Is Ray Tracing Support Losing Traction?

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[@allansolano5587]

To be honest yeah RT is pretty but i wish that devs focus more on the physics, AI, interactive worlds and so on that only focusing on getting games looking like a photo

[@v0ldy54]

RT can actually help with those things, one of the problems with interactive worlds is that you can't have good looking lighting since you can't bake it if the game world is too dynamic, while that's not a problem at all with a fully ray tracing lighting system.

[@Minarreal]

Ray tracing doesn't nail it on interactivity but it definitely does so on the physics front. A good RT implementation is mesmerizing to look at.

[@ZackSNetwork]

If technology is gonna evolve why abandon something that works?

[@keef78]

I totally agree but I think it may be a case of concentrating on one thing at a time and raytracing just happens to be first up, I reckon once they get it down pat they’ll move on to adding more ai ect, I mean look at the massive ai push and the upcoming graphics cards, I reckon amazing interactive worlds are coming very soon.

[@youtubeaccount7544]

Wish we actually got good games that were fun to play. Don’t care about a feature that 95% of people turn off. Oh wow shiny reflections amazing.

[@AJ-xv7oh]

The majority cant optimise for standard 1440p let alone any sort of stable ray tracing.

[@user-rt4ct6tq3r]

cope toaster boy QQ

[@rodiculous9464]

"The majority" buy whatever new console comes out, plug it into their tv, never mess with the settings and dont even know what 90% of them means. So as long as RT can run on console hardware and make normies go "DURRR GAEM LOOK PURTY" which will probably happen with the next Playstation then RT will be a thing and you wont have a choice.

[@randymarsh4748]

it doesnt look that pretty when its upscaled and 30fps ​@@rodiculous9464

[@Katsuchiyo]

800p non-RT Starfield you mean 😳

[@user-rt4ct6tq3r]

@@Katsuchiyo maybe on your toaster

[@davidfaustino4476]

Its 2024 and enemy AI is still as dumb as a box of rocks.

[@commanderboo8879]

good AI often is more of a design thing than it is a "not enough compute thing" tho

[@AndrewTSq]

Well. Watch some "epic fails" videos and that AI might be realistic afterall.

[@EmperorOfMan]

If it was better you would be mad about losing all the time

[@skycloud4802]

I think the problem with obtaining a satisfying AI is balancing difficulty. An intelligent AI could beat a person easily because it can out compute a player easily. An unfair AI before this time, would have instantanious aimbot, knows your hand in card games, or rubber banding in racing games. No situation is perfect (and certainly not the old ways). A good AI would need to be fallable, like a human player would be.

[@muresanandrei7565]

Rockstar says no

[@chemergency]

Ray tracing is cool but ultimately the performance penalty just isn't worth it in most cases.

[@blubblurb]

Yes, FPS > Realistic Lightning. At least until you have a certain amount of FPS.

[@randymarsh4748]

​@@blubblurbid never use stx unless its 90+fps

[@HarryS77]

If you can pull off RT at 60fps minimum, who cares about the performance penalty?

[@blubblurb]

@@HarryS77 Then I would probably get 100 FPS without RT and would still prefer that over RT.

[@HarryS77]

@@blubblurb ok buddy

[@manuelbarreto7032]

The path Unreal has taken is very scary, I see the games become a blurry mess the more I play new games...😢

[@awrsish]

change your anti aliasing settings and disable FSR/DLSS and suddenly no more blur

[@baka_ja_nai]

​​@@awrsishand still get below 30 FPS with awful frame pacing. Most Devs who create UE5 games say "we develop with DLSS in mind" and refuse to optimise further as soon as they think that game performs well enough with DLSS.

[@Micromation]

​@@awrsishand enjoy sub60 frames in some of recent games with 4090 in 4k because "it was meant to be played with upscaling"... 😂😂😂

[@awrsish]

@@Micromation Bro I’m just saying anti aliasing will kneecap the look of your game at 4k

[@hadiabdul9266]

i understand that RT greatly reduces developer workload compared to baked lighting. but we need to see greater advancements in reducing pop-in and enemy AI. that's next gen to me

[@thetruth5232]

Cyberpunk Maxed is absolutely stunning. But man does that engine annoy me with objects and texture popping in right in front of the player in the most noticeable way possible.

[@lowqualityvideos8091]

nanite:

[@commanderboo8879]

like I said to another person, improving AI is more often a design issue than a "not enough compute issue"

[@madalinradion]

Nanite already solved the pop in issue, with it lods will cease existing and it will make scenes look far more detailed in every scene, no longer will you see grass disappear 10 meters in front of you, there will always be grass even far into the distance, the reduction in level of detail for saving performance will be resolution based not asset based, meaning things will naturally look less detailed in the distance and more detailed up close like just the way human vision works in reality and there will never be shit disappearing again when you get too far from it

[@T2DARLANTANAH]

Robocop and other ue5 games use nanite but still has terrible texture pop in on pc.

[@TheJaka221]

RT/PT looks nice but not "Cut your frame rate in half good". As long as I don't search for examples non-RT lighting looks good enough

[@SpartanArmy117]

Agreed most of the time except for Cyberpunk. If you play with path tracing on there is no way to go back to baked lighting.

[@Fina1Ragnarok]

I'd argue that for regular RT - the differences are in small details but the overall appearance of a scene is "close enough" with traditional rendering that the perf hit RT has isn't worth it. PT on the other hand, at least from what I've seen in CP2077, does actually make fairly significant improvements all around...though at an even greater hit to performance. I guess my overall position is that the RT isn't worth it in most cases - I'd take higher FPS and resolution over it, but PT adds enough quality that I'd consider it.

[@ProtectusCZ]

@@SpartanArmy117 baked lightning looks good, AC Unity still holds up to this day. Dynamic rasterized lightning is whole different story.

[@notenjoying666]

​@@SpartanArmy117cb rt looks good ONLY because standart lighting is trash there. Same for taa in that nvidia sponsored game.

[@Ferdinand208]

You can’t say that on digital foundry. They only care about eye candy and don’t care about gameplay. So far RT is Nvidia tesselation and hairworks. Sure it looks nice but is it worth the frame rate dip? I don’t even run older games on ultra. Just high because the image quality isn’t even worth the power bill.

[@Walt2005]

RDR2 still looks amazing without RT.

[@HonestHans365]

As someone with a 4070ti super, games that look good with Ray tracing look great without it. IMO we don't speak enough about hdr. Good hdr on an oled has a much bigger visual impact than Ray tracing.

[@De_kaid]

Games just look worse with RT anyways, who actually enjoys grainy reflections and shadows, I don't get it...

[@xenomorphlover]

​@De_kaid some look worse but the idea is that it adds a kind of realism which baked lighting can't offer. I would actually prefer grainy shadows/lights/reflections if they are accurately cast as opposed to "fake" lighting effects.

[@lawyerlawyer1215]

Here is the type of comment that the guy who made the question was referring to. The typical “but rDr2 looks good without RT” ignorant No it fucking doesn’t lighting looks outdated as fuck.

[@ColdFear6666]

@@lawyerlawyer1215 yes, it does. RDR2 is gorgeous. Btw Horizon Forbidden West just got released for PC and people's mind are blown, how beautiful it is. I already saw comments about "omg it's the best looking game ever", and it doesn't use any kind of RT. What matters more is art style and care. Nowadays it's easier for lazy devs to just "fire rays everywhere", instead of creating art. I mean RT looks awesome, but most games already looked pretty good.

[@abesmissioncontrol2013]

It's six years since the RTX 2080 launched (the first mass-produced consumer-market rt gpu) and RT is still not mainstream - not b/c games are ignoring rt (they're not), but b/c hardware STILL can't run it w/o using tricks / hacks to bring the frame-rate up to semi-acceptable levels.

[@mikew1080]

Same with mip mapping, normal mapping, tesselation, global illumination, etc. They all took several generations of improved gpus to run well. I don't understand why people act like this is new to gaming. Give it time. It will mature like every other new technology introduced..

[@commanderboo8879]

@@mikew1080 The 7th generation of consoles and it's consequences. We went from the early 2000s being in a far worse situation where every year a new game would come out that would basically outdate your PC in a flash, look how Doom 3 runs on a Geforce 3 card that came out 3 years prior for 500 USD. 7th gen happened and took years to see any improvements cause the bottom end of games consoles stuck around for ages. In the early half of the 2010s the bottom end was still stuck on 256mbs of system ram (8th gen started in 2013 took a few years for them to stop making games cross gen). 8th gen also was released on already kinda outdated hardware because they assumed since the gap was so long they could go away not selling on a loss which was also a mistake and while there was a mid gen refresh for most of that gen things still had to run on kinda dopey hardware that also didn't even have an SSD by default. The Lovelace GPUs def can handle Raytracing the real issue is the cost of GPUs and also a change in consumer demands. Back in the 2000s people were happy with a stable enough 60fps and would gladly accept big decreases in framerate so long as it didn't go below that, now a lot of people are expecting 4k res at 120+ FPS sometimes more, and basically are uninterested in anything that doesn't just make the framerate go up, anything that pushes something other than framerate forward gets met with suspicion an derision. The prevalence of internet clickbait circlejerk content doesn't help.

[@ikjadoon]

@@mikew1080 Because *none* of those features had 1) as ridiculously overhyped marketing cycles as ray tracing nor 2) as severely damaging to FPS. Not to mention ray tracing launched at a similar time as high refresh rates, which are mutually exclusive for most games running on most GPUs. Nobody said "new features take years to get right" is new for gaming, lol. People-and at minimum me-are saying ray tracing gets way more attention with far worse performance than something like tessellation or global illumination had.

[@berkertaskiran]

RT itself is a trick. RT is just a simplified version of PT and I think it is mainstream enough. One of the most used GPU in Steam is 3060, which can do some kind of RT in games that are not the most demanding ones. Even 4K is not mainstream so this doesn't really mean anything. Is High settings mainstream? Again, doesn't mean anything. A lot of people don't even play AAA games so even good visuals isn't something that can be considered mainstream in the sense that it is the most popular thing. But all of those are mainstream enough.

[@DiegoSynth]

That happens when hardware companies quit building hardware, but instead do software, which they sell as new shiny and very expensive hardware. But the hardware is the same as 6 years ago. They are busy playing with AI. Since RTX 2000 series nothing has happened. Nevertheless, they will start selling RTX 5000 anytime now, always at higher prices than the last ones. And unless you buy the high end models, you will get a newer generation that performs worse than the previous one.

[@tektight]

Raytracing or not I just wish optimization was at the forefront of all this "innovation".

[@FusionC6]

it is? how do you think its possible to have games look the way they do and run at 100+ fps?

[@Micromation]

​@@FusionC6*checks notes* - they don't 😂

[@MrMooMoo89]

Give me full next gen destruction, give me physics. I don't care about fancy shadows or lighting. The loss of Physx is such a shame.

[@Bagginsess]

If you want destruction you need lighting to adjust to the new placement of broken objects, which ray tracing helps with.

[@jordanr.4856]

This comment and the first reply just makes me think about The Finals, a UE5 game featuring gorgeous ray traced lighting and even more gorgeous destruction and physics.

[@Bagginsess]

@@jordanr.4856 that was exactly what I was thinking too and Tear Down.

[@SupremacyGamesYT]

Shadows and Lighting is major, not taking it seriously is foolish. Second only to having hires textures. Fact of the matter is everything should have appropriate attention put to it.

[@rezaimran98]

@@jordanr.4856 You can thank the ex-Battlefield devs for that one

[@MrXaniss]

I don't thing RT is dying, as much as I think it's just blooming VERY slowly.

[@TheInternetIsDeadToMe]

Maybe gaming needs to focus less on expensive technical gimmicks and more on good, accessible games that run without having to have access to a super computer the price of a second hand car. The idea that newer technology = better games isn’t true.

[@ld9387]

I know right.

[@philosoaper]

the price for hardware that can run RT decently is still way way too fucking high

[@rodiculous9464]

You realize this is changing right? It's like every comment is from people who cant think ahead more than 5 minutes 🙄

[@federicocatelli8785]

​@@rodiculous9464 Kinda slowly ....in a few years we might get good RT performance at a reasonable price point (1000+ Eur for 080 cards is not)

[@MandoMTL]

@@rodiculous9464 Buddy NVIDIA isn't sending you a free card. Stop riding.

[@yancgc5098]

@@rodiculous9464 And when is it changing?

[@philosoaper]

@@rodiculous9464 in theory yes.. but not in practice because game engines have a habit of evolving with or above the highest end hardware available.. so sure if you want to play games that was released with RT back when the 20xx series was the "big thing"...

[@Jaap-Relou]

Back in the day all my hope was on PhysX, and it still is on something that does the same thing. Interaction is were the magic is for me

[@michaelmonstar4276]

PhysX is not necessary anymore because studios can create custom physics, which they do. It's just they don't do it often, as it's time-consuming and probably drags down performance as well. Besides not being that necessary all that often. - Thank Nvidia for ruining PhysX, though...

[@Verchiel_]

These days havok seems to be doing most of the work, which I'm not terribly enthusiastic about as it has it's issues that can limit the potential of the physics implementations in games. So I would really enjoy games like TES6 getting proprietary physics, though evidently I am exaggerating a bit as starfield can handle 100k toilet paper rolls in a confined space which is quite impressive.

[@AngryApple]

Hardware Accelerated Physics Engines are still way faster and can therefore do more. But there isnt a need for it. PhysX though isnt really deterministic which makes it completely useless for anything Multiplayer. Also its only GPU Accelerated on Nvidia, PhysX can be used by anyone for example the default engine in Unity is PhysX

[@Jaap-Relou]

@@AngryApple i don’t mean Physx specifically as a tool, but more interaction based physics in general. Lots of games are mostly static. And thats a shame. Interaction still is the most interesting feature for me

[@Micromation]

Can you name one game that took advantage of PhysX that wasn't just a meme? Because I can't, ever since Nvidia bought out the tech and completely neutered it. Honestly, go look at old demos before and then compare it to the entirety of the game library featuring Nvidia's PhysX.

[@FatNorthernBigot]

RT has a huge toll on performance. It's great for screenshots.

[@victfv]

Might as well have a full path tracer for that.

[@asmod4n]

no use to enable ray tracing till a 400€ card can do path tracing at 1440p 60fps without upscaling and especially without frame gen. You don't see the difference in motion.

[@Wolfos530]

Ray traced reflections don't affect performance that much on Nvidia hardware and RDNA 3. The main problem is that consoles don't have great ray tracing support, so it's not part of most game's "default settings". It's treated like an extra, and anything extra is heavy.

[@cantgameright]

Having artists manually tune all light and effects in game has a huge toll on development time. It's great for performance. See? I can make very conclusive statements too.

[@MA-jz4yc]

@@Wolfos530 It definitely does affect performance. Enabling RT in most games i've tried pretty much cuts framerate in half

[@JohnSmith-bt4lf]

RT isn't really for the benefit of the players. It's meant to reduce work for developers by having the heavy lifting be done by consumers' hardware, so that the developers don't have to spend time on creating/testing baked lighting solutions. The fact that the end result looks more realistic is just a bonus. Problem is, as long as the consoles and older/weaker PCs exist, developers will be pressured to implement non-RT solutions anyway, which makes RT extra work rather than an effort-saver on their end.

[@locinolacolino1302]

At this stage RT serves to benefit Dev PCs more than end consumers given things like Optix accelerated baking, which as you mentioned the rigid constraints of the target hardware, better suits their workflow.

[@vanman266]

This is a key point. RT is just autopaint.

[@petrkdn8224]

exactly. game developers can exchange their time and effort (and money) into the consumers money. Why would the devs make a game optimalized to run on every system (lots of money to develop) if they can just forgo that and force THE CONSUMER to spend money to upgrade their setup..

[@Micromation]

Because if a consumer has even half a functioning brain they will just vote with their wallets. You all seem to forget who is putting food on whose table in this relationship 😂 the reality is, unless you enjoy 1080p, upscaled blurry garbage riddled with artifacts and subpar framerates, nothing short of 4090 (and in some instances not even that) can deliver tangible results. Until you get at least 4090 RT performance in 4060 price bracket, you can forget about RT becoming anything but a meme. Because if only a fringe minority can have acceptable experience then nobody will care about your antics as you go bankrupt because your half-baked garbage bombed at sales.

[@davidcomito505]

When people say they can't see the difference between RT and older raster games, it really speaks to the talent of artist who worked on those games to get them to look so good. I really look forward to smart implementation of RT where it is used when needed and raster is used when needed. The hand of the artist is still important because while RT might be more realistically correct sometimes for spesific reasons it might more important to be artistically correct.

[@paulojamesminimoisaac7858]

RT only shines on games that had poor lighting to begin with. I think RT Reflection is the one that stands out the most tbh.

[@perkzy5146]

⁠​⁠@@paulojamesminimoisaac7858100 percent agree, devs can make beautiful baked lighting, like RDR2, Last of us, raster CP2077, heck even Arkham knight from 2015 looks damn good cuz of their great lighting and art design, tho RT reflections are a standout because the raster methods like SSR and cube maps come with artifacts

[@Daniel-bs8wv]

You could argue that game devs are already doing a hybrid RT/raster approach, especially in PS5 first party titles that are designed exclusively for that platform. Spiderman 2 and Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart are good examples. The RT capabilities of the current gen consoles are quite limited, so it makes sense to use RT sparingly where it makes sense and use traditional raster methods as a fallback when RT becomes too expensive.

[@e5jhl]

it just speaks of the ignorance of people. there are not a lot of game that bake their lighting based on rt renders

[@rodiculous9464]

​@@perkzy5146rdr2 and cyberpunk took over a decade to make, cyberpunk was the duke nukem forever of this generation for the longest time, and it still came out a shitshow on top of that, pretty sure that's a horrible argument to any investor or shareholders "this thing that took a decade to make and tanked our goodwill with gamers looks just as good as this other thing that took 2 years to make"

[@mauriciochacon]

We dont even have 16x af in console games, maybe in 20y rtx will be standar

[@taliesinsilvercrow9736]

i reckon 5-8 years before games mostly only have just RT lighting / when dx13 comes out and thats the norm

[@SamiJuntunen1]

16x af would take less then half percent of vs 4x or something. Dont understand why they dont use atleast 8x.

[@adamdunne6645]

​@@SamiJuntunen1It's not about gpu power, it's because of the shared bandwidth on consoles. Df has explained that numerous times before

[@math3capanema]

theres is almost no difference in 8x vs 16x af

[@Etheral101]

Naughty Dog, Santa Monica and Guerilla games have made some of the best looking games ever. And they have no Ray Tracing. Baked lighting setting a seen will always win out artistically

[@bismarckluna]

The Demon's Souls remake also doesn't use ray tracing and it looks amazing.

[@Etheral101]

@@RicochetForce Wow one game that can only be played like that on the very top end expensive PCs. You've really made your case

[@adamdunne6645]

​@@Etheral101Alan Wake 2 is another great example. As is minecraft actually. There's a bunch of games getting remixed now too. Look into it. Muh the parts are expensive isn't a great argument to dismiss the tech. It will become cheaper.

[@Verchiel_]

Those are easy examples because afaik all of them create linear controller scenes where 95% of lighting and effects can be simulated with baked graphics, and that's great. Ray tracing would absolutely shine in dynamic games where controlled lighting is only a part of the total expected experiences.

[@hohohodrigues]

​@@Etheral101 skill issue

[@ihya_oldum7265]

I think it was more about making game development easier rather than just quality. Plus it turned out to be much more demanding than the average person expected so low-mid tier gpu users kinda gave up on using it.

[@Verchiel_]

RT CAN be optimized even for lower end users, teardown forces it's built in ray tracing for rendering, and doom eternal actually runs competently in part because it's so optimized in general. In the end If ray tracing was used to actually improve graphics in places where it's needed and not just shoved in every corner or puddle, I do believe things like mirrors or translucent objects could benefit greatly at not that severe cost at performance it usually does.

[@sapphyrus]

Tessellation got like 10 years to be finally in everything. RT will take several more years.

[@hmello3250]

I thought the same about physix but I just recently found out nobody uses that anymore. I was shocked.

[@Da-iken]

I think RT is on a good way. Even a "lower budget" game like Persona 3 Reload uses RT while 4k 60 on PS5.

[@ChurpGaming]

difference is tesselation is actually a good feature that isn't just a replacement for more efficient methods that have been used for decades

[@mash2481]

@@ChurpGamingmore efficient, but for more inferior.

[@ChurpGaming]

@@mash2481 not necessarily true from an art direction perspective

[@devilmikey00]

Been playing Horizon FW on PC recently and no RT in sight and it's gorgeous and runs really well (maxed out 1440p DLAA on 3080 60-75 fps). I have never once thought RT would make my experience better. I'd have to dump a bunch of settings and use DLSS all so some lighting, I quite frankly would barely even notice while playing, could look marginally better while degrading every other aspect of my experience while also performing worse. I'm not against RT but consoles are not currently good enough to be pushing this technology and even on PC it's still a substantial trade off unless you are running a 4070 TI/4080/4090. I personally don't care that much as long at RT remains a toggle but I get the sneaking suspicion that option is going to be taken away in the next few years.

[@JustThePR]

Rich, I think Sven is aware that software Lumen is still RT. I believe he means because game devs aren't developing RT around dedicated RT hardware, i.e. GPU. They are developing RT to be able to run on every system regardless of having dedicated hardware to accelerate the RT, i.e. CPU.

[@Kasamsky]

I have to agree with Oliver here. I do think it's the opposite aswell. Other lightning and reflexion techniques that are less costly don't get the attention they need because of RT. One example of that is Jedi Survivor.

[@damianabregba7476]

True. Just because you can use RT in every way doesn't mean there aren't more efficient raster based methods to explore. RT just feels like a brute force solution, which is kind of the opposite of what optimisation was about. Shouldn't the solutions that are more efficient be better in the long term?

[@Kasamsky]

@@damianabregba7476 Let's be honest here, rasterization in games looked better 5 years ago than it does now. This might be a hot take, but Cyberpunk 77 doesn't even look all that impressive without the fancy RT compared to a 2018 released Red Dead Redemption 2. Screen space reflections look so awful if you don't put them on ultra or psycho, wich at this point they already have as much as an performance impact as RT. Foliage looks awful. Texture quality is mid, probably because they needed to make savings on VRAM because again, RT (Also Nvidia VRAM situation, lol). Don't get me wrong, i love CP77, but sometimes i wish it wasn't just an Nvidia tech showcase title.

[@MZ99698]

RT is exclusively the domain of ultra ultra tech nerds. Nobody I know who plays PS5 knows much about it, or cares about it. Nobody is playing games like Forza or RDR2 and thinking “oh boy, this lighting is awful, I wish they could use enormous amounts of processing power to improve it slightly”. Devs are aware of this and focussing their resource on other things, which are significantly more important to the experience.

[@pirkkafilander342]

RDR2 lighting is phenomenal even without RT.

[@MZ99698]

@@pirkkafilander342 yes, that was my point.

[@decline.enjoyer]

Best comment on this video. And the whole comment section: it's easily 80 percent inline with what you're saying

[@michaelmonstar4276]

Oh, you don't even know how wrong you are about Forza. At least Motorsport.

[@adamdunne6645]

Except transitioning to rt only lighting will saves devs time and money to more efficiently make games and focus on those other things. Rt isn't a small difference when it's implementation is done correctly. Lots and lots of games would benefit from it.

[@carpetfluff35]

I don't need correct reflections if it's losing me framerate, is how I generally feel about it. I like a bit of RT global illumination though.

[@jaredangell5017]

Nobody wants to pay $1000 extra for something that's barely noticeable

[@inqizzo]

I recently started playing ghostrunner and i switched rt on and off a few timed because i thought it didnt turn on but then i noticed that with it on some trash on the side had better reflections. Turned it off after that and never used rt again

[@TomRFL]

This!

[@lbgstzockt8493]

You should play Cyberpunk, it looks so much better with RT on.

[@jaredangell5017]

@@lbgstzockt8493 I have. It looks like a mess of way too much crap reflecting to me.

[@Jtretta]

I haven’t had much care for RT or PT since the idea was first foisted on us with Kepler. I got a 7900xtx in large part because of how much silicon Nvidia dedicates to features I don’t care to use.

[@EastyyBlogspot]

With Rt sometimes i see it and i cannot tell of i prefer it or not to the standard lighting...it just feels different but often does not feel like a upgrade though i guess the performance hit does not help lol

[@vitordelima]

The output of software methods for GI are very similar to the hardware RT and they are also faster, but the last generation of baked lighting was also extremely advanced and sometimes comparable to the raytraced "ground truth". RBDOOM-3-BFG has an implementation of this.

[@samcerulean1412]

That's because baked lighting is done so well, however it's a lot more time-intensive for developers than Raytracing is.

[@vitordelima]

@@samcerulean1412 There were attempts to build it using the GPU in UE4 (or other engine).

[@Kdkjdjewerdnxa]

Unless games need dynamic time of day or tons of dynamic lights, baked lighting can look better because it’s actually using more complex RT to generate the light maps and cost a fraction of rendering it in real time. For open world games RT is definitely a game changer, or games like Fortnite which have time of day changing all the time and destructible environments, but so many games add RT and don’t benefit in any real way.

[@noahflare6825]

💯

[@GoldenSW]

The rasterized lighting in Cyerbpunk Phantom liberty is the perfect example you don't always need raytracing to get good lighting. It's so good sometimes you can barely tell the difference. Path tracing is a different story tho...

[@chillnspace777]

Does the dlc look better than the base game? I don't have the dlc, and I wonder how much " better " the dlc would look like

[@GoldenSW]

@@chillnspace777 In some areas, yes. But it's also much more demanding. It's why they released it on next gen consoles only.

[@Ivan-pr7ku]

The conventional pixel shading has evolved so much (methods, tools, engines) that a dedicated and skillful game dev can approximate very realistic lighting effects, considering most of the game world is static anyways, so pre-baked FX is good enough option. Shadows and reflections are probably the areas where RT is worth implementing, but full-blown PT replacing all lighting is still too much for what the market is ready to pay for.

[@chillnspace777]

@@Ivan-pr7ku I do have a 4090

[@TheRedCap30]

@@Ivan-pr7kuMakes me wonder if using AI to create baked lighting (if that’s even possible) would be more efficient than the performance overhead of RT to take less work of the game devs

[@ralphengland8559]

Givee 60 fps over RT any day.

[@KUIJEN8659]

that's perfectly doable depending on the game with RT???

[@ralphengland8559]

@@KUIJEN8659 not on all hardware. Targeting 30 fps with RT is not what I want. Every game should have the option for a smooth framerate

[@hohohodrigues]

​@@ralphengland8559skill issue

[@MurphyOCP-001]

RT was always the hardware hog the GPU manufacturers wanted to increase high end graphics card sales. It’s a gimmick like physx.

[@accumulator5734]

When they told us next gen consoles would have RT, I’m sure no one thought they meant shadow and reflection RT 🤦🏻‍♂️…

[@southsidetherealest2860]

Console fanboyd thought so they kept saying we didnt know what were talking about when wre corrected them they really believe rdna was untapped magic

[@Jdogg4089]

Better than no rt at all. AMD didn't really have rt tech really done at that point because remember, these consoles had to have everything pretty much done in 2019 so they could focus on testing and manufacturing these units. I'm happy my PS5 has rt support but AMD is in a bad way with those rt technology and I really hope to see it improved big time in these upcoming years as well as with Nvidia. The performance hit is crazy.

[@mitsuhh]

what's wrong with RT reflections?

[@lukeyrs7447]

RT is the sort of thing that’s great for tech demos to show what hardware can do. But in reality all my favourite games don’t have RT. They just have amazing gameplay.

[@pdmerritt]

Most titles have such lackluster use of RT where it's not even worth the performance hit to turn it on. The games where it uses RT in a major way also hits performance in a major way. RT is still not ready for the masses imho. This is one of the reasons I didn't mind spending less and purchasing an AMD GPU this time around. NOTE: this was WELL before the super cards were released.

[@MrKillasling]

My opinion may change in the future but as of right now, RT has to be the biggest waste of resources for such a slight increase to *realism* vs baked lighting. Im genuinely curious on the number of people who play games in RT mode over Performance mode

[@netron66]

im more concern with pop-up texture being transitioned smoothly then just sudden pop up and decent frame rate

[@byronfranek2706]

Hardware RT is probably as much about future of game development paradigms as it is about "how good the game looks". The trend is toward achieving next-gen visuals while effectively reducing development costs and timelines. In a very real sense, part of the costs of AAA game development are being transferred to the client hardware. One look at the Steam hardware survey will show that the barrier to full RT gaming is mostly economics, and not technical.

[@dgdt8089]

Honestly unless it’s a slow paced cinematic game as dead space or hellblade majority of players fall into the same boat as me where honestly we don’t pay much attention. Fun gameplay and smooth frame rates are more important.

[@MichaelM28]

Lol now you're simping for Midblade 2 which has neither gameplay or a smooth frame-rate 😂😂😂

[@noodles9345]

For the player I think Ray Tracing is a gimmick. If you did a blind test with "normal" gamers, not the ones like us watching Digital Foundry and such, I bet hardly anyone would be able to detect whats ray traced and whats not. Even amongst most of us id bet we'd often get it wrong if asked if this game we are playing has RT implemetation. Im noy saying that RT isnt cool or useful. Just saying that the desire for it is probably a bit overblown. Its like playing a game on Ultra settings compared to high. You only know there is a difference because you flip back and forth in the settings, squinting your eyes and staring at msi afterburner.

[@evan-du3vk]

I'm not specialist from image quality but even in doom enternal you can see easily difference between ray tracing on or off or metro. But you must play it. Otherwise on videos it's not the same. And really path tracing is killing the framer rate but rt not that much any more

[@Ragssssss]

I can easily say which is which in games like cyberpunk, aw2 (city), portal, TW3, fortnite, hogwarts legacy...etc

[@testertester4968]

He will lose his hair before RT loses its traction.

[@KonglomeratYT]

You mean gains* traction lmfao. Still never booted up a game and found an RT option once.

[@lordspalse0062]

I think it's the other way round actually 😂

[@mausmalone]

I'm kind of rolling from the part of this "question" (thesis statement) that posits whether gamers are at fault for being satisfied with non-RT solutions. A real "who are you going to trust: me, or your lying eyes?" moment.

[@wiseman4953]

I think it comes down to how much work, game performance cost, and how much better it looks to other forms of lighting. If it hits either or all of those hard, it won't be standard for long.

[@OwtDaftUK]

I don't intend to upgrade my PC or get a PS5 pro because ray tracing is not worth it yet.

[@applehazeva2739]

Honestly I think not even the PS6 or Next Box will utilize it. Consoles barely have Games that run on wishful 60 or promised 120 Frames. The only Game I can think of where I don't wanna miss out on Ray Tracing is Control Ultimate Edition (greatly optimized btw for an entry 2060)

[@IgorBozoki1989]

Okay your loss. You are missing a lot of good games.

[@HShango]

Ps5 pro is going to be the most niche console ever (for all the wrong reasons as well)

[@allansolano5587]

​@@IgorBozoki1989 not upgrading his pc or his ps5 doesnt mean he cant play games like he just wont use RT and i think thats fine cyberpunk looks pretty with path tracing but the core game is what matter in the end

[@KonglomeratYT]

@@IgorBozoki1989 He's not missing any games. He's just not enabling a certain graphics option. Lower your defensiveness lmao you're breaking away from reality.

[@S5000Krad]

I'd ask is ray tracing interest losing traction

[@antoniotorres1674]

Sadly I think given the huge cost, it was implemented one generation too early on consoles. The fact it has such limited implementation (some reflections usually instead of an actual lighting system) usually halving, It won't be viable until next gen.

[@soulsolis3096]

RT has always been interesting Only for Reflections to me, and yet, I can't help but feel like reflecting surfaces in older games on older consoles felt more convincing despite being duplicate of models. Also, I hate with a passion to see my framerate going below 60.

[@kurtwinter4422]

When a $300ish GPU can do RT at 1440p 55-65 fps, then it will become popular. Too much performance cost today, despite upscalers.

[@Emucratic]

After playing TLOU Pt 1 and 2, RDR2 and Horizon Forbidden West, I can say I will always prefer adding more detail to the world over wasting all the resources on raytracing. You can do it all with a good implementation of global illumination, radiosity, screen space reflections with good fallbacks, physical based lighting and tile deferred shadow rendering. It's just about studios sitting down and implementing these thoughtfully instead of a blanket approach that makes their shortcomings obvious. Is raytracing even necessary if we could soon be using post-processing AI filters that add more realistic lighting to a rendered image?

[@dr.sivavignesh664]

Df mentions Unreal engine have all kinds of optimised features. So why is every UE game I play runs like it's on a potato pc yet I'm running those using an rtx 4070.

[@FusionC6]

something is wrong with your pc then

[@dr.sivavignesh664]

@@FusionC6 just KZbin the performance of UE5 games . Brothers a tale of two sons remake barely runs on a 4090. It's just a poor game engine or the devs don't know anything about how to develop using it.

[@Micromation]

​​@@FusionC6or with your (lack) of expectations towards what constitutes acceptable performance. Each and every single UE5 game today runs like absolute garbage while delivering none of that salivating tech demo quality.

[@speedgoat7496]

I’ve tried rt a number of times, never impressed, what does shock is the performance hit.

[@ACFUN34]

Get yourself some glasses.

[@jjsavior]

Nobody cares about Ray tracing as much as you guys. I can list about 3games where I was impressed, and one of them is the witcher 3. You can imagine the Ray tracing in that is not extensive, just well implemented for what they wanted it for.

[@GerritTV187]

If we getting a decent non Nvidia exclusive upscaler thats widely available than i m looking forward to more rt especially on consoles. Atm amd fsr3 is just not cutting it.

[@Karn0010]

Even in a game like Cyberpunk, outside of reflections I don't notice the difference between RT on and off. If you tested me I would be guessing. That is when I'm actually looking to try and see it or not. When I'm actually playing the game and it is in motion, absolutely no chance, and even reflections at that point I wouldn't know. At the moment if I have to pick between a setting I barely notice or native 4k 60+ FPS, resolution and frame rate win every time.

[@stebo5562]

Performance hit just too high even on modern, expensive hardware. When high level ray tracing performs well on $200 gpus, it’ll be truly mainstream

[@AlecuSs93]

most triple A games have been shit anyways so why even care about RT when most games don't even have optimization down

[@truknetsoh]

The Spiderman 2 controllers and the deep earth collection controllers from last year are all "V2" controllers. They all have a different sku number that matches the leaked best buy Canada model. The first ps5 controller is rated at 6-12hrs battery life. So there is no change to battery life!

[@heyguyslolGAMING]

RT/PT is great tech BUT it's still years / generations away from becoming a standard bc it's only viable on the top end gpu's like a 4080/4090. Most ppl aren't buying/using those gpu's and tbh I find that most of the games that support it are unstable w/ it enabled. Don't buy a high end gpu for RT/PT buy it for the performance if its what you want.

[@kaseyboles30]

RT has a lot of promise eventually. especially when supported by proper HDR. It's much easier to see the value of rt with an hdr monitor IF the renderer wasn't set to optimize for sdr. When an RT/PT algo is allowed to render all the colors and brightness and the monitor presents that it looks more realistic. The human eye has a huge range in terms of being able to see clearly things in bright light and deep shadows at the same time. However the tech to really do it well is a ways off (one estimate for full pt was 50x the power of a 2080TI). Add in monitors that support per pixel lighting at up to at least 2k nits and a color gamut over 95% of what the human eye can see then we can we're there (and again when we get holodecks, but I suspect that make take quite a while yet).

[@JJssss]

If they can have 60/x600 class gpu doing 60fps RT ultra or 45fps PT at 1080p without upscaling.. That would be a great start and see greater adoption

[@bluemuscle2]

Until they can create cards where you don’t have to spend 1000 dollars plus and have to turn on all these upscaling features to run it ray tracing will never pick up traction like they want it. It’s too demanding and most people prefer higher and smoother frames

[@soulsbourne]

A lot of titles like witcher look, play and most importantly doesn't have the HUGELY DISTRACTING RT DRAW DISTANCE POP IN issue ... Witcber looks and is more immersive in non RT mode on an OLED screen.. Add to it the RT Reflections are either make water like mercury or are a grainy distraction... Good RT is atleast 2-4 GPU generation away and atleast 1 console generation away

[@John-gh2lz]

Thing is with Ray tracing is like having a good art style for a game . An ok game can look way better if ray tracing is implemented correctly. A game that already has an excellent art direction usually always holds its own with out any type of ray tracing . It's like having a nice looking Honda civic and a nice looking similar looking Mercedes. Nice looking Honda civic looks great and cost less to run( good art direction). Mercedes that is applicable in looks cost more to run and is a higher buy to get one (ray tracing ). No need for the Mercedes.

[@yumri4]

The games moving to UE5 and Lumen having both baked lighting and baked shadows along with the option of ray tracing is where i think it is going. Have the lighting set up already but have it as an option to turn on not having to redo lighting for RT from normal lighting. Lumen can be very performance heavy by itself compared to the UE4 lighting systems with the updates to UE5 Lumen has become as light weight if not more so than UE4 lighting was. So having it as an option for gamers to turn on and off with the maps for when turned off already made is most likely the option they will go with. Now for the settings the maps will be made at yeah 1 frame per 10 to 20 minutes is not what gamers want thus why to bake the lighting. They turn the setting way down for what the player can turn on. This is most likely part of why some gamers do not see a difference between x128 MSAA for a lightmap that is baked into an image and thus not having to be made on the user's computer then is processed again on the user's computer with the rest of the environment at most MSAA x16 and RT for the same area. The performance will be a small hit and if the lightmap is made correctly it should looks close if not identical to RT. The other part we are running into is there we all grew up with the faked lighting not path tracing. Got used to the methods used to fake it instead of make it. Path tracing is still compute heavy and depending on how many rays and which rendering engine they go with it might slow the process to a crawl or might be at real time. When we get people used to AR which is a tech of coming real life with virtual objects RT will take off. AR uses the real life lights in the area you actually are in. So perfect lighting not semi perfect not faked perfect but perfect lighting. The move from perfect to not perfect is easy until you go to look at shadows and reflections and how they act. Yeah the virtual objects cast no shadow but all the real ones do. In short RT will be demanded soon but not now. The AR and MR stuff will make it come sooner as they mix reality with faked reality but it will still come either way.

[@artyboy1377]

Out of curiosity I actually played older games when RT wasn't an in-game thing then and I must say the reflection effects still look pretty realistic albeit at lower resolution with less detail. It looks dynamic too as in it changes with your viewpoint. At that time it was called dynamic reflections transform and lighting but i find it pretty good. As RT halves the framerate in modern games I find the results doesn't justify the means (loss in performance) and I'm not really concerned if the entire car is reflected on the shiny barrel of your gun, or of bounced lighting lighting up something in a covered sheltered area of a scene. But fortunately with DSLL and FG the loss in performance is somewhat mitigated.

[@FusionC6]

cubemaps you mean.

[@artyboy1377]

​@@FusionC6 😮

[@artyboy1377]

​@@FusionC6 Yeah can't remember the exact tech terms. Before RT most PC and even console games can do reflections be it on pools of water, on the bonnet of a racing car or wet ground. RT reflections are more accurate and detailed. RT shadows are not as critical as they are less discernable and more nuanced than pronounced and likely to be missed if not specifically pointed out.

[@carloscuello8814]

RT is something that hasnt finished to be totally invented and their impact on performance is bigger than its benefits, at least on consoles and most gaming PC setups (the average, not the higher end ones). While that we have gone backwards in Physics (there are PS360 era games more advanced on that matter, which is embarrasing) and AI. We need improvements on that areas and also just taking rasterization tech to its very limits and beyond. RT should be the main focus when its viable to use and not just an expensive a taxing gimmick.

[@Raymie2k9]

I hope so. I dont feel the older tech has been fully used yet and prefer higher framerates on low spec systems.

[@Koozwad]

they should be using RT during game development as a tool to see how scenes should be lit, and then recreate it in non-RT with the same or better results FPS will be so much higher, and the money spent on graphics cards will be so much lower... unless NVIDIA and possibly AMD are blocking this..?

[@brutlern]

I hope so. Also, look at Forbidden West. No RT. One of the best looking games ever made.

[@squiggles5746]

it was adopted too early by Nvidia mainly as a cash grab and a justification to move away from lower end cards specifically before the technology could be achieved at a lower cost.

[@sklynexd]

I play without RT on PC and PS5 just because of the performance hit, I can get higher resolution on PS5 and more fps on PC without losing so much detail, I actually can't notice RT while playing the game because I focus on the combat more than on the reflections.

[@sonicslm4844]

I completely understand that everybody is different, and if visuals / graphics are what excites you about gaming thats totally cool. But its not a problem that many gamers do not care. Personally, since the end of the 7th gen, graphics has really taken a back seat for me. I barely notice the difference between my PS4 and pS5 when immersed in gameplay. The SSD has had the biggest impact for me. I could never go back to old loading times. What I want is more innovation in game design, especially in open world games. I feel like previous generations (4, 5, 6) had more overall variety of game styles.

[@HotGritz910]

RT looks great but not good enough to sacrifice 20-40% performance. When i show my family the difference they really cant tell. Some games implementation is better than others though.

[@martinaee]

I’m playing Alien Isolation currently on Switch and am blown away with how good the lighting is in that game… on Switch. Is a little RT awesome? Sure, but it doesn’t need to be this massive burden on every other aspect of a game just to make the pixels a little prettier right now. When there is enough power to easily implement it in the future, fine, but things like that shouldn’t take over right now.

[@T33K3SS3LCH3N]

By the late 2020s, path tracing will be sufficiently supported amongst consumer systems that many titles for desktop and console will be able to rely on it as their primary mode. And that's how it will make its final breakthrough: Path tracing makes it extremely easy to achieve complex effects compared to rasterised shaders, so studios will be able to cut down on their workload by not offering advanced rasterised graphics anymore. These types of economic benefits make for an unstoppable development, no matter what the consumers want. Similar to how it's getting increasingly difficult to find a car with physical buttons rather than a touch screen, because the latter is so much cheaper to design and build.

[@premoboy]

You see I don’t know if I misunderstood or if we were misled, but when the RTX 20 series came out which included special cores for ray tracing. I was under the impression that utilizing those cores specifically designed forRay tracing wouldn’t have any performance hit to the rest of the GPU. Because those cores for ray tracing would to be used only for ray tracing.

[@KonglomeratYT]

You misunderstood. Raytracing-specific hardware (Cores = Nvidia lingo.) exists specifically to make raytracing faster; not to actually handle raytracing by itself. The actual raytracing happens elsewhere. The acceleration hardware (more accurate name) just helps speed up calculations, and does not benefit your GPU in any other scenario.

[@SerBallister]

The part that's not used is the triangle rasterisation. The compute part of the GPU, which account for all the "cores" in the GPU, is hammered hard during certain types of RT with per-pixel calculations for path tracing being far higher than traditional triangle rendering, which use far simpler and less compute heavy shaders.

[@vampirestrike_]

Art direction trumps visual fidelity every time

[@jasonkostelecky5413]

partial ray tracing is not ray tracing, physical based rendering is superior.

[@hoshikuzuvenus]

I wish devs didnt care about adding RT in games honestly

[@ymiround]

I wish RT implementation was something like Metro Exodus. When its just there and it runs reasonably well

[@forsaken841]

RT makes Elden Ring look better, but it’s too inconsistent with performance

[@TheMaztercom]

Imagine having a tecnology that the majority of consumers cant use

[@blubblurb]

The problem is, we are in a in between situation. Meaning when devs use RT they still have to have baked lightning as well as fall back. So adding RT doesn't reduce cost in creating a game. As long as we still have baked lightning it adds costs.

[@LappyAwoo]

I understand that RT is superior, but it's not worth it if we have to run games at 30 - 45 fps, seeing all this pointless focus on RT instead of better physics, destruction, good AI, etc, is just frustrating

[@schikey2076]

oh no, RT is dying and losing relevance *plays my world smallest violin*

[@roki977]

i just look top 50 games on Steam and have hard time finding RT title..

[@dvmrp]

4k 60fps+ is way more important than RT.

[@holyknighthodrick5223]

Still waiting for workgraphs in Vulkan :/ Can't really dev with Direct X because I'm using Linux

[@DJordydj]

Ray Tracing has so much potential for implementinc game mechanics into games, and developers still can't do anything about it. Splinter Cell with RT can be amazing, not just by the looks, but because of how RT can be create game mechanics that can't be done with the average hardware people own. When more than 70% of PC gamers get RT capable GPUs and the actual and next gen consoles, game could change a lot. But if RT is just gonna make games look better and nothing else, they can shove it up their asses. Reflections and shadows and lights can bring us game mechanics. That's where it should shine. If gaming is stuck in 10 years in the same point it is now, then RT is useless for gamers. Games shouldn't "just" looke better, the new tech should bring us possibilities that shuldn't be possible to replicate with older hardware. We could have had The Witcher 3 on XBOX 360 and PS3, and the only reason they're not there is just because it would look uglier than XBOX ONE and PS4 versions. We don't need better looking games, we need innovation for our games. Modern games are all the same, they control exactly the same but have different textures between them. That's sad. Back in the PS2 and PS3 era, there were tons of games that had similar mechanics, but they felt very different from one to another. No FPS games felt like a copy-paste. I expect WAY more than just improving graphics. I want games where I can enjoy, not games that I must focus on a corner to appreciate how the ambient occlusion or the RT shadows make the game look a little bit better by running at a third of the full framerate.

[@bardavidson2102]

we don't see proper optimization for games especially at launch at all with redicoulous CPU limited stuttery disasters, let alone run well with RT enabled...

[@derekh7222]

Too big of a.performance hit for the small bump in eye candy

[@Shamushead]

During covid, ms bought up tons of raw materials to make their own chips, hopefully we will see the result of their endeavours

[@digdug233]

On console, as it is barely RT anyway. On PC I think it is essential, if you want to get noticed

[@known3617]

As much as I like ray tracing id rather install enb series and enable actual sky lighting, cloud shadows and full contact ambient occlusion.

[@IsraelSocial]

I think the next gen is going tp push the trend because today is to much cost for fps

[@xyzz8722]

Where livechats can I ask questions too?

[@nuddin99]

On Patreon

[@UberNeuman]

RT is like colored lighting was back in tthe day. A little goes a long way.

[@locinolacolino1302]

*Unless it's so little no one notices

[@igorthelight]

@@locinolacolino1302 Cyberpunk 2077 Overdrive mode Say that you can't see the difference ;-)

[@locinolacolino1302]

​@@igorthelight Full Path tracing is the exact opposite of little RT.

[@igorthelight]

@@locinolacolino1302 Fair point tho!

[@chillnspace777]

Perhaps ps5 pro will help build the bridge for consoles. It's a start. Playing pc games with path tracing/ ray tracing is incredible. It's also incredibly demanding on current hardware. Let's see what ps6 xbox next will do to push towards that

[@nicolapellegrino1072]

Gaming should focalise more on contents and less on "RT on or off", raytracing, framerate and resolution are becoming more important than the gameplay and narrative, the technical side is important but when youre playing a game other things are more important (imho).