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

[Nexus18]

As per subject title.

Will get a poll created, probably keep it to basic yes and no options?

- Yes
- No

 

[Nexus18]

Maybe a not yet? By that I mean that I do care for Ray tracing, but I wouldn't necessarily base a purchasing decision on it yet. I think it probably has a little more maturing to do.

Yes I think that makes sense and probably an option most people would pick.

Was considering that but kind of want to keep the thread for just the here and now as ultimately every game at some point will become RT only.

 

[Nexus18]

Ok, so then perhaps these options? Along with a title change to "do you care for ray tracing now?"

- Yes
- No
- Not yet but in the future
- Never will care for it

 

[Nexus18]

Poll added (nice that we can finally add it ourselves!)

DLSS is a genuinely good technology though and is needed even with ray tracing disabled.

+1

I use it whenever I can.

 

[Nexus18]

Interesting results so far and kind of what I expected, well actually, I was expecting less votes for "yes" on this forum tbh.

Just thinking, a better poll would have been to split it into be based on who owns what gpu brand as that would have been a rather good insight imo since generally I find it seems to be amd owners who don't use nor care for RT i.e. something like:

Yes (nvidia owner)
Yes (amd owner)
No (nvidia owner)
No (amd owner)
Not yet but in the future (nvidia owner)
Not yet but in the future (amd owner)

But will stick with the current format for now.

I called Turing out many times at launch, so much so that @Gregster called me an AMD fanboy and thought I 'hated' Nvidia. I then called out RDNA2 at launch for its similar garbage performance only to find myself labelled as a Nvidia fanboy

Exactly, I was the same too and also called out how utterly **** dlss 1 was but nope "amd fanboi!!!"

I'll never understand the "but it's amds first go, this is nvidias second attempt" stance.... yes that is true but it doesn't matter, it's a big selling point for nvidia and the features are here to be used in many many titles now, as a consumer, I couldn't care less who does it better etc. but I want to play said games with said features now, not in 1-2 years time, which sadly only nvidia offer atm.

Also, there was some talk of this in another thread recently but seems turing is still ever so slightly better than RDNA 2 in RT games.

 

[Nexus18]

RT has a long way to go yet to be fair. We are limited by hardware. I am more impressed by HDR when it is done right at the moment. But still, very nice thing to have even now, hence my vote

I am sure if you make a new poll in one or so years time when people have next gen cards, especially AMD owners, there will be a difference in results. Would actually love to see AMD end up with more RT grunt than Nvidia, can think of a few people that would change their tune on RT

You know it Especially since amd might have RT being displayed/working correctly by then... Makes sense now why Matt and the others say they don't notice the difference!

 

[Nexus18]

I'd rather have RIS that works on pretty much everything than 'RT', and yes I've had multiple 3000-series cards and 6000-series cards and prefer the AMD cards for this very reason (plus I feel there's a bit more pop-in on Nvidia cards generally so they can maintain a high framerate but that's another issue)

Why not both?

Ris is a completely different thing to RT and both can be used in conjunction.

Not only that but if you really love ris and what it does, generally sweetfx/redux will provide better results since it is individually tuned per game and various presets you can choose from. Although obviously not as convenient/easy as a global setting at driver level though.
Personally I don't like any kind of over sharpening as can notice the issues it causes with increasing artifacts present in the native image especially if using upscaling techniques, even more so with FSR 1.

 

[Nexus18]

Tbf the Nvidia version is pretty pony and I've noticed artefacts with that as well.

Yeah nvidia has 2 different ways you can do it:

- via geforce experience, which gives various different types of sharpening "filters/sliders" and also hits performance harder
- via the windows xp control panel, basic sharpener like amds one and doesn't hit performance at all except maybe 1-2 fps

I don't like either way.

When I had my vega 56, amds ris was good but you still get the usual traits that comes with over sharpening.

Sweetfx/redux is the best overall in my experience.

In game sharpening is actually quite good these days too e.g. division 1 and 2 in game sharpness sliders work very well.

All in all, it very much depends on the game, generally games that are very blurry because of TAA e.g. RDR 2, sharpening advantages can outweigh the issues it brings about, thankfully RDR 2 got dlss though, which fixes all the overdone blurriness and artefacts present in the TAA/native image.

 

[Nexus18]

Due to other thread being locked, which tbf wasn't the right place really, I think it's ok to continue the investigation with regards to AMD not rendering RT reflections 100% correctly here @montymint since it looks like it might be an issue with amd RT and if so, @LtMatt can raise with the correct people in amd (he works there) to get it resolved or perhaps some answers as to why it is happening. Don't see why we can't continue it here, feel free to state otherwise though.




Regarding the poll, seems the yes option has gone up a fair bit since this morning.

 

[Nexus18]

https://www.amd.com/en/support/contact-call

There you go chap. Let's leave it to the thread title for now.

Someone who works there would get a result/answer far quicker not to mention get past the non technical helpdesk stage

But yes, perhaps not the right thread here either although given what has been discovered, it would have an impact on these poll findings i.e. you can't really say you don't care for RT if users aren't having RT being correctly displayed in the first place... I shall leave it to someone else to open another thread if they wish to continue it but given all the people and various sources (we're not just talking about one source and one game here either) and comparisons showing the issue at hand, it kind of invalidates any future RT perf. comparisons now imo.

I think it’s time to call it a day Nexus.

I’m going to order a 3080 AIB myself and test it with side by side comparisons in a controlled environment. Trying to properly look into this with you providing screenshots of recorded videos is not very productive, and folks are getting fed up of reading it all. As we saw from the FC6 example you provided, using different settings can have a big impact on how things look. Nonetheless, I’ll let you know the outcome of my findings if there is actually an issue there or not.

Sure thing.

Be good to see your ghostwire comparison though as per the other thread.

I might close this thread and reopen a new one with these poll options instead given the new findings of RT:

Yes (nvidia owner)
Yes (amd owner)
No (nvidia owner)
No (amd owner)
Not yet but in the future (nvidia owner)
Not yet but in the future (amd owner)

 

[Nexus18]

@Nexus18 I don;t see a problem disusing existing card RT performance here, as long as we kind of keep it on topic.

The subject is "do you care for raytracing now", not Manufacturer X vs Manufacturer Y play by play breakdowns which turn into petty squabbling. So a discussing about AMDs RT not working seems ok to me.

Do you want to make the other thread, if you do it in the next 20 mins and ping me I'll close this and do the poll for you.

Thanks for confirming monty. I think as discussed above, we'll keep this thread to the topic at hand and if @LtMatt @Wrinkly or anyone else wishes to continue the "potential" amd RT issue discussion, they can create a new thread.

Will let the majority decide on what to do with the thread/poll, say a certain amount of likes (10?) on yours or/and my post for all those in favour of the new thread/poll options?

 

[Nexus18]

Surprised by the number of No’s. I would have thought more would be no but later, rather than an outright no. That’s like saying you are not interested in better and more realistic graphics essentially isn’t it? Maybe it is early and I am missing something though

Probably just poor options to pick from on the poll, as right now people just see a price tag attached to it and just say no, rather than actually not wanting better image quality I guess.

Perhaps it is largely down to the cost i.e. you need 3070+ level or a 6800xt/6900xt for some kind of RT but is surprising how many have said "no", given how many of those people buy the best of the best in order to get the best visual experience they can

I never expected "yes" to be the most popular given how vocal some are on RT being a gimmick etc. but I was expecting far less "yes" votes.

It is where it is all headed imo. As hardware gets better more and more games will use it as not only is it better for graphics but it makes development easier as I understand it.

Only a matter of time until everything becomes RT/path traced, whatever you want to call it imo and not just for it being the next generational leap in visuals but more so because of how much easier it makes the developers life and as we all know, the crunch is a very serious/big problem for the game development industry when it comes to meeting deadlines. I think given that developers are implementing RT wherever they can even for the console versions shows how much they value it and with the next refresh/gen of consoles is where we'll see the next step up, until then, it will mostly just be RT titles like GOTG, ghostwire, RE village with a few in between like DL 2, cp 2077, chernobylite and even rarer ones like metro ee and the upcoming avatar where it will be RT only.

 

[Nexus18]

Yup this is purely for the here and now.

The last option "never will care for it, rasterization all day long!!!" was just there for giggles tbh However, there have been a few people that said they rather have rasterization over RT any day because of it "looking better", "being more vibrant/saturated" etc.

People should be able to change their vote if they want.

 

[Nexus18]

Next confirmed big game with quite a few RT effects for me is atomic heart.

Would love to see older games get the RT treatment, there are some that are just crying out for it i.e. batman arkham games

 

[Nexus18]

Probably because some areas of the game were specifically made to show off rt effects due to nvidia sponsorship. More of a tech demo in a fashion.

CP 2077 is very well regarded for its rasterization methods and there are a few areas where you would be hard pressed to notice the difference tbh. Main aspect of cp 2077 where I notice RTs benefits is when driving throughout the city with the reflections and light bouncing/illuminating of other objects without any of the light bleed you would get with rasterization nor having reflections just gradually disappear.

One game I would love to have RT in is ark as the developers for that have done an awful job with SSR especially when you're used to RT reflections, the issues with SSR become even more jarring:

Spoiler

It's even worse in motion. This is where if developers are lazy, don't have the time or whatever reason, rasterization can just look beyond awful and immersion breaking.

Hopefully ark 2 will have some good RT effects, I think the first game was sponsored by nvidia.

The only games I would rate for being incredibly good and matching/surpassing even most RT titles would be RDR 2. Metro games are also very good and have always been regarded as having great lighting, shadows etc. but even the exodus enhanced version shows just how bad that really is.

I think avatar from ubi/massive and their snowdrop engine in that avatar/pandora world is going to show just what RT is really capable of achieving.

RT does very little for me and I also think it is vastly over rated for gaming (Genius of NVidia marketing).

As a feature I find it is nowhere near as good as something like PhysX which in itself is not that great and no one even talks about it on forums.

10 mins into a game how many serious gamers would even be taking any notice of what RT is doing or would they be a lot more interested in the gameplay itself?

Physx did nothing for me. Sure the effects were quite nice in batman games but there is no reason why the developers couldn't have achieved the same without locking it behind nvidia (unless like rasterization lighting, shadows etc. it also required a lot of effort and time from developers, rroff could probably answer that?), not to mention the hit to perf. was even worse than RT especially when you consider that it only affected one or 2 objects/items, that and things like the smoke looked overly done to the point it didn't even look realistic then.

If we're talking about titles with limited RT or/and titles where RT doesn't show of well like f1, re village then I properly wouldn't care nor notice but things like riftbreaker, control, cp 2077 and metro ee etc. it definitely adds a lot to the gameplay/immersion so much that I even completed control and metro ee as RT added a lot of atmosphere to them, which made them more immersive and kept me wanting to play and see more of the game world.

We’re really just seeing a very basic version of ray tracing currently, the amount of rays and bounces are limited, In the future that could well increase but it’ll likely be a very subtle image change for another chunky performance hit. Likely be an option in games in the future for low\medium\high\ultra amount of rays and bounces, and i really doubt the difference between them will be worth the performance hit.

The annoying thing is 4a enhanced have shown what can be achieved if you do RT properly with regards to things like light bounces and so on, it makes a massive difference and when implemented properly, the performance is even better than rasterization version and the rasterization + half baked RT version.

I'm of the opinion that RT won't be super mainstream until mid/low end cards can handle it well. For now we'll see some RT within AAA games using it to show off the tech.

Would agree with this, 4060/4070 should match/provide 3090 levels of RT for £400-550 so I think 50xx series is when we'll see a massive shift in peoples interest and uptake in games, especially if AMD can match/beat nvidia in RT.

 

[Nexus18]

Instead of just cherry picking one or two games and with it trying to establish that as a yard stick why don't we avrage a much larger selection of games, something that has both Nvidia and AMD sponsored titles.

We don't take one Nvidia sponsored game and use it for AMD's rasterisation performance yard stick so why do that with RT performance?

So basically you're agreeing with me then.....

Decent article that, however, they are missing a lot of RT games where nvidia does see more of a gain over amd, just to name a few:

- chernobylite
- dl 2
- cp 2077
- the ascent
- control
- watch dogs legion
- ghostrunner
- bright memory infinite
- sword and fairy 7

And there are a whole bunch of other ones you could add, not to mention if you add the path tracing classics like quake, doom, mario, serious sam.

Their list:



But I think if you look at the big picture where people will also be using FSR or DLSS, the 3070 will still come out quite a bit better for 2 reasons:

- DLSS gains more performance than FSR 1 in RT scenarios as we have seen in a few comparisons now, bang4buck showed this of well, time will tell if FSR 2 can achieve the same perf gain as dlss
- DLSS is available in certain games where FSR is not

Ray Tracing does look great but it's annoying having to tweak settings when you see dips here and there. Even for those on the 3080/3090. The tech probably needs another 2 years. It's actually more annoying that HDR looks absolutely stunning on a 4k TV on the girlfriends PS5. I wish more PC monitors had really good HDR support instead.

Get yourself a nice OLED display for the pc, problem solved

 

[Nexus18]

Can't really answer this via poll, the poll options don't really resonate with me and the OP is lacking in detail.

For me, it's all a balance. Do want raytracing - yes. Do I want raytracing with bad performance - no. I guess ultimately raw rasterisation performance is like a hygiene factor, ray tracing is kind of irrelevant unless you get the basics right. So it's like, if I had a choice between two really fast cards at similar prices, one can do RT well and the other can't, then the former gets my money. If it was the case I had to pay significantly more for RT, or it performed significantly worse at 'normal' rendering, then the latter would probably be the choice.

See below, it is purely based in the here and now as to whether you care for RT as a feature/tech. or not, of course all of what you said would come into consideration as to which option you vote for.

Yup this is purely for the here and now.

The last option "never will care for it, rasterization all day long!!!" was just there for giggles tbh However, there have been a few people that said they rather have rasterization over RT any day because of it "looking better", "being more vibrant/saturated" etc.

People should be able to change their vote if they want.

 

[Nexus18]

Obviously raster CAN look better as well especially if you want a specific look in a part of a game, the rt version might be the real look, but that may well not be what the designers want in the scene.

I think we have pretty much hit the peak/best we can with rasterization now i.e. rdr 2 where as with what we have seen with RT currently, even with the likes of metro ee it is still just the tip of the iceberg then that is where it comes down to the developers workflow being hampered because of all the time and effort they would have to put into get something looking rdr 2 quality as opposed to a much quicker and easier implementation as shown by 4a enhanced video of them implementing RT.

 

[Nexus18]

What I'm saying though is the artistic interpretation of a scene can look better than the realistic version of a scene. Ray tracing can give you how it should look, but it might not suit what the designers had in mind, especially for dramatic scenes or big reveals etc.

True that, RT GI would be the main one for that I suppose where they would avoid it.

Some games with a bit of a cartoonish look/direction about them work rather well with "some" RT effects I find e.g. riftbreaker, the ascent and deathloop

 

[Nexus18]

Games are a form of art, good game developers put a lot of time and effort in to making their games look good, the art aspect of the game.

physically accurate lighting is not necessarily beautiful and if Ray Tracing becomes the standard for lighting in games we may loose that aspect of the art, especially if studios decide they can save money by not hiring lighting artists because, well, all you do is click a radio button and there you go, your scene is accurately lit, job done.

Digital foundry i think it was, scrutinised a large church window with RT lighting and traditional Screen Space GI, they had a lot to say about how the scene was lit correctly with RT vs not with Screen Space GI, and they did look very different, that's what they got all excited about, but to me at least Screen Space GI looked WAY better, much more art than the cold, blue, dark scene the RT render produced.

Is that DL 2 you're referring to I think?



It's one of those things where you need to be in the game and seeing your surroundings and light sources as you move around to appreciate why RT achieves a better looking result, at least to my eyes.

Dying Light 2 PC Tech Review: Graphics Analysis, Optimised Settings, Performance Tests!

Dying Light 2 on current-gen consoles is pretty great - but if effectively forces you to choose between resolution, 60fps or ray tracing features. The PC ver...

youtu.be

Part of the problem with DL 2 is the very limited light bounces, iirc, it's only 1 so it doesn't look as good as what it could. Would be good if they give you the option to up this or do a future RT only edition like metro ee.

Yeah, sometimes real life can look drab and boring. Our eyes are drawn to over-saturated colours. Like poorly calibrated TVs in an electrical retailers!

Pretty much, very much like real life, on a cloudy, rainy day, everything looks crap, on a bright blue sky kind of day, everything looks epic.