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Raytracing - Would you buy in to it now?

Caporegime
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Performance takes a huge hit when using RT so until they can figure out ways to reduce the impact then it will not be a feature most will be able to use let alone afford. Those with 144Hz screens are certainly not going to be sacrificing fps for some visual effects which tank performance but give similar results to older techniques. If more consoles games use the effects then perhaps it will become popular but for now it's not a priority. I certainly wouldn't be handing over £800 for just RT in a few games.


Yup, right now all they can do is bung in more rt cores and rely on upscaling, at some point presumably they're going to have to make tradeoffs in the die as to what takes priority for rendering and that's likely the turning point as to what's the main rendering method.

So far in the examples i've seen nothing really makes me go "wow", in person the only game i've played with rt on was BF5 when i was doing a 2080ti build a couple of years ago for someone. So i'm open to the possibility that maybe seeing it playing on your pc instead of watching a video makes it look more impressive, though in bfv it was very "meh" to say the least. I was running around on the amsterdam map inside that building with the shiny marble floor looking at reflections, and seeing some in puddles outside and that was about your lot.


Video i recorded of it at the time, 1080p res ingame.
 
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Associate
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Yup, right now all they can do is bung in more rt cores and rely on upscaling, at some point presumably they're going to have to make tradeoffs in the die as to what takes priority for rendering and that's likely the turning point as to what's the main rendering method.

So far in the examples i've seen nothing really makes me go "wow", in person the only game i've played with rt on was BF5 when i was doing a 2080ti build a couple of years ago for someone. So i'm open to the possibility that maybe seeing it playing on your pc instead of watching a video makes it look more impressive, though in bfv it was very "meh" to say the least. I was running around on the amsterdam map inside that building with the shiny marble floor looking at reflections, and seeing some in puddles outside and that was about your lot.


Video i recorded of it at the time, 1080p res ingame.
middle of a war and someone still had time to buff and polish the floor
 
Associate
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So far in the examples i've seen nothing really makes me go "wow", in person the only game i've played with rt on was BF5 when i was doing a 2080ti build a couple of years ago for someone. So i'm open to the possibility that maybe seeing it playing on your pc instead of watching a video makes it look more impressive, though in bfv it was very "meh" to say the least. I was running around on the amsterdam map inside that building with the shiny marble floor looking at reflections, and seeing some in puddles outside and that was about your lot.

It's fair to say given the current trade offs there are some titles that are better suited to RT than others. I believe it's another tool to be used bringing us closer to the pinnacle of immersive gaming environments.
 
Caporegime
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middle of a war and someone still had time to buff and polish the floor

Yup :p

It's fair to say given the current trade offs there are some titles that are better suited to RT than others. I believe it's another tool to be used bringing us closer to the pinnacle of immersive gaming environments.

Yup, fast paced games like shooters it's a bit pointless as you're sacrificing fps for stuff you're likely gonna run right past and not notice, adventure games and the like it could be used a bit better.
 
Man of Honour
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13 Oct 2006
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For those saying Quake 2 RTX renderer couldn't do stuff like Cyberpunk:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2379340708

Obviously some way to go to take that into a full live city with a full range of rendering features but:

I tried to get Quake to load a BIG 400000 polygon monster model... and to my surprise it didn't just work, but even with 4 instances there was no notable slowdown... and the result just looks great!
 
Soldato
Joined
12 May 2014
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5,225
For those saying Quake 2 RTX renderer couldn't do stuff like Cyberpunk:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2379340708

Obviously some way to go to take that into a full live city with a full range of rendering features but:
While impressive it is still miles off from what we need for AAA games. Maybe it is enough for indie games.

The thunder jaw in horizon was 550,000 by itself and that is ps4 game. And there are a few last gen games (the division, ffxv, infamous second son) pushing a couple million on screen.

Source
https://polycount.com/discussion/141061/polycounts-in-next-gen-games-thread
 
Man of Honour
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While impressive it is still miles off from what we need for AAA games. Maybe it is enough for indie games.

The thunder jaw in horizon was 550,000 by itself and that is ps4 game. And there are a few last gen games (the division, ffxv, infamous second son) pushing a couple million on screen.

Source
https://polycount.com/discussion/141061/polycounts-in-next-gen-games-thread

As mentioned he stuck near 2 million tris in one test and there was virtual no slowdown - though there is more to it than that but at least as far as geometric complexity goes the renderer is untroubled by significantly higher levels of detail than the Quake 2 stock maps.

This one shows 1.2million in use:


In this case he is just using one material on most surfaces (though it does have all stages in use) to simulate load and doesn't have complex use of materials involving caustics, etc. but still.

People massively underestimate the capabilities of the renderer in Quake 2 RTX and/or still assume it is using optimisations like Minecraft to work due to the simple nature of Quake 2's maps when it isn't.
 
Soldato
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Fair enough on getting 1.2 million in there. Let's see it in AAA game then. I still think there is something missing or not accounted for. Because if this would work in AAA game then Nvidia are fools to not sticking it in one already.
 
Permabanned
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RT in cyberpunk is something that has blown me away. Look beyond the bugs of the game and anyone who has run it with Raytracing on has to be impressed. Static screens don't do it justice in truth but playing in UW (3440x1440) had my jaw on my keyboard (normally one of my many chins) and turning RT off and back on brings a smile again to my face.

Now that the gentlemen's relish is wiped off the KB, prior to CP2077, Control and Metro Exodus were the showcases for me and I could see back then what a difference it could make. Soooooooo, Would you buy a GPU for Raytracing now? I understand AMD don't have it in CP2077 as of yet but they will, so would that sway your decision?

What blows me away is Crysis 3, and Assassin's Creed Valhalla with its insane depth of field and fidelity.

Ray-tracing can be substituted by classic lighting effects and gamers won't even notice the differences.
Nvidia tries to sell proprietary features for crazy prices.

No, of course not - ray-tracing is not needed.
 
Man of Honour
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Fair enough on getting 1.2 million in there. Let's see it in AAA game then. I still think there is something missing or not accounted for. Because if this would work in AAA game then Nvidia are fools to not sticking it in one already.

One of the big hurdles is - you either need the resources to maintain two branches of the game for people who do and don't have sufficient ray tracing hardware, have a very basic looking game without ray tracing so as to avoid using newer features which would conflict with ray tracing or build the game exclusively for people with sufficient ray tracing hardware - which is pretty much Ampere upwards - which puts a lot of developers off as it stands.

Even then and as much as I hype this we still don't have a perfect solution for noise from the requirement of using denoising with lower ray counts to mimic a higher number of rays - realistically we need another generation step to have the performance for an optimal implementation there - though DLSS can help a bit there which is notably missing from Quake 2 RTX.
 
Caporegime
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What blows me away is Crysis 3, and Assassin's Creed Valhalla with its insane depth of field and fidelity.

Ray-tracing can be substituted by classic lighting effects and gamers won't even notice the differences.
Nvidia tries to sell proprietary features for crazy prices.

No, of course not - ray-tracing is not needed.
Both Crysis 3 and Valhalla look great and great games. RT is the future though and it will cut down on development time and it will create natural lighting and reflections but it does take immense GPU power. Give it time though and things like DLSS make it doable and with ease.
 
Soldato
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I didn’t, I bought a 3080 for it’s raster performance and RT is a nice little bonus.

Stock issues aside I would have still bought a 3080 (over a 6800xt) even without RT as it’s faster in the games that I play.
 
Soldato
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The fact of the matter is that RT on it's own takes a significant amount of gpu power. Even after 10 years it will still take significant amounts of power.
Nvidia is using valuable die space on the chip to enable RT but still have to resort to DLSS to get acceptable performance. That is not an efficient solution.

Unless they can find a way to reduce the impact significantly it will have to remain an optional feature in most games. Upscaling tech is the current method to alleviate the demands of RT but it's essentially rendering at a lower resolution. Developers will need to discover new ways to optimize RT code to make it a must have feature.
 
Caporegime
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Most GPUs out in the wild don't support Ray Tracing yet, until that changes the amount of games using it will be small.

In a few years I'm sure it will be much more common and it will become a setting we all want to use rather than an automatic disable due to heavy cost to FPS.
 
Soldato
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RT is on all the new cards so like it or not use it or not your still buying into it and still paying for it.
Somethings can’t be helped though. In that context I pay for the video features in my camera that I’ll never use.

I pay for the ability for my car to hit 155mph that again I’ll never use.
Sometimes things come as a package in life.
 
Caporegime
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With consoles adding ray tracing to games now and microsoft getting their version of dlss out soon, it'll probably become a lot more common.
 
Soldato
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Somethings can’t be helped though. In that context I pay for the video features in my camera that I’ll never use.

I pay for the ability for my car to hit 155mph that again I’ll never use.
Sometimes things come as a package in life.
The difference is you can still buy a standard camera or car that won't do a 155mph, with the new Gpus there is no option to buy say a GTX3080 that just focuses on raster with no RT cores and comes in £100 cheaper, I'm sure if there was then many people would be interested.
 
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