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[borborygmus]

I don't have a good idea of what people think about hardware accelerated real time ray tracing. Sony, Microsoft and nVidia are marketing the hell out of it, but I don't think I've read many positive impressions of it on forums.

To me it seems like an obvious waste of resources. You'd still be able to have very good looking reflections and lighting/shadows without it and imho it's "good enough" quality for now in the big picture. When I look at "RTX on" screenshot galleries, it very quickly resorts to showing scenes with large puddles and it reminds me how situational and how marginal the benefit is.

Is this an artifact of how cynical this field has become? Or maybe this is a necessary stepping stone toward something that'll become worthwhile in the future. But then that raises new questions: should we dedicate silicon, and how much, for specific features? This seems to contradict the previous trend of generalizing GPU programmability.

Am I an idiot? I'm open to that possibility. Let me know.

edit: I a word.

 

[Sakura]

Personally I have no idea what is supposed to be impressive with ray tracing. It looks marginally better in the screenshots I've seen, if I even notice it, but maybe I am just not looking at the right stuff.

 

[RoadHazard]

For lighting it can definitely be nice, but what we're seeing right now (in-your-face reflections just to show that "look, we have ray tracing!") is generally a waste of resources. Faked reflections look good enough in most cases.

 

[SaturnSaturn]

No, i always prioritize frame rate

 

[cyberheater]

Get used to it. Ray tracing is here to stay.

 

[Elog]

Lighting/shadows is key for graphical fidelity. How that is achieved is less important. Having said that, the only way to get highly reflective surfaces accurately depicted is to use RT (e.g. metals, glass, water). Once that is in place going full RT adds significantly less and is insanely expensive in terms of silicon. My take is that the next-gen approach of using old lighting/shadow techniques for the bulk and RT for highly reflective surfaces is a huge upgrade with limited silicon budget impact.

 

[Mister Wolf]

Yes when it comes to lighting, either raytraced global illumination or raytraced emissive textures. The rest I don't give a fuck about especially reflections.

 

[Ellery]

Yes. I have seen it in Control and Metro Exodus and it is one of the best/most important things to happen to graphics.

No idea though if the RayTracing Hardware inside next gen consoles will be powerful enough to have a meaningful impact on it, but I bet Sony first party studios like Naughty Dog are going to make efficient use of that for their Playstation 5 exclusives and those games are going to look glorious.

RayTracing is here to stay.

 

[Md Ray]

If the implementation is good and makes a huge visual quality difference then heck yes, I do. If it's something that cuts performance massively for very little to no visual gain then RT be damned.

I particularly like to see RT GI. Metro Exodus's RT GI was substantial and blew me away. If it's like RT shadows like we saw in SOTTR, in which even non-RT shadows looked good enough then I don't care.

 

[BlueXImpulse]

I'm in love with it.

 

[The Hamburglar]

No. Along with 4K it’s a complete waste of resources. I’d rather see a huge leap in graphics over this fluff shit

also nearly all RT reflections overblown. Light in glass and metal does not reflect as strongly as show in all these RT games.

 

[GametimeUK]

Personally I have no idea what is supposed to be impressive with ray tracing. It looks marginally better in the screenshots I've seen, if I even notice it, but maybe I am just not looking at the right stuff.

It's great. I wouldn't say it's amazing for the end results, but it is game changing for how developers do things. No longer will they have to artificially do this stuff which I imagine would be massively beneficial for them.

Have you ever seen Control with RTX enabled? The windows are both reflective and transparent and it's a sight to behold for sure. I'm also a big fan of the bounce lighting too.

Obviously it seems like such a small detail, and that would be right, but it's all these small details that add up to a more believable image in the long run.

 

[DonJorginho]

Your typical Raytraced reflections are pretty but quite unimportant and overhyped imo.

Raytraced Global Illumination however? I fucking adore that stuff, did wonders for Metro Exodus.

 

[MiguelItUp]

Not really, but it is something exciting to look forward too. I mean, this next-gen is really relying on RTX, it's basically this next-gen in a nutshell. So, the more I can see done with it, the better IMO.

 

[Vawn]

Both. I care, but the payoff is not worth the costs in most instances.

 

[ThaMonkeyClaw]

For lighting it can definitely be nice, but what we're seeing right now (in-your-face reflections just to show that "look, we have ray tracing!") is generally a waste of resources. Faked reflections look good enough in most cases.

While it does look better than normal lighting/reflections/shadowing/etc. the main reason to switching over to ray tracing is the fact that is makes life a lot easier on the developer and saves a lot of time creating everything, with the old system shadow maps, etc. have to be created for the baked in lighting and with ray tracing built into the new engines it is more of just flipping a switch to turn on those features which saves a TON of time when creating a game, the worlds are getting more and more complex so any help that can be done to shave time of development is going to help. Right now is the tipping point on moving to ray tracing as a whole and I couldn't be more excited! Once the hardware improves even more on the ray tracing front the generation after PS5/XSX is going to be literally insane, but I am super excited to see what the programmers are going to be able to accomplish with the PS5/XSX.

 

[Oida di Figgiano]

I haven´t experienced it first hand but would assume it´s one of those things that when you don´t have it it okay, but once you have it and get used to it you won´t miss it.

 

[Nikana]

Lighting is such an important aspect of modern graphics engines and tech. Developers have had to fake it for such a long time and its cool to see that we are finally approaching the era where it can start to become common. Moving tech forward is always important.

 

[TheContact]

If I can get 144hz with RTX on absolutely. Depending on the game, I'd be OK with 60hz as well. Anything less than that, I would prioritize frame rate over RTX.

 

[pawel86ck]

Are you impressed with UE5 visuals? If that's the case then you care about RT, because UE5 is using it (just software implementation) for GI.

Crysis 1 has also software GI implemenation and it makes a huge difference.

 

[DaleinCalgary]

Both. I care, but the payoff is not worth the costs in most instances.

I would agree with this.

 

[AllyITA]

for now it's not that interesting, but with time it will be. we just have to start from somewhere.

 

[dorkimoe]

No. I can’t imagine in motion you’d even notice. Gimme FPS

 

[Phrixotrichus]

RT is the holy grail of rendering. It`s here to stay...but its usefulsness on next consoles will be very limited. Expect big jumps in the PC realm with every new GPU gen, though.

 

[KellyNole]

The main time I would really worry about it is in reflective surfaces. It is kind of jarring going up to a tall building of glass and just seeing a blur.

 

[Mister Wolf]

 

[Dr.D00p]

Ray tracing is a first step...you can't truly see the difference until we're talking about 'Full Path Ray Tracing' in games, like what was shown with the Nvidia 'Marbles' demo, which is basically movie CGI level graphics in real time.

..but we are many,many years away from getting to that point.

 

[SF Kosmo]

also nearly all RT reflections overblown. Light in glass and metal does not reflect as strongly as show in all these RT games.

RT is actually good at replicating the variance in reflectivity based on the angle and the lighting on either side of the glass, as in real life. Control does this real well. Compare it to most rasterized games where reflections are just at a fixed level or opacity.

Realtime RT in games is in its infancy, and whether or not it is the best use of resources in a given game depends on a lot of factors. But it's the future of graphics.

 

[Sentenza]

It's the future of rendering.

 

[lastmessiah]

Yes, it is the greatest leap we've seen in graphical rendering for a long time.

 

[Hudson_303]

Toy Story 1 had them and now we have them in real-time. It's time to bask in ray tracing in the next generation of software graphicalisations.

In the words of Woody: To ininifty and beyond!

 

[MrS]

Nope. Would prefer more resources get dedicated to resolution and frame rates.

 

[lastmessiah]

No. Along with 4K it’s a complete waste of resources. I’d rather see a huge leap in graphics over this fluff shit

What the hell do you think "graphics" is?

 

[Hunnybun]

I'd probably err on the side of it being a waste of resources at the moment, but it's kind of hard to say without knowing exactly what you give up in terms of other graphical effects.

The only really impressive implementation I've seen so far is Metro Exodus.

In every other game I have to strain to notice, even in side by side screenshots.

It's not like we don't already have things like reflections in games. Yeah, they're heavily compromised, but they still look about 80% as good as RT, especially while playing.

I suspect it'll be next generation when RT will be truly impressive, and worth the performance hit.

 

[TonyK]

Of course! If I need to play another game with inaccurate reflections in puddles I will left this hobby!

 

[Rickyiez]

Stop looking at screenshot gallery for next gen. It's the motion video that you need to watch.

Any stills for current gen game will still looks nice but it's really the 60fps plus in motion that can actually showcase all the next gen RT shadows, RT Global illumination and RT reflection

As for RT, it's as next gen as pixel shader impact for me, it makes 3d graphics more organic.

Control


Bright Memory infinite

 

[Skifi28]

Does real time ray tracing care about me?

 

[Agent_4Seven]

Do you care about real time ray tracing?

Ask me about it in 5-6 years from now.

 

[LazyParrot]

No, but I stopped caring about graphics in general ages ago.

 

[TheMan]

Right now it seems too computationally expensive for what you get over well-faked lighting. It's one of these effects that looks the most impressive when directly compared to screenshot without RTX. I think deep down people are waiting to be wowed in the same way they were when they fired up super mario 64 for the first time, but those days arent' coming back.

 

[MoreJRPG]

Give me 60fps over RTX janky 30fps any day of the week.

 

[Croatoan]

I care about Ray Traced Global Illumination. As a developer I yearn for the days where game engine lighting works exactly like it does in the real world "out of the box" and baking is a distant thing of the past. UE5 looks to be giving me that so I am real...real excited.

Give me 60fps over RTX janky 30fps any day of the week.

If you are on PC you can have both.

 

[Mistershine.]

I voted yes, I want the full path traced minecraft experience.

 

[azz0r]

Definitely care.

If the industry cared about it like apparently 42% of you do, we'd still be playing 2007 graphics.

 

[Warnen]

Considering its been 50/50 for me if something looks better with it or with out I voted no. Would rather have those resources spent making the frame rate better.

Until we get to the point where Raytracing doesn't half the fps don't think its worth it personally. Sure it make pretty screen shots but 60fps looks better in motion.

 

[Soulblighter31]

Stop looking at screenshot gallery for next gen. It's the motion video that you need to watch.

Any stills for current gen game will still looks nice but it's really the 60fps plus in motion that can actually showcase all the next gen RT shadows, RT Global illumination and RT reflection

As for RT, it's as next gen as pixel shader impact for me, it makes 3d graphics more organic.

Yeah. People need to play them. The biggest showcase and arguably the most technologically advanced game on the market right now is Quake 2 RTX. Fully pathtraced, its amazing how that transforms the game. Then its Control and Metro Exodus. Control is a different game with RTX cranked up.

They're coming. Watch Dogs Legion and Cyberpunk especially will offer a different experience than non raytraced versions. The universe of Cyberpunk probably lends itself best to this

 

[Denton]

It is amazing in Control, Metro and Q2 and I can't wait to use it in Cyberpunk. Ideally every game would support it for GI and reflections together with DLSS2.

 

[Bogey]

Real, full path-tracing like in Quake 2 RTX? Straight into my veins!

Whatever else they are calling Raytracing in pretty much any other game at the moment? Blergh. Wouldn't be keen to give up even a single fps for that gimmick.

 

[Soulblighter31]

Real, full path-tracing like in Quake 2 RTX? Straight into my veins!

Whatever else they are calling Raytracing in pretty much any other game at the moment? Blergh. Wouldn't be keen to give up even a single fps for that gimmick.

With a 3080 the story changes. You can play every raytraced game over 60 with everything at max

 

[Alebrije]

No , but not considere it a waste of resources. Games are good because gameplay , story. Ray tracing is cool but wont convert a trash game to a good one.