RayTracing is required – Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition in Digital Foundry Test

The Digital Foundry lab has carried out a detailed analysis of the improved version of Metro Exodus. The original game was one of the first projects with support for ray tracing, and Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition took a step further - the new product does not run on computers without RT-acceleration support. But for the owners of new video cards, a lot of advantages are expected!

First of all, 4A Games team was able to fix most of the lighting problems. At that time, users complained about both versions: without raytracing, some places seemed to be flat, and with RTXon, many buildings or basements were almost completely dark due to a single light bounce.

Now, almost all rooms are filled with layers of reflected light, taking into account the global illumination RTGI (RayTraced Global Illumination). Correct shadows are also created not only from light sources, but also from luminescent objects like fire or small bulbs. With only RT in mind developers no longer need to bake them or add fake light sources, it is the emissive material that is taken into account.

The game also features DLSS 2.1, so the display is pretty accurate and sharp even with the upscale. The origial 2019 game used DLSS 1.0, so it was kinda messy in that area – branches or fences were a cloud of random pixels.

However, it turned out to be impossible to achieve widespread use of raytracing even here: the leaves on the trees are still created using the SSR (Screen-Space Reflection) technique in Enchanced Edition, so they are reflected only where these trees are in the screen space, and when displaced, they fade away.

Visual artifacts also occur in rooms where the windows are not completely closed. Sometimes the lighting in such places changes while walking through them, however, the authors, most likely, will try to fix such an obvious bug.

• Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition will be released on PC on May 6, but on consoles the release is expected before the end of the year, but its date has not yet been announced.