drops below 30 FPS occurring more frequently. However, the difference between the two consoles isn't substantial.

Morgan conducted testing for the game on a PC with an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 processor, 16GB DDR4-3600 RAM, and a GeForce RTX 2070 graphics card. Using graphics settings comparable to those on the PS5 and Series X, and with the "High" ray tracing preset selected, the frame rate in open locations dropped to between 30 and 35 FPS.

Morgan noted technical issues and performance drops on all platforms with ray tracing enabled and suggested it may not be worth it to use in regular gameplay. However, he acknowledged that ray tracing could be useful for creating screenshots. He also expressed surprise that FromSoftware chose to add ray tracing before addressing technical flaws in the game.

You can learn more by reading Thomas Morgan's review here or watching the video here. Also, don't forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram and Twitter, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.