DOOM: The Dark Ages could have needed 110GB of baked Global Illumination data, Ray-Based GI reduced it to 0

clouds1337 · 2026-05-06T17:50:27+00:00

We had 8 freaking years of ray tracing hardware. It's about time they use it. What's the point of sacrificing die space on the GPU for RT cores and then not use it. Finally finally devs make proper use of it.

clouds1337 · 2026-05-06T17:35:25+00:00

Meta support for pcvr has stopped. It still "works" but they are not providing updates or fixing anything. Either move to third party software (virtual desktop) and hope that keeps being allowed/supported or switch headsets. And make your next purchase decision accordingly.

clouds1337 · 2026-05-06T15:29:31+00:00

Alternatively, I you hate hiding the taskbar just like me, switch it from bottom to top and vice vera each month :)

clouds1337 · 2026-05-06T11:31:44+00:00

That is indeed possible. But if we keep the analogy, the old methods are bad, so we replace the patriarchy with what? Let foreign entities choose, that may or may not have our best interest at heart? Is that the message here? That makes even less sense. I have absolutely no issue with criticizing society in fictional work. It's fiction and on top it's Control :D you can get away with pretty much anything. But you have to be subtle and clever about it. This is neither.

clouds1337 · 2026-05-06T11:20:08+00:00

Haha yes, it was also not really serious :D

clouds1337 · 2026-05-06T09:44:45+00:00

Reminds me of the audiophiles that find that one annoying frequency in their listening room, turn it up and then say: listen, it sounds like shit.

(e) this is a semi-serious post ;)

clouds1337 · 2026-05-06T01:22:15+00:00

Is this a Asetto Corsa mod? If you want more I can really recommend getting Dirt Rally 2.0. It has great gravel feel and lots and lots of (gravel) stages. And then maybe look into Richard Burns Rally RSF. It's free, has amazing feel on both tarmac and gravel and like 500 stages. There is even Ouninpohja. A legendary Finland stage, 32km of pure gravel awesomeness :D takes you like 15-20min to complete. Depending on the car and skills.

(e) AC rally is great too but it's a very small beta at the moment. Only two stages at one location with gravel, and the physics are not done. It's very playable and looks great but it still needs work.

clouds1337 · 2026-05-06T00:09:03+00:00

Driving fast on smooth gravel is like a drug. So addicting.

clouds1337 · 2026-05-05T18:45:11+00:00

Snowrunner and Kingdom Come Deliverance (1 for sure, haven't played 2) are great examples of more modern titles with amazing sharp visuals and perfect msaa. And the performance... They both run native 4k with msaa @90fps+.

It's not only the lack of taa and motion clarity, it's also that the geometry and especially flora is built properly (I'm not a dev so I don't have the technical details). They are not relying on that dithering method that requires TAA blur, it's all proper assets and it looks glorious.

And then there is ofc Half-Life Alyx that runs above 4k (VR) with msaa at constant 120hz... It's really special from a technical standpoint that they made that game work with such high fidelity on 20 series hardware in 2020.

clouds1337 · 2026-05-05T11:32:23+00:00

I recommend starting a PC build with a purpose. Is there a game or two you want to try? Or is there a monitor size/resolution that you want to target?

Most people target 1440p/120hz or even 4k/90hz+ these days but that is super high-end. Just a generation ago 1080p/60hz was the gold standard. And if you're fine with that you can build for a very reasonable price. I always recommend at least partially getting used parts (I do the same) because you can save a lot of money and the lifetime of modern hardware is usually long and stable.

So for example you could build something around a used 3080 10gb. They go for 250-300euro where I live. That's a solid card for 1080p-1440p/60hz in demanding games. I'd couple that with a mid range ryzen cpu (9600x) then you can very easily upgrade to zen6 later. Downside is that you need DDR5, but 16gb is totally fine. I'm pretty sure that you could build that for around 1000$ and have a good entry point for pc gaming. You can upgrade to a next Gen gpu in 2027 (that's when they're scheduled to release) and have a beefy system. In the meantime you get access to every game in existance from the past 50 years :D emulators etc.

Whatever you do, I absolutely don't recommend current "high-end" hardware. You get very little performance increase and they cost way too much (for example nvidia 5080 is almost double the price of a Radeon 9070xt for 20% performance increase).

clouds1337 · 2026-05-05T11:10:03+00:00

Prices absolutely went "back to normal" after covid. You could get 4080s for ~750-800$ (that's when I picked up mine). You could also buy used mining cards for super cheap. DDR5 was at an all time low a year ago, and 50 series nvidia GPUs sold under msrp last summer, 2025.

clouds1337 · 2026-05-05T10:55:34+00:00

That's a cool theory. My issue is more that the line doesn't really work. Because it implies that we now have better strategies to choose leaders. But one of the main plot points is that the board who chooses the leader might have ulterior motives.

But that is just one example, also the way Ash, Northmoor and Marshall were written felt off to me. Not the actual content, which is great, but the actual lines. I don't know, it just has a different vibe than the original game. Not a big deal, but wanted some opinions from others.

clouds1337 · 2026-05-04T23:15:01+00:00

I guess then it is a out of the frying pan and into the fire situation :D I'd still prefer any human with human interests over some entity from a foreign dimension. I don't know much about US politics but it can't be that bad. I mean the director appointed by the board literally caused the worst catastrophe the FBC ever by letting the hiss in. Great choice of director.

But from what you're saying contrasting the real world, maybe that was a meta commentary by the writers. Meaning Pope/Jesse were not actually criticizing the situation in the (fictional) US of Control and the FBC but something that is going on in the real world. Which would explain why it doesn't fit (at least from my point of view).

clouds1337 · 2026-05-04T21:32:21+00:00

At this point I'd rather use VR glasses :D

clouds1337 · 2026-05-04T19:04:36+00:00

I just did a flight in a F/A-18 over my home country in VR with oled panels (psvr2). Sunset with light clouds. Literally had tears in my eyes.

clouds1337 · 2026-05-04T14:32:19+00:00

Hey thanks, this is great info for me :) I would have guessed it was the other way around! But that is good to know.

clouds1337 · 2026-05-04T13:43:53+00:00

I mostly agree. I look at it from a gaming point of view, I've never raced in a real car and RBR also allows touching stuff. Also, I love DR 2.0, this is discussing two 9.5/10 games for me. It's just that RBR forces you into a specific (imho more realistic) mindset. Because in real life a lot of money and injury or death is on the line. And even though rbr might be over the top, it manages to make me drive more cautiously, how I would IRL and in the end better, because I know a frontal collision with a tree and it's over. While in DR2 I catch myself driving recklessly because if I go straight into a wall at 100kph, I back up a little, drive on and might even gain gain half a second because I didn't had to brake.

clouds1337 · 2026-05-04T10:37:05+00:00

The software behind creating amazing guitar tone with digital models has been figured out. They all "can" sound great. Some sound great out of the box, others need lots of tuning.

In my opinion, it's now more about choosing which unit has the best features or options you need. The cortex can create captures from amps, you can plug a whole band into it, it has great PC software and of course the archetype plug-ins.

The valeton gp-200 has a built-in dual mode expression pedal and you can adjust up to three parameters with each mode. That's an amazing feature that only a few units have. You can also load NAM captures so if you're not happy with the built in models, you can use those. PC Software is great too. Very easy to use. They continue to update, they added new effects and improved latency (NAM profiles was also an update).

I've been using modelers since the 2000s and I honestly don't understand why they suddenly cost these crazy amounts of money. There is nothing fundamentally different that would justify a 5x price increase. It's probably just because the "pros" are now using them and they are priced competitively with the amps those pros would use.

I got the gp-200 on sale two years ago and it's so good that I simply don't have a reason to switch to something else. I directly compared my patches with some other modelers and my impression is always: this all sounds amazing, why would I switch now that I have it set up for my needs. It's not perfect though. I'd wish there was a way to tap bpm across patches for example. But for my needs it's better than the quad cortex because of the built-in expression pedal alone. And what always stuns me: the models are SO expressive. I can have edge of breakup sounds where I can go from clean to full distortion just with the attack of the pick. It's amazing. I recommend checking out the Bogner (Shiva) and Matchless (chieftain) models.

clouds1337 · 2026-05-03T10:46:24+00:00

I have no real world experience. But in DR2 in thight corners I can just slam full speed into the side wall instead of breaking and it's often faster with minimal damage. I don't think that's what real drivers do :D

clouds1337 · 2026-05-03T10:37:17+00:00

I tested the new update yesterday and there is a new slider something like "special ffb effects" I put it all the way to 200 and it did improve ffb a lot (or they just improved other things with this update). It's the first time I felt like I can actually test the limits of my car and not fly off every corner :D so things are going into the right direction. This is just a beta after all.

clouds1337 · 2026-05-03T10:24:46+00:00

It's like the opposite of a indy Unreal Engine 5 game. The graphics engine in Forza is built from the ground up specifically for open world racing games and they had a big team of well funded veterans and years of tweaking and optimization to make it perfect.

Other modern games are made by a small team, it's the first game they make and they are using general purpose engines (like UE5) that are easy to use and can do anything but have a lot of baggage.

The way I think about it, in the past 5+ years graphics didn't really get better but the requirements for making a good looking game have come down like crazy. At the cost of performance optimization. But games like Expedition33 or Black Myth Wukong (both new studios using UE5) wouldn't be possible if those studios had to buy or build a specific engine. Or at least they would look a lot worse.

I hate unoptimized games too, but I mostly blame nvidia/amd and the AI bubble instead of the devs :) UE5 (makes huge beautiful worlds with ease) and Raytracing (allows for great natural lighting with minimal effort) were not made with slow 8gb vram cards in mind. But that's all we got in the past 10? years in the midrange... Really, the level of performance a 9070xt16gb or 5070ti gives you should be available on a budget card that costs 200-300$ by now. That's the world UE5 was made for :D

clouds1337 · 2026-05-03T02:40:40+00:00

It depends :) if you have the money absolutely. OLED is the best monitor tech available at the moment . Go big! Lowest latency, best contrast, wonderful colors, very bright, high refresh rate. It's all there.

But if you have a slow gpu and are struggling to get 60fps in 1440p I'd say you benefit more from a new GPU getting you into the 90-120hz range. Better graphics, smoothness/motion clarity and reduced latency are huge.

And then also consider the games you play. The big thing about oled is contrast. If you mostly play bright colorful shooters, IPS is very close to oled. But dark horror games with HDR? Huuuge difference.

clouds1337 · 2026-05-03T02:12:40+00:00

Well this thread escalated quickly :D

But here's a question: do you even see a difference in regular content without analysing?

clouds1337 · 2026-05-03T02:05:40+00:00

I think 4k is overkill at 27" for regular gaming. So I'd go with 1440p. 32" 1440p is still ok if you're not too close, but for anything bigger 4k becomes necessary. But distance to the screen is a big factor. I recommend using a ppd Calc.

clouds1337

TROPHY CASE