The improvement in ray-tracing in the past 2 years

[Quartz]

JayzTwoCents has an illuminating video showing that ray-tracing has turned from a demo into something very usable.

Skip the build bit and jump to 6:20 for ray-tracing performance in Minecraft, Battlefield 5, and Control. (TLDW: he now gets well over 60 fps with DXR.) This bodes well for future games and GPUs.

 

[varkanoid]

It doesnt bode well for future games because in the last two years we've had a "handful of games" which suggests devs are not enthusastic about ray tracing in games. Especially when the only future AAA game is Cyberpunk that everyone seems to be looking forward to.

 

[Poneros]

It doesnt bode well for future games because in the last two years we've had a "handful of games" which suggests devs are not enthusastic about ray tracing in games. Especially when the only future AAA game is Cyberpunk that everyone seems to be looking forward to.

I don't think that's why, I'm willing to bet it's simply a case of re-tooling needed so it's just gonna take time for people to make that switch. As they start adding it to consoles it will appear more & more on PC as well. Same story as for HDR, which also sees difficulty in adoption across the wider market. Plus for RT the market wasn't there in the first place either, as very few people had a card capable of it.

People just underestimate the time it takes for these things to happen.

 

[TNA]

I don't think that's why, I'm willing to bet it's simply a case of re-tooling needed so it's just gonna take time for people to make that switch. As they start adding it to consoles it will appear more & more on PC as well. Same story as for HDR, which also sees difficulty in adoption across the wider market. Plus for RT the market wasn't there in the first place either, as very few people had a card capable of it.

People just underestimate the time it takes for these things to happen.

Yea I agree. With time as the hardware also gets better we will get more use. My guess is when next gen consoles comes out I.e. PS6 we will have it a lot more common as the tech will be where it needs to be also by then.

 

[varkanoid]

People just underestimate the time it takes for these things to happen.

I dont really agree with that regarding RTX. If they brought out the new Xbox and Sony with 0 games there would be uproar. Nvidia bring out RTX hardware with one game or two support and silence. Its gets ridiculed on the whole.

It shows the PC Producers had no faith in Ray Tracing for RTX hardware. Nothing to do with time. Both Ray Tracing and HDR are visual enhancements they do not stop you playing a game and are not fundamental to the mechanics. HDR has been around for a few years now its not essential to a game. Neither is Ray Tracing. I dont think its time itself I think its why bother implementing something that just looks nice when it takes too much development work. After all its not full Ray Tracing its only partially using it for certain reflections etc.

 

[Joxeon]

I dont really agree with that regarding RTX. If they brought out the new Xbox and Sony with 0 games there would be uproar. Nvidia bring out RTX hardware with one game or two support and silence. Its gets ridiculed on the whole.

It shows the PC Producers had no faith in Ray Tracing for RTX hardware. Nothing to do with time. Both Ray Tracing and HDR are visual enhancements they do not stop you playing a game and are not fundamental to the mechanics. HDR has been around for a few years now its not essential to a game. Neither is Ray Tracing. I dont think its time itself I think its why bother implementing something that just looks nice when it takes too much development work. After all its not full Ray Tracing its only partially using it for certain reflections etc.

Also it's a lot of time invested for probably less than 10% of PC gamers with RTX Gpus.

 

[pugheaven]

The next gen will usher in ray tracing the previous/current gen simply weren't powerful enough to bother with, if people can't get 60fps at 1080p maxed in every ray traced game they won't be interested, well I wouldn't be anyway but the next gen WILL be able to do that so I think you'll see a serious push now. First gen in anything is always pants really with slow uptake...

 

[K1LaW8tt5]

Still a demo.
Could this not have been merged with the DLSS/RTX didn't work this gen thread?

 

[EastCoastHandle]

It's funny how dlss is disabled on bf5 for the 2080 TI because it was"incompatible" but are using it in other games.

What a nebulous quandary. It really does prove to me they have no direction for dlss.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It's funny how dlss is disabled on bf5 for the 2080 TI because it was"incompatible" but are using it in other games.

What a nebulous quandary. It really does prove to me they have no direction for dlss.

So first they had to reduce image quality to get it to run better,and now its disabled? LMAO.

 

[EastCoastHandle]

In BF5 they reduced the overall effect of Ray Tracing to get the performance they have now. It's a bit specious of Jay to imply it was from drivers alone.

 

[K1LaW8tt5]

His test strategy was immense though, I'll just wiggle the mouse here a bit. Yeah more frames than we had 2 years ago .Om sure the quality is exactly as it was before no need to test that

 

[gpuerrilla]

I dont really agree with that regarding RTX. If they brought out the new Xbox and Sony with 0 games there would be uproar. Nvidia bring out RTX hardware with one game or two support and silence. Its gets ridiculed on the whole.

It shows the PC Producers had no faith in Ray Tracing for RTX hardware. Nothing to do with time. Both Ray Tracing and HDR are visual enhancements they do not stop you playing a game and are not fundamental to the mechanics. HDR has been around for a few years now its not essential to a game. Neither is Ray Tracing. I dont think its time itself I think its why bother implementing something that just looks nice when it takes too much development work. After all its not full Ray Tracing its only partially using it for certain reflections etc.

This is the most accurate summary I have read here in a while. You have another thread where naysayers are knocking someone for posting how the 5700XT with new drivers is beating a 2070S stating "it has to be great out of the box"; yet when it comes to nvidia and raytracing, theres a mammoth of a birth given saying "give it time". No. Its had two years now and people are quite right to state it was not needed and is not ready to ram down people's throats. It should be labelled a damp squib and lambasted enough so that even nvidia cant get away with it no matter how brainwashed some followers are. Lack of both games and enthusiasm from devs is now showing the cracks.

It's funny how dlss is disabled on bf5 for the 2080 TI because it was"incompatible" but are using it in other games.

What a nebulous quandary. It really does prove to me they have no direction for dlss.

So first they had to reduce image quality to get it to run better,and now its disabled? LMAO.

Again, green get away with it but its par for the course now. At least its being picked up by other users.

 

[Phixsator]

In BF5 they reduced the overall effect of Ray Tracing to get the performance they have now. It's a bit specious of Jay to imply it was from drivers alone.

I was just about to ask about this. Cause if fps is gained or lost the next question should be, has the image produced changed in quality as well? Otherwise the result you get may just as well be a misleading one.

 

[BigBANGtheory]

Skip the build bit and jump to 6:20 for ray-tracing performance in Minecraft, Battlefield 5, and Control. (TLDW: he now gets well over 60 fps with DXR.) This bodes well for future games and GPUs.

I think it does bode well however I still have some unanswered issues that seem to persist when you look at the bigger picture:

1. Turing charged a lot for RTX and what has actually transpired in the past 2yrs is exceptionally poor value, with a high amount of oversell. Nvidia should be held accountable for that its not ok for the media and reviewers to overlook it.

2. If someone buys a high end GPU from the nextgen for their 4K monitor are they going to have to drop down to 1440p to play titles with RT content on?

3. I have seen other graphical effects such as Screen Space Reflections deliver good results too without needing RT, what about other less compute heavy techniques?

4. RT seems to have a dependency on DLSS for higher resolutions in order to be practical, but DLSS has a poor adoption rate and doesn't appear to apply to any legacy titles yet most gamers continue to enjoy games like GTA 5, Witcher 3 and Skyrim i.e. anything that requires developer support to code into the game rather than the native hardware and drivers is a BIG problem in reality no matter how clever the technology.

 

[keyser]

I'm looking forward to seeing the step up from next nvidia cards, I will probably be getting nvidia for the fps boost and for the RTX and DLSS. I think Control has the settings just right: you can choose the render resolution and every RTX effect. It's early days with raytracing, its totally different to what we have been doing up until now (faking it).

 

[Unseul]

Certainly making me think on my next upgrade (won't be for a while though!). Will keep tracking, but with the 2080ti, actually doing fairly well now, and with more improvements likely to come, a 2nd hand 2080ti may be enough to enjoy new games with rtx in the future, if not requiring 4k.

 

[Rroff]

I dont really agree with that regarding RTX. If they brought out the new Xbox and Sony with 0 games there would be uproar. Nvidia bring out RTX hardware with one game or two support and silence. Its gets ridiculed on the whole.

It shows the PC Producers had no faith in Ray Tracing for RTX hardware. Nothing to do with time. Both Ray Tracing and HDR are visual enhancements they do not stop you playing a game and are not fundamental to the mechanics. HDR has been around for a few years now its not essential to a game. Neither is Ray Tracing. I dont think its time itself I think its why bother implementing something that just looks nice when it takes too much development work. After all its not full Ray Tracing its only partially using it for certain reflections etc.

Slapping some token ray traced effect in is one thing - there are an ever increasing number of games that are doing that (Digital Foundry amongst others are covering this), adopting ray tracing at a larger scale is another because many of the more advanced techniques and workarounds/hacks for traditional graphics (for advanced effects there are a lot of physically incorrect faking of effects) conflict with the use of ray traced techniques meaning either the developer has to go to the effort and resources of maintaining two branches of the game or reduce the visual quality of their non-ray traced implementation of the game.

I'm going to find it amusing down the line when people start changing their tune on RT.

 

[Quartz]

Turing charged a lot for RTX

I disagree. Nvidia charged a lot for their GPUs full stop. RTX was a bonus. A taster. It certainly didn't enter my consideration when I purchased my 2080 Ti.

 

[Grim5]

It doesnt bode well for future games because in the last two years we've had a "handful of games" which suggests devs are not enthusastic about ray tracing in games. Especially when the only future AAA game is Cyberpunk that everyone seems to be looking forward to.

Chicken and egg

percentage of gamers who own rayvtracing hardware is 10 to 15%, easier for devs to ignore it.

Sony and MS is throwing a lot of money around to get devs to implement rayvtracing in the new consoles which of course help bring more ray tracing games to pc too