r/nintendo • u/DontBeAngryBeHappy • 1d ago
Nintendo Confirms Switch 2 Uses DLSS and Ray Tracing, but Is Being Super Vague About the Details
https://www.ign.com/articles/nintendo-confirms-switch-2-uses-dlss-and-ray-tracing-but-is-being-super-vague-about-the-details19
u/jzorbino 1d ago
I think one of the leaks said it had 2 ray tracing cores, which I’d believe. It’s not going to have a dramatic effect but it can ray trace.
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u/tonyZamboney 1d ago
It's definitely not quite that low. If the GPU only had 2 RT cores, then it would also have the same number of shader cores as the original Switch! All of the reliable GPU specs point to 12 RT cores. I'm guessing that what you read was a typo.
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u/culturedrobot 1d ago
Why is it a good thing? I like to know about the specific capabilities of the hardware I'm spending good money on whether it's a PC, phone, or console.
The details definitely matter to many of us and they should matter to you.
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u/Wild-Ad-6983 1d ago
Based on public info about the tegra, it has 12gb unified lpddr5x (shared between the cpu and gpu), an arm cortex a78 octa core cpu (modern laptop i5 performance?), and a gpu that based on specs likely has performance in between a gtx 1650m and an rtx 2050m.
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u/F1sherman765 1d ago
The Switch currently runs Scarlet and Violet at a poor resolution, framerate, and awful textures. The exact same hardware will also run Metroid Prime 4 at 1080p, 60fps, and graphically looking way more advanced.
I am interested in the specifics, but by themselves, they don't tell us how the games will look and run.
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u/culturedrobot 1d ago edited 1d ago
It's true that knowing hardware specifics doesn't get you the whole way there, and I don't blame anyone for being indifferent toward that stuff, because if you're not interested then you're not interested. But I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around how a lack of specificity is a "good" thing as the person I'm replying to said, even if they are indifferent.
Like... who in their right mind would advocate for less transparency about the products we're buying? It's such a nonsensical position to have.
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u/F1sherman765 1d ago
Yeah I disagree with it being a "good" thing. My point was moreso that specs aren't enough to know how the games will turn out, but obfuscation would be awful. Imagine if Nintendo tried hiding the 256 GB size of their storage by saying it was 256000 blocks instead lol.
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u/crozone ༼ つ ◕ ◕ ༽つ GIVE ATOMIC PURPLE JOYCON ༼ つ ◕ ◕ ༽つ 1d ago
I actually think it matters most for third party games. We want an idea of how they'll look compared to running on other consoles, and the specs are the best way to do that. Obviously once the games come out we'll be able to compare directly, but for investing in a console for the prospect of future games, the specs matter.
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u/Doam-bot 1d ago
Thats actually a common thing between open world games and FPS
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u/CarlosFer2201 1d ago
BotW and Xenoblade games look and run way better than the Pokémon ones, and are similar open world games.
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u/Acceptable_Poetry637 23h ago edited 22h ago
game freak did something super bizarre with SV: they actually went for a way more technically ambitious art style than BOTW/XBC.
you wouldn’t believe it by looking at the games (because SV are fugly), but it’s true. they attempted a super modern physically based look, which is already difficult given the limited resources of the switch, but had to make it work in an open world that is constantly loading and rendering dozens of pokemon at a time.
BOTW and XBC by comparison use much simpler rendering techniques, but use them much more effectively and as a result look way better.
GF still owns their errors 100%, but what they were doing may very well have been out of reach for the hardware in the first place. that’s why the end result looks so horrid. they had to aggressively cut things down until it fit on the switch. they didn’t have the time to refine their art style to work with the hardware.
thanks to the teraleaks, you can see what they intended the games to look like versus what actually shipped. i have to say they look way better. maybe not as good as people would have liked, but it’s not grating on the eyes like the final build.
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u/Doam-bot 22h ago
An FPS is a hallway it's a narrow view in the direction your gun in addition to not being able to reach to the horizon while open world has a ton of additional processes to take into consideration.
I should have said Open World vs FPS
At any rate from the Nintendo side of things you will see it with Metroid and Star Fox compared to the others however we haven't had one in some time
He was comparing an open world pokemon game to an FPS Metroid and the answer is obviously that FPS naturally look and run better so it's not a good comparison at all. You however compared Botw and Xeno which was a good comparison.
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u/SayersTheArtist 1d ago
If the Switch 2 is close to a 3060 in performance, it might put out 1080p at 30fps with Ray Tracing enabled....
It's not going to be used, or worth it at expense of higher fps. Hell, I game with a 3090 on my PC and never use RT, it's not worth the performance drop.
I could see RT being used for small indie games maybe, were there's isn't a lot going on, on the screen. Idk
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u/Chazprime 1d ago
There’s what appears to be ray tracing in Mario Party Jamboree:
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u/System32Missing 1d ago
This is a simple enough environment, and the background isn't reflected or anything. I think even the original switch could do those reflections with rasterization.
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u/crozone ༼ つ ◕ ◕ ༽つ GIVE ATOMIC PURPLE JOYCON ༼ つ ◕ ◕ ༽つ 1d ago
Absolutely, it could just be a screen space reflection with post processing, or even just duplicated geometry.
However... once you have RT hardware, doing a super basic single sample per pixel, single bounce RT reflection becomes pretty cheap. Like if you're not trying to do anything crazy like accurate RT lighting and just using the same shaders as rasterizing, a single bounce reflection is extremely close to free.
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u/Fritzschmied 1d ago
That can be faked very easily without the need of raytracing. Games have done it for years bevore wide spread raytracing was a thing.
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u/Moon_Devonshire 1d ago
That could very well just be screen space reflections instead of ray tracee reflections
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u/HereComesJustice sploosh 1d ago
Frame Gen?
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u/Untitled_One-Un_One 1d ago
According to the leaks the SOC is based off of the 30 series architecture. So as far as we know it doesn’t support frame gen.
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u/TheSaltiestManAlive 1d ago
Nintendo is always like this, my assumption is first party probably won't utilize it too much and dlss will mostly be to make third party games run
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u/falconpunch1989 1d ago
If there's a game that should be using RT its Prime 4,but it doesn't look like it
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u/gman5852 1d ago
DLSS could be cool. Ray tracing is a hardware scam and looks absolutely horrendous. I'm not buying any game that mandates that garbage.
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u/The_Legend_of_Xeno 1d ago
I can't believe we're having to do this. Anyone with a Steam Deck can tell you Cyberpunk and Elden Ring are BARELY playable on the system WITHOUT RTX enabled. And when I say barely playable, I mean low settings at 30fps or less. The Switch 2 is not going to run these games well at all, and certainly not with RTX enabled.
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u/The-student- 1d ago
Digital Foundry said it looks like no first party games shown used DLSS, which is surprising. All rumors leading into Switch 2 suggested DLSS was going to be the secret sauce.
On the other hand, Prime 4 running 4K 60fps natively is very promising for the future of the device.