Ray Tracing shimmering and distortions

[Sarafan]

Here's the story. I bought a GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card recently. In some games I'm experiencing specific shimmering/distortions with Ray Tracing enabled. These usually show on the border of lighting, in the place where direct lighting gradually disappears (don't know how to precisely describe it). Check out my video from Quake 2 RTX and you'll have the idea of what I'm talking about:

View: https://youtu.be/S04N0WCCYlQ


I experienced similar problems in other games on my previous GeForce RTX 2070 Super (Control for example). I was convinced that this is a side effect of Ray Tracing caused mainly by the fact that the GPUs still don't have enough power to trace the rays bounces enough number of times, but... My friend bought GeForce RTX 4070 recently as well and he doesn't have a similar problem! I mean, there are some distortions from time to time, but not nearly as visible as in my case. He uses the same drivers, has a different motherboard and CPU, but I don't see a correlation between these two factors and shimmering I'm encountering.

In Cyberpunk 2077 Path Tracing mode the shimmering is almost non existent. It appears only in some rare cases like on the stairs. It's also barely present in Half-Life with RTX mod. I'm perfectly fine if this is a natural thing. But it wonders me why the problem is less noticeable on my friend's GPU. I also tried to change the game options. With anti-aliasing completely disabled it's even worse. The best result gives Temporal Upscaling AA, but it's still clearly visible. I also see in videos on YouTube that people rarely have this problem, at least in Quake 2 RTX.

Do you have any idea what might be the cause? Does someone who has RTX graphics card can confirm similar problems? I haven't tested my new GPU in Control, where the shimmering was sometimes very noticeable on my RTX 2070 Super, but I might do so...

 

[Colif]

Curious if it happens on more than one monitor.

it was a problem on 20 series cards with ray tracing - link

Cyberpunk has shimmering problem but not only on Nvidia cards, 7900xt also does it - link

Its a Ray tracing problem.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I'm curious about this too, but I dont have an RT card. Does enabling or disabling DLSS affect anything?

The only other variable I can think of is the monitor, what model is it you have exactly @Sarafan ?

 

[Sarafan]

Curious if it happens on more than one monitor.

it was a problem on 20 series cards with ray tracing - link

Cyberpunk has shimmering problem but not only on Nvidia cards, 7900xt also does it - link

Its a Ray tracing problem.

It happens on all monitors, so it's clearly not a display case. It looks the same as in the posted Control video, but the CP2077 case seems to be a little different. There's some blinking there rather than shimmering. It's clearly a Ray Tracing problem, as you mentioned, because when I switch to normal rendering everything is dandy (apart from worse lighting effects that is ).

I'm curious about this too, but I dont have an RT card. Does enabling or disabling DLSS affect anything?

The only other variable I can think of is the monitor, what model is it you have exactly @Sarafan ?

It's not a problem with monitor. Right know I'm using MSI G421V E2. Although it's nothing from higher tier, I had even more problems with Ray Tracing shimmering on RTX 2070 Super and Samsung S24D300 display. I changed the monitor and still was using the old graphics card. It didn't make any difference.

I don't use DLSS in Quake 2 RTX and the problem is noticeable there more than in other games. In fact there's no DLSS option there. Only AMD FSR 1.0, which drastically worsens the image quality. Also disabling DLSS in CP2077 doesn't make the problem appear. I guess there must be a correlation between this and the rest of the hardware. Maybe it has something to do with Windows 11? I doubt this is the case, but my friend still uses Windows 10.

 

[Colif]

Most of the differences between 10 & 11 are on the surface. there is likely more difference in the hardware between you and your friends PC compared to the OS.

I don't have any games with RT effects so I don't even know what it looks like

Funny how RT is the big selling point for Nvidia and it doesn't even work right all the time.

I don't have any suggestions, you could ask on https://forums.tomshardware.com/forums/graphics-cards.9/ for other options.

tried different cables?

 

[Sarafan]

Most of the differences between 10 & 11 are on the surface. there is likely more difference in the hardware between you and your friends PC compared to the OS.

I don't have any games with RT effects so I don't even know what it looks like

Funny how RT is the big selling point for Nvidia and it doesn't even work right all the time.

I don't have any suggestions, you could ask on https://forums.tomshardware.com/forums/graphics-cards.9/ for other options.

tried different cables?

I already tried to ask on the Nvidia forums. Maybe I'll try on Tom's Hardware as well, thanks! Tried both DisplayPort and HDMI cables, no difference. It's probably some hardware-driver related thing. In theory these could be faulty Ray Tracing cores, but it doesn't explain why some Ray Tracing games don't have this issue or why is it only barely visible there. I'm pretty sure that to some extent it's a natural issue of Ray Tracing. Look at the Nvidia Remix video (1:33-1:48):

View: https://youtu.be/Vg52-HZhrFc?t=93

There's a similar effect visible when editing Morrowind assets in Nvidia Remix. The Ray Tracing shaders fill the scene with a delay. The renderer needs time to trace all the light rays bounces and that's why there are distortions at first. And I'm fine with that. This doesn't explain however why I'm seeing these things notoriously in real time in Quake 2 RTX and my friend doesn't.