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

[Nexus18]

You can always manipulate light through the environment and its color. You can also color grade how you wish or chose a specific time of day for a certain scene. Nothing changes. It just works

I'd rather have something extremely easy to be done right than something that can be done "good enough", but with such an effort that only a couple of studios are able to - like RDR 2.

Exactly and the way things are nowadays especially with development, there is always a rush to get things done in order to meet deadlines. As noted earlier, imo, it won't so much be about benefiting us/consumers the eventual transition to only RT, it'll be the developers that dictate it for their own benefits. Indie developers are a big fan of nvidias RTX RT plugins, the developer for fabled woods posted on reddit how much quicker/easier it was to go this path than the usual way, especially since, iirc, it was nvidia who reached out to him to help.

 

[Nexus18]

I may have to change my vote if it's based on the here and now. The option that says "not yet but in the future", I took that to mean sometime during my lifetime. But now I assume it means sometime during the next few months?

It can be at any time in the future, be that 2 months or 2 years or 20 years.

 

[Nexus18]

I hate the idea of a monopoly occurring because every gamer buys the same brand because of a must have feature.

I'd rather miss out to stop that happening to be honest. Even though it's a nice feature.

It's not a unique feature to just Nvidia though. As shown amd can enable and make use of it too, they just don't have the hardware/perf. matching ampere. If anything supporting/buying into the brand that does it better would force amd to concentrate more on it.

 

[Nexus18]

Nvidia has a monopoly on discrete desktop GPUs right now and is exploiting it to the max, frankly I'm amazed they've not fallen foul of any regulators yet

As pointed out above, it is very much amds fault, the thing that sits with me the most is looking back at the e3/ces or whatever live shows they were, where amd spent most of the show talking about their partnerships across every industry/sector then spent like 1 minute, if that on the pc gaming space, meanwhile nvidia spent their whole show focussed solely on pc gaming, safe to say "at the time", the pc gaming space was very much not amds focus hence why there was sweet f all stock on rdna 2 release as they were supplying 80% of their chips to consoles. Given amd don't have consoles to think about/supply now, I'm expecting them to come out swinging for RDNA 3.

Not as much as i thought. Jumped on a 2080ti at launch and proceeded to wait a further year for any RT implementation other than the odd demo. Not sure this had much of an impact as i was hyped for anything with RT in the early days but now i am much more, not moving away, just not swayed quite as much as i was.

To be honest, I've been in the land of Elden Ring for so long I've forgotten what an optimised RT game looks like.....Does ER even have RT????

Apparently it is in the works.

No, can't say I care. It's existence doesn't make a bad game good nor does it's absence make a good game bad. It's nice to have, but I don't base any graphics card or game buying decision on it.

In fact, most ray traced games have the problem of being "triple A" video game tripe anyway, most could have done with the RT development time being spent elsewhere.

That is largely what RT sets out to achieve, to save developers a **** load of time, obviously they will have developers working on their own things though so the guy responsible for lighting/graphical stuff will not be working on gameplay/balances/core game side of things unless they're the equivalent to a full stack dev....

Nope!

Nv didn't trip their way to 83%, they got the market to desire them all the way to 83%-that doesn't fall in your lap, it's hard hard work.

Look what's happened to @Nexus18, been on AMD(positively) for years went Nv-absolutely loving it.

That's AMD's job to get nexus back, so far they haven't got me back and I've been away much longer, that monopoly is on AMD not us.

Exactly.

I prefer AMD on the whole but until amd can at least match nvidia on 2 fronts that I very much care for now (RT and DLSS), I won't be going back.

Do they not have FSR which achieves much the same thing? I appreciate the consensus is that it's not quite on the same level, but they have got an alternative.

I come up with a draw in so far as as much as people talk about it, DLSS is not in everything, certainly not legacy games as it didn't exist then. For me, I'd have been happy with either, hence draw


I have no idea what I'll play tomorrow. Ray tracing may or may not be a part of it, but as of right now, its a great feature, not a game maker. I do know what I'm playing today though, and on the whole (not completely) either brand is fine.

Ray tracing will be good. Its not essential right now as it needs to develop, like any tech.

FSR 2 is the true competitor to dlss and is only coming out tomorrow.

FSR 1 in my experience was not great, certainly not for anything less than 4k and UQ preset, so much I chose not to use it in the games I played with it, re village, rfitbreaker, fc 6 (at 1440) and obviously if given the choice, I chose dlss in other games.

If FSR 2 still can't achieve the same gain in perf. as dlss in RT workloads, which is pretty substantial at times especially since you need all the perf. you can get in things like dl 2, cp 2077, fsr 2 will still fall short. Hopefully FSR 2 is based on TSR and not TAAU or/and amd have made improvements to whatever one they're using.....

 

[Nexus18]

There is a thread that proves otherwise - https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/t...ames-benchmarks-software-etc-thread.18898329/

Indeed.

I have played more RT titles in the last 2 years than I have just rasterization games.

Quite looking forward to trying out the f1 game:

F1 - Imgsli

F1 - Imgsli

imgsli.com

F1 - Imgsli

imgsli.com

F1 - Imgsli

 

[Nexus18]

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

https://twitter.com/HardwareUnboxed/status/1523815491319439360

Spoiler

8%???

Presuming their bar chart is the latest version? If so, I would read that as 49.5% considering it "worthwhile/good".

Definitely would love to see the ratio of amd to nvidia gpu owners for these polls

Obviously backed up by the huge market swing to AMD this round

The things I notice when it comes to RT discussion is:

- people don't really have an understanding of it and think it is purely just a reflections thing based on comments "shiny puddle"
- people base their opinions only on early/**** games for it i.e. tomb raider, bf 5 or go based on scenes where there won't be any difference i.e. if it is just RT reflections implemented, you get people comparing scenes with no reflections of any kind in the scene....
- performance hit, which is a valid enough point if you don't have the hardware for it

 

[Nexus18]

They took the screenshot a day or two back, the results have changed a little since then so I included a link to their tweet for context. 8% think it's impressive, 31% think it's okay are the latest results.

Btw, I just tested Ghostwire on the 3090, looks identical to the 6900 XTXH @Nexus18 at 4K max settings, no image reconstruction. Neither gives playable FPS. 3090 is faster by about 8 FPS (30 vs 38 FPS) Both feel horrible, massive frame time spikes.

So the headlight and purple lines are being fully rendered on your 6900xt?



Must need more vram from the sounds of it

I can't recall exactly but there is a texture cache setting or something that needs to be changed from cinematic to auto to resolve some of the perf issues, once that is done, it plays well with the odd UE 4 DX 12 shading stutter. DF noted this too. There was a patch recently, which supposedly improves perf. further but I haven't tried it since.

Obviously it is a game that will need upscaling tech for both vendors though especially at 4k.

 

[Nexus18]

Yes, everything is the same. As I told you it would be. Tested Far Cry 6, Ghostwire and that other Bright Infinite thingy you mentioned too.

I might buy Cyberpunk when a certain game update comes out. That'll make sense soon.

I'll put up some screenshots for side by side comparisons in the not too distant future too.

Shall await the screenshots

Bit weird though how several other people are all experiencing it in several games, maybe game or/and amd driver updates have fixed it? Or maybe just system/local issues.....

 

[Nexus18]

You say several other people, but really only one YouTube channel showed some examples (outside of DF and the UE5 alpha demo).

There's also no context provided, no information on settings used on each system and steps to reproduce. Also he was capturing videos using external hardware, there's so many variables there. Everything is vague with no substance, which is always a red flag.

You can be sure that Digital Foundry would be all over it if this was a genuine issue in games I can promise you that.

Well there were/are several people saying about it in bang4bucks comments and on that big reddit thread then factor in the same showing on other peoples youtube footage too. I do agree though, there are a lot of factors but generally when you get that many people all showing the exact same issue, it does look like something isn't quite right.

I also just remembered you benched the 3090, 6800 and 6900xt, had a quick look and looks like you were suffering the same issue too:





However, your latest run with the 6900xt:



So seems it was a game(s) or/and amd thing.

 

[Nexus18]

How far through the game is that cut scene in Ghostwire? Might be able to get a screenshot up now.

IIRC, it's the very start.

 

[Nexus18]

4K max settings, all RT on, 6800 XT. (ignore the overlay)




Another one debunked.

I wish I had realised it was the first cut scene. I skipped it and carried on playing the game for another 30 minutes.

And this game is absolutely terrible.

Fair

So looks like it has been potentially fixed by either a game or/and amd driver update then? At least looking at your FC 6 comparisons over time.

Yeah it's not the best tbf, something a bit different to the usual crap put out nowadays though

 

[Nexus18]

Well technically we have seen that if done right and from the ground up, RT can in fact perform better e.g. metro ee.

Avatar is due this year and RT only so it will show how perf. is. I'm expecting good things given it is by massive on the snowdrop engine.

 

[Nexus18]

To the 68.2% of people who voted in this poll that they do not care about RT either now or at all, I ask you to watch this video and tell me if this kind of graphically fidelity would make you change your mind?

I'm really hoping I'm missing the joke/punchline here but you do realise that's not ray tracing, right? That's SSR and is why I love RT as you don't get that behaviour with the reflection disappearing.... DL 2 sadly only uses RT reflections for certain areas/things. DF or maybe it was the video above by wrinkly where they talk about it in their video.

So seems I'm right as per usual @Wrinkly @TNA Specsavers or people don't understand/know what to look for in RT which very much invalidates most of the no/not yet votes imo

This is why I always recommend likes of DF as they can explain it very well and do great in depth comparisons on this kind of tech:

Much better show cases for RT reflections are cp 2077 (try driving around night city when it's been raining), control, doom eternal (when you get to the metal demon base), wd: legion etc.

 

[Nexus18]

@Nexus18 I found some nice reflections in the game and you tell me it's not RT. I should probably turn Ray Traced reflections off then I guess and save me some FPS.

Hmm that guy says the reflections are RT.

DL 2 is only using RT reflections for certain aspects, not everything is RT, same as is the case with FC 6 RT e.g. it's only puddles and some metal surfaces using RT but the sea and larger pools of water are SSR. I can't remember who it was, either DF or some other site that recommended to turn RT reflections off due to it not adding as much to the game as the other RT effects (only if you needed more performance though)

Your video is showing the biggest issue with SSR, which is what RT reflections overcomes. Those SSR issues are my biggest annoyance now that I have seen/am used to RT reflections in things like cp 2077, it just makes SSR traits stand out even more.

This ghostwire comparison compares RT reflections to SSR quite well:

 

[Nexus18]

Oooo shiny puddles

I voted "not yet", but could easily have voted no. I certainly don't care about RT any more than the miriad other steps in graphic fidelity in games that have happened over the years.

Perhaps it's because I started out playing games on the Speccy, but I'm not going to get all worked up about another evolutionary improvement if the game isn't fun to play. The pretty-pretty is all well and good, but if I'm bored why should I bother?

If it saves game designers and developers time, then great. Lets hope they do something worthwhile with it. Taking Nexus's example of F1 2022 - to my mind if they do well rendered mirrors (with vibrations - it's F1 after all), then that would enhance the game. On the other hand, beautifully rendered standing water would be pointless if there wasn't an associated decent model for aquaplaning.

Speaking of puddles, the puddles in CP2077 look lovely until you drive through them and they don't splash. Or is that just AMD not rendering things properly again?

In short, my preferred option for the poll would be: "Never will care for about it, gameplay all day long!!!"

See above post on that scene of Matt in fact being SSR, not RT.


As for CP 2077 question, they have added more water physics:

Of course everyone will value gameplay above all else... It's a good thing RT doesn't have any impact on that.

@Nexus18 Please never mention Ghostwire again. It's just a painful reminder of 45 minutes you made me waste playing that tripe only to find out the reflections are rendered properly. God that game was terribad.

Hmmm… I can certainly appreciate what they've achieved, but at the same time something is lost with RT. Call me old-school, but I'm not sure I'm ready to give up that distinct game-like look compared to what looks like an artificial photograph or video record. Don't get me wrong, I love taking in the view in my games, but I'm not sure I want my RPGs (or other games, but I mostly play RPGs) to look like a TV sitcom or even cinema production shot with normal cameras. It's kind of like some of those problems with CoD triggering PTSD in combat veterans — too much realism is actually not necessarily good. I probably wouldn't like to play something like RDR with complete photographic realism and a controller in my hand that looked and acted like a real gun. With KCD this was more forgiving due to the mediaeval setting already telling your brain this isn't you going outside and stabbing at people. I think there's a place for photorealistic games — for starters, for people who just like them, and in some cases also for me — and it's great that games have been taken to DAI/TW3/KCD level rather than polygon-faced, but at some point there's gotta be a limit, and I think that limit may fall short of photo-realism. Or it could go beyond and into hyperrealism (exaggerated colour gamut, contrast range, etc.). But TV realism wouldn't necessarily be the ideal place for a game to be, in my subjective feel. Looking at the OFF vs ON examples made me realize this. The pews, the ivy… it's quite possible I liked them better in the OFF version, despite its technically lower quality.

Agree.

However, at the same time, look at a few artistic/cartoon like games where with the right use of RT, it can add to the game very well without making it "photo realistic" and improve the art style even further imo e.g. riftbreaker, the ascent, maneater, deathloop, sword and fairy 7. Could even say the same for things like minecraft, quake, serious sam, doom, nowhere near photo realistic but RT adds a lot of nice touches to them.

Much better than in CP 2077 since you can see yourself in the reflection.
But i agree in your clip they don't look ray traced. Reflections dissapearing when viewed from certain angles is not the most annoying thing for me tbh. I understand it is a game and there are rendering limitations. It is more annoying when someone is talking about RT reflections realism but you can't see yourself in the reflection because the devs were too lazy to make a dummy body for you. Or when you destroy a whole room in Control but it still looks pristine in the reflections because " decals or whatever they are called can't be RT reflected". Don't talk about realism then.

Try playing ark and then tell me that again

RT obviously isn't "perfect" but it looks better than SSR and has far less issues with it such as disappearing reflections. The games which have the best SSR is batman arkham knight, alien isolation and RDR 2, GTA 5 is pretty good too but still not a patch on RT reflections and has more issues than even the most basic RT reflections implementations.

 

[Nexus18]

Water in CP 2077 looks so ... PS4 ish.
I'll take the water from Horizon Forbidden West all day long and i can't wait for that game to come to PC. The water in ARK is great too.

Not sure how you can say the water in ark is good, it is bloody awful.... maybe if standing still and just looking at it from the ground then yeah maybe.... although even then, I'm not sure about that....

Spoiler

HZD water is pretty looking overall, reminds me of assassins creed odyssey but if talking about reflections only, it's still not a patch on games with RT reflections, just look at how reflections disappear especially on the sides of the screen. This is what I and rroff were saying a while back, once you experience RT reflections, the issues with SSR become even more noticeable/jarring.

I agree, I'm not looking for photo realism. I just enjoy the more cohesive scene, greater depth provided by RT, where as before I'd describe titles as having a cardboard cutout appearance. Indeed I think we will be running into problems with photo realism and the effect it may have on people left thinking they are shooting a real gun at a real person.

I'm sure it was Shadow of War that was getting great praise for it's graphics within the gaming forum here, which I got called out for as I described it as flat with cardboard cutouts. Playing a game such as CP2077 or DL2 I find I have a much better sense of depth.

Exactly.

Deathloop shows this depth to the game world and objects in said world of very well too.

 

[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.

 

[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)

 

[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....

 

[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?