Graphics never have alone sold consoles, but advancing the technologies that produce them is still important. 

The biggest value of Ray Tracing is that it saves development costs, making game development cheaper and shorter, which in turn allows for more games to be produced without compromising quality or better games to be produced if development is long. 

Games are what sell consoles, and saving on expensive asset production, allows game developers to focus resources on actual game design. 

Credit to Chrkeller for beating me to it, but DF have taken a look at Indiana Jones and confirmed that Ray Traced lighting is in, and in fact exceeds the implementation in the Series S version slightly according to the developer. Image quality is also sharper than the S, due to DLSS, as we've seen in a number of other ports.

The main limitation is that it can drop frames when sprinting through demanding areas or when you fight a large number of enemies in these same areas, but for the most part it seems to hold a steady 30.

On the whole, definitely seems like one of the best ports so far of a demanding game, and a good demonstration of the system's capabilities.

Fairly good port (though XSS is, from my POV, obvious "winner" here, especially with high res textures pack), though I would've preferred if they were analyzing not just Vatican, but also next level, since that's where the game is more demanding. That said, tied to our conversation on future SW2 ports from PS6/Helix gen, a bit worrisome port as well. 

This is running in dynamic 540p-1080p@30, and PS5 version is at dynamic 1440p–1800p@60. DOOM, on same engine is at 1080p-1440p@60 on PS5 (635p–900p@60 on XSS). Imagine when PS5 ports of PS6 games are at dynamic 1080p@60, let alone 847p@60 like Alan Wake 2 or even (to be expected from future RT heavy games) lower than that.

Of course, SW:O port is even lower, at dynamic 720p, and honestly, I find it to be better job overall, given how much more demanding that game is compared to Indy.

The thing with dynamic res is that "540p" as a minimum sounds bad on paper, but in reality, the game may hardly ever get that low in practise, as the minimum is typically reserved for the worst case scenarios, and when the game does drop frames it seems more CPU than GPU bound.

Plus, with DLSS, you can get away with resolutions that would look terrible on say PS5 or Xbox Series and still have passable image quality. Speaking of DLSS, the game apparently uses one of the more demanding variants of it available on Switch 2, so that also would incur a performance hit as well; there are lighter variants available for when a game has less headroom than this.

To port a more demanding game like Doom, I imagine they'd just have to make more cuts to the assets themselves.

Looking at the full DF video it looks quite unstable, but I think it's just the constant pop-in & shadow instability. And maybe motion blur is cranked a level too low for my liking 

Yeah, 540p via DLSS to 1080p output actually looks surprisingly fine on 4K TV from usual viewing distance (I was messing around with Max lighting+RR in Crimson Desert, which cripples GPUs, so I tested 1080p@ DLSS4/DLSS4.5 and FSR4.1 Performance). But...

...what I'm saying is that Indiana is...well, not light, but lighter game...with modified idTech 7 that actually favors Ampere over RDNA2 (unlike idTech 8 in DOOM that solved RDNA2 bottlenecks), yet they still had to go below 1080p@30. That's why I find it to be fine port, but not as impressive as SW:O, and why I think heavy RT titles from PS6 gen, who will be tough even for PS5 (again think Alan Wake 2 case or worse), will be really, really tough for SW2.

That said, it's always about ROI, not about tech, since there's pretty much always work around.

I feel like the fact they're still targeting 1080p while using a more demanding DLSS variant suggests they've got some breathing room here in the graphics department; it's more the CPU that would appear to be the limiting factor.

They could have gone for say 720p with DLSS "Lite" like Star Wars Outlaws if the hardware was really pressed, or they could have cut back the scenery, props, etc a lot more, like say FF7 Rebirth does.

Yeah, as I said, Indiana is lighter title - this is for 3060 12GB (Ampere like SW2), 1080p native, max settings:

- Indiana: 74fps 
- DOOM: 41fps
- SW:O: 43fps

This is why I feel it's fine, but not outstanding port - there is a problem somewhere on overall, if they couldn't get 60fps and opted for dynamic 1080p, which isn't even at stable 30fps.

60fps is likely off the table for CPU reasons. And the 30fps is stable most of the time as per DF; it typically drops if you sprint through the larger outdoor areas or engage large numbers of enemies in these areas, again suggesting that it's the CPU that's the limiting factor.

And dynamic 1080p while using the more demanding available DLSS model is not at all a bad result for the hardware; DLSS has its own processing cost that eats into pixel count, which is why a lot of other games like RE Requiem or Pragmata that use this model render at quite low resolutions.

With regard to the third party output once the PS6 launches, while I do think ports will become less common when the next gen arrives, by that point Nintendo should be putting out much more first-party titles to compensate. Currently the 3rd-party ports are doing the heavy lifting for the Switch 2 because Nintendo is taking forever to make games for the hardware. But that situation will reverse over time once the first-party games start arriving and making ports becomes more difficult.

With Indiana Jones, my big concern was shadow quality, because shadows really seemed to pop-in close to the player in the prerelease footage.  But while that issue is still there, I find it a lot less noticeable when playing on my 4k tv than it was in 1080p Youtube previews.  Maybe that footage was mostly taken from handheld mode.  It's a beautiful game overall.