Ready for prime time? Unlikely. This is with DLSS on Quality (4K), but extra details still at 0%. Note: it's not generally like this but this is a very reflections intensive area, which imo should be the barometer anyway for such effects, not just a single puddle in a scene.
I will say this though, there's definitely room for ray tracing as an ultra high-end option (I'm happy if these exist just for future hardware & for them being something extra when you play them again years down the line). It just isn't more than that right now, and not for years to come. I do wish it were, because I was playing KCD recently and I was just dreaming of RT shadows fixing so many of that game's shadows issues but then again, even SotTR only half-implemented RT shadows because they're just TOO EXPENSIVE! So I guess we're still many years out regardless. I'm still optimistic & hopeful for RT but I think the next 10 years will still be rasterisation-dominated and for good reasons.
As I mentioned before the problem here is trying to keep one leg in each generation of technology - with a proper path tracer from the ground up within reason it doesn't matter how many puddles are in an area the performance impact is largely the same, within a small percentage, whether it is 1 or 10 or 100. And if the game was written for path tracing from the ground up without having to worry about rendering it using backwards compatible techniques you'd get a raft of GI, etc. features for little more than the cost of a few puddles currently.
Best post you made to date for me!
Not really - he has a huge ego problem that he then projects on to other people.
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