Poll: Do you care for Ray Tracing "now"?

[CuriousTomCat]

Hardware unboxed polled their viewer base for their thoughts on Ray Tracing in games, only 8% (of 61K votes) considered it impressive.

You have to appreciate that RTX is nearly 4 years old now. We were impressed when it came out but you can't expect everyone to be impressed non-stop for 4 years. The human emotion of being "in awe" of something doesn't last indefinitely. We get used to it. It becomes a new normal.

Realtime Raytracing is supposed to simulate real life. Our reality. If done right, we shouldn't even notice it.

I've seen dozens of impressive tech demos. Its got to the point where they're not impressive anymore because I've seen it all before. That's how games should look by now.

So a poll asking if I'm impressed by something we've all got used to by now is going to get a negative answer. However, if the poll asked "do you think Raytracing is the future of gaming" I'm certain it would have gotten a much higher percentage because it most certainly is the future.

 

[Nexus18]

^^

Kind of the opposite for me tbh. When first released, it was incredibly ****; performance was awful, dlss was **** (so couldn't use it without harming IQ too much), wasn't in enough games, not to mention even less gpus could make use of it and obviously we didn't have the current gen consoles out either. Nowadays, I'm still wowed with every game that uses it well. Problem is as shown in this thread is people don't understand it or don't quite know what to look for or the main reason, can't make proper use of it as you really need a 3070+ to get good performance at 1440P or above.



This is all you need to know about the future of RT:

As I said before, it's no wonder you're seeing it being adopted in far more games and even on consoles where possible now, that time saving is absolutely priceless in the development world.



Also, some will probably not be too amused with HU as it looks like they will start to enable RT where possible in games going forward



No reason for them not to enable it given how widely adopted it is as well as most gpus supporting it and obviously consoles supporting and using it too.

 

[Wucked]

Lots of pretty looking stills and comparison videos while standing still, but when playing and in motion, it doesn't make enough of a difference vs the performance hit for me to want it right now. Maybe the next-gen of cards will take enough of the performance hit out of the equation to make it worthwhile? We'll find out I suppose.

 

[Nexus18]

Lots of pretty looking stills and comparison videos while standing still, but when playing and in motion, it doesn't make enough of a difference vs the performance hit for me to want it right now. Maybe the next-gen of cards will take enough of the performance hit out of the equation to make it worthwhile? We'll find out I suppose.

Opposite for me too

In motion when playing for yourself is where it shows of even better as you don't get reflections randomly disappearing, distorting, or weird artifacts. In Matts DL reflection video, that is definitely noticeable in "motion", if that had been RT, it would have looked a lot nicer.

See DF video for games where RT GI etc. is used too as it can impact the overall graphical fidelity and further add to enhancing detail in textures etc. as opposed to just being higher res. textures etc. Seeing how shadows and lighting works as you move and interact with the environment is very impressive.

I never quite get that argument either as surely is it not the same as saying might as well just reduce all graphical settings then as in motion, you'll definitely not notice the reduced settings and chances are you'll probably gain just as much FPS back, if not more (if you have certain settings that hammer FPS e.g. grass setting in gta 5)

 

[LtMatt]

@Nexus is the Swiss Toni salesman of Ray Tracing.

 

[Scougar]

A lot of lighting in games is not for realism, but for mood/tone. RT can take some of that away. I'm sure there is still tweaking to be done after the fact as well if anything needs to be tuned for visuals.

And again... the issue is PERFORMANCE, and not whether we want it yet.

 

[Quartz]

Has anyone mentioned the development cycle of games? Big games take many years to produce, so if someone started coding a RT-only AAA game when the 2080 came out then it would likely only be entering beta next year and only be ready for the 50 series.

 

[SilverCider]

A lot of lighting in games is not for realism, but for mood/tone. RT can take some of that away. I'm sure there is still tweaking to be done after the fact as well if anything needs to be tuned for visuals.

And again... the issue is PERFORMANCE, and not whether we want it yet.

There's little to nothing preventing artistic direction with RT too. And, much like many other graphics technologies in the past, performance will come as both hardware and methods mature. AA, tessellation, shadows, AO to list a few were all performance hogs in their introduction.

 

[Nexus18]

A lot of lighting in games is not for realism, but for mood/tone. RT can take some of that away. I'm sure there is still tweaking to be done after the fact as well if anything needs to be tuned for visuals.

And again... the issue is PERFORMANCE, and not whether we want it yet.

No doubt some tweaking will be required even when using RT but nowhere to the same extent, if you haven't already, would watch the above video by DF showing 4a enhance workflow as they kind of cover this, this reddit post summarised that aspect well:

Expect to see this more and more with AAA releases. Why? Because "standard lighting models" are a ton of work for still-inferior results. Faked lighting requires an army of artists to place invisible point sources. Every torch for example is a emissive-texture (think texture that always renders at a fixed luminance) with an artist-placed point light source.

With RT an artist just places the torch and the engine figures out the "correct" light, and if the artist doesn't like the scene they add another torch/light source to get the tone to match their vision.

Agree though, if you're all about high fps i.e. locked to a constant 100+ or/and playing at 4k/144hz and refuse to use upscaling tech. or/and reduce other graphical settings then yes, the performance isn't there and won't be in those circumstances for at least another 2/3 years.

Also, 30.2% of people on this forum don't seem to want it all with the "no/never" votes.

Has anyone mentioned the development cycle of games? Big games take many years to produce, so if someone started coding a RT-only AAA game when the 2080 came out then it would likely only be entering beta next year and only be ready for the 50 series.

Avatar is due out this year and iirc, it only got announced last year.

That is another aspect with RT and how it is a **** load quicker to implement, in theory it should mean quicker time to market....

 

[mid_gen]

Avatar is due out this year and iirc, it only got announced last year.

You think it has only been in development for a year?

I'll let you in on a secret...it's been in development a LOT longer than a year. I worked on it for several years.

 

[TNA]

You think it has only been in development for a year?

I'll let you in on a secret...it's been in development a LOT longer than a year. I worked on it for several years.

Read what he said again. He said announced, not developed

It has been in development for a long time is my understanding. He is trying to do it so there are not huge gaps between films and can release one per year was what I read a few years ago as I recall.

What did you do?

 

[Nexus18]

^^

Exactly.

It has been in development behind closed doors way back before ray tracing was even in our sights.

Wonder why they switched to ray tracing only..... Nvidia sponsored? Time saver? Help make it a visual master piece given the Gameworld? All of them?

 

[varkanoid]

Is it me or is there no light source at all in this picture ?? Looks a bit like "Mr Bean spotlight"

(an invisible torch ?)

Avatar is due out this year and iirc, it only got announced last year.

So that means it will be a bag of spanners just like the films. Not like Film tie ins have good prospects.

 

[mid_gen]

Read what he said again. He said announced, not developed

It has been in development for a long time is my understanding. He is trying to do it so there are not huge gaps between films and can release one per year was what I read a few years ago as I recall.

What did you do?

Misunderstood, thought he was implying that it hadn't been in development for long! A modern triple-A title is typically 5-7 years total.

I was a lead AI programmer on it.

Looking forward to finally getting my hands on it, will have to treat myself to a collector's edition!

On the OP topic. I like RT, but I only have a 2070 which is basically useless for raytracing....and I ain't paying this gen prices for an upgrade.

I'm working in UE5 at the moment, and it's really impressive how good Lumen is on relatively modest hardware though.

 

[TNA]

Misunderstood, thought he was implying that it hadn't been in development for long! A modern triple-A title is typically 5-7 years total.

I was a lead AI programmer on it.

Looking forward to finally getting my hands on it, will have to treat myself to a collector's edition!

On the OP topic. I like RT, but I only have a 2070 which is basically useless for raytracing....and I ain't paying this gen prices for an upgrade.

I'm working in UE5 at the moment, and it's really impressive how good Lumen is on relatively modest hardware though.

Hold on, thought you guys were on about the movies. Is there a Avatar game also?

 

[Nexus18]

Is it me or is there no light source at all in this picture ?? Looks a bit like "Mr Bean spotlight"

(an invisible torch ?)

Lol yeah does look a bit odd doesn't it

Basically is that for demo purposes:



Time stamp of that bit:

Exclusive: Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition Analysis - The First Triple-A Game Built Around Ray Tracing

The first triple-A PC game that will *only* run on ray tracing equipped PCs (and next-gen consoles to come), Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition is a phenomenal im...

youtu.be

 

[Nexus18]

Hold on, thought you guys were on about the movies. Is there a Avatar game also?

There is indeed and RT only:

Going to look so good on the QD-oled panels, hopefully HDR is featued.

By massive on the snowdrop engine iirc @mid_gen?

 

[TNA]

There is indeed and RT only:

Going to look so good on the QD-oled panels, hopefully HDR is featued.

By massive on the snowdrop engine iirc @mid_gen?

Ah awesome

 

[Nexus18]

So that means it will be a bag of spanners just like the films. Not like Film tie ins have good prospects.

Possibly!

Whilst I'm hesitant of ubi games (last one I thoroughly enjoyed was assassins creed origins and the division 1 and somewhat 2), this one is by massive and ubi do decent open world games along with good graphics (especially with it being based on the snowdrop engine). As long as they nail the gameworld/pandora where you can just get lost/immersed in it (much like the film), that will do for me

 

[mid_gen]

There is indeed and RT only:

Going to look so good on the QD-oled panels, hopefully HDR is featued.

By massive on the snowdrop engine iirc @mid_gen?

Yeah, Snowdrop is bloody great. I wish Ubi would license it! Unreal is awful to work with in comparison.