The Raytracing thread

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 29 Aug 2018 at 13:36

I thought maybe it would be useful to just have a thread on this,just talking about the tech in RTX,and similar stuff from other companies to do ray tracing,and games which are using it. So just about the tech itself and any implementations.

At least if this thread survives long enough maybe we can look back on the progress over time??

If there is one already(I didn't see one),then the mods please delete.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 29 Aug 2018 at 13:41

Just to start off:

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
https://twitter.com/aschilling/status/1034489154774679552

Cyberpunk 2077 has an RTX option.

Gregster · 29 Aug 2018 at 14:00

I am and have always been a big proponent of Raytacing and whilst I would love to see a decent thread discussing it, 3 posts in and it already descended into a joke thread

JediFragger · 29 Aug 2018 at 14:03

Found this interesting;

http://on-demand.gputechconf.com/si...man-morgan-mcguire-real-time-ray-tracing.html

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 29 Aug 2018 at 14:06

Gregster said:
I am and have always been a big proponent of Raytacing and whilst I would love to see a decent thread discussing it, 3 posts in and it already descended into a joke thread

Yeah,can we keep to the tech guys!! Want to just see how this progresses.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 29 Aug 2018 at 14:10

JediFragger said:
Found this interesting;

http://on-demand.gputechconf.com/si...man-morgan-mcguire-real-time-ray-tracing.html

A good explanation of hybrid rendering. Also from the end of that talk,some good books on RT in general:

https://www.pbrt.org/
http://dept.cs.williams.edu/~morgan/cgpp/about.xml

The first book won an Academy Award.

melmac · 29 Aug 2018 at 14:34

As far as I can tell some things are easier to do in Ray Tracing than others. Global Illumination apparently is easy to do and it's simpler to compute too when used alone. So maybe that's why Enlist was running at 4K because they were only using Global Illumination and why the other games are only using 1080p as they are rendering more of the scene using Ray Tracing?

And I agree with Cat, this thread should only be used to discuss the tech. There are enough threads to complain about the price, frame rate, performance etc.

melmac · 29 Aug 2018 at 14:44

Legend said:
Come on, talk sense... if it was REALLY that bad then Nvidia wouldn't be releasing these cards. The 2070 and 2080 would not even be given the RTX branding if there were going to be that hopeless. Even if current in-game FPS examples are accurate (e.g Tomb Raider), it will only be due to immature drivers and no developer actually having much time with the tech yet.

Well, 4A Gaming who are developing Metro Exodus have been working on Ray Tracing since last January. Metro Exodus was used in the RTX demo by Nvidia in March. They hope to have Metro Exodus running at 60FPS at 1080p by the launch of the game and that's in February 2019.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 29 Aug 2018 at 14:44

I called it the "ray tracing" thread and said "RTX,and similar stuff" and that was implied to cover the gamut of general ray tracing stuff.

Edit!!

Edited the OP to make it more clearer(I hope).

Legend · 29 Aug 2018 at 14:53

Marine-RX179 said:
Talking sense would be looking at what's currently presented to us rather than wishful thinking without anything to back it up relying on nothing but the faith in the company.

However for everyone's sake I think we all want to be proven wrong by Nvidia...but it is difficult considering they tried SO HARD to conceit poor frame rate during the demonstration ingame use of the Ray-tracing by moving the camera at snail speed.

It doesn't change the fact that it would be the biggest fail in PC hardware history if the 2080 doesn't even achieve 30 FPS with ray tracing. Nvidia's stock would plummet and we'd practically have riots in the street, and more vitriol online than internet servers will be able to handle! It would make the 970 3.5GB fiasco look like a storm in a teacup, and there'd be lawsuits aplenty. I foresee these cards performing FAR better than whatever rumours/leaks may suggest currently. It's not so much wishful thinking to assume that, it's just expecting Nvidia to not choose to utterly screw themselves... and for what? A bit of hype and pre-orders, which would swiftly be cancelled/returned if the cards' performance are in the toilet? That's not to say ray tracing won't have teathing trouble at first as devs come to terms with it all... it will undoubtedly improve over time.

melmac said:
Well, 4A Gaming who are developing Metro Exodus have been working on Ray Tracing since last January. Metro Exodus was used in the RTX demo by Nvidia in March. They hope to have Metro Exodus running at 60FPS at 1080p by the launch of the game and that's in February 2019.

Well 60 FPS is a darn sight better than 30 FPS lol! And they haven't said that's only on a 2080Ti. They will be aiming for that on a 2070 also, even if it is with some details turned down.

Stanners · 29 Aug 2018 at 15:02

If the same people keep coming in to threads ranting the same old they will be removed, simple. Plenty of other threads for the childish comments.

melmac · 29 Aug 2018 at 15:03

Marine-RX179 said:
Sure, but we probably would need to renaming the thread or make a new thread, considering Nvidia's Ray-tracing is a proprietary Ray-tracing (G-ray-tracing?) rather than a standardised or open standard Ray-tracing in the same way as PhysX not equal to game physics?

But I still don't see how discussion about gaming Ray-tracing can be meaningful whilst avoiding discussion of the impact on the actual application in games? (i.e. performance hit and frame rate)

Ray Tracing isn't proprietary. It's going to be using Dx12 or Vulkan. Nvidia have just made hardware that's capable of Ray Tracing.

WantoN · 29 Aug 2018 at 15:11

I watched a YT video demonstrating that RT tech is quite old, and a $150 tablet was able to produce 6 Gigarays/s years ago. Nvidia’s heavy push for this incredible new product feels pretty empty imo, and the DLSS actually seems much more appealing.

Given that they’ve pushed a deal on third party customers to take old 10 series stock if they want first dibs on 20 series stock, massive price increases, plus the dilineation of GTX vs RTX, it just feels like they’re desperately trying to shift old stock after the mining boom. And the product itself really doesn’t excite me that much, it’s just ‘meh’ performance increase with some interesting new hardware.

I’m sure I’m not the only one that’s not at all impressed with the new series and I’m not buying a new card or monitor until price reflects the performance.

I’ve never been a fanboy of either side, I just chose the best performer for my budget. But all of NVs recent actions just make me want to buy from them less and less, which is a shame; I think they’ll end up really damaging the PC market. But what do they care, graphics cards aren’t really what they want to make anymore.

Silent_Scone · 29 Aug 2018 at 15:12

melmac said:
Ray Tracing isn't proprietary. It's going to be using Dx12 or Vulkan. Nvidia have just made hardware that's capable of Ray Tracing.

I'm not 100% on this, but I'd imagine regardless of the API used that RTX features will still be part of an SDK much like GameWorks.

melmac · 29 Aug 2018 at 15:14

Legend said:
Well 60 FPS is a darn sight better than 30 FPS lol! And they haven't said that's only on a 2080Ti. They will be aiming for that on a 2070 also, even if it is with some details turned down.

He would have been talking about the 2080Ti. The question was put to them in the aftermath of all the stories about Ray Tracing not been able to reach 60FPS at 1080p on a 2080Ti. So that would have been on his mind. Second, If he thought they would achieve a better frame rate at a higher resolution, he surely would have mentioned that. Developers always give best case scenarios. And he also talked about profiles for the other cards, so that would mean, like you say, you would be turning down detail levels to get 60fps on the 2070.

Legend · 29 Aug 2018 at 15:20

melmac said:
He would have been talking about the 2080Ti. The question was put to them in the aftermath of all the stories about Ray Tracing not been able to reach 60FPS at 1080p on a 2080Ti. So that would have been on his mind. Second, If he thought they would achieve a better frame rate at a higher resolution, he surely would have mentioned that. Developers always give best case scenarios. And he also talked about profiles for the other cards, so that would mean, like you say, you would be turning down detail levels to get 60fps on the 2070.

They will be targeting higher. Again, as mentioned, if ray tracing is only playable on a 2080Ti, there will be blood on the streets. There's plenty of malice out there right now with the pricing, but if these cards don't even perform to the point where games are playable... Nvidia just won't survive that, it would be suicide. Performance simply won't be THAT bad.

Let's not forget, there are plenty of people out there with 1440p and ultrawide monitors... and this is the audience more likely to be stumping up for these GPUs anyway... and even many of those won't be able to afford the 2080Ti. So 1080p isn't even on their radar. These cards HAVE to perform better than is being suggested, they just have to, or RTX is going to be dead and buried before it's even had a chance to get off the ground... and it will take Nvidia with it.

melmac · 29 Aug 2018 at 15:21

Silent_Scone said:
I'm not 100% on this, but I'd imagine regardless of the API used that RTX features will still be part of an SDK much like GameWorks.

This is my explanation in very simplified English lol. From What I understand, in Dx12 and Vulkan, that when Ray Tracing is turned on, it calls in the manufacturers specific code/API. Example. For AMD and Vulkan, Ray Tracing turned on, call in Radeon Rays 2. Run scene. It's up to the Radeon Rays 2. instruction set to utilise the hardware as best it can. IF a Nvida card is detected it runs Gameworks.

melmac · 29 Aug 2018 at 15:24

Legend said:
They will be targeting higher. Again, as mentioned, if ray tracing is only playable on a 2080Ti, there will be blood on the streets. There's plenty of malice out there right now with the pricing, but if these cards don't even perform to the point where games are playable... Nvidia just won't survive that, it would be suicide. Performance simply won't be THAT bad.

I already told what they are targeting, that's straight from one of the more experienced developers. 60fps at 1080p. And since non RTX cards can only run the scenes in single digits at 1080p, that's a massive jump in performance.

Legend · 29 Aug 2018 at 15:26

melmac said:
I already told what they are targeting, that's straight from one of the more experienced developers. 60fps at 1080p. And since non RTX cards can only run the scenes in single digits at 1080p, that's a massive jump in performance.

Then they are talking this down. These cards have to do better. If not, short Nvidia stock NOW... they will be going down hard.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 29 Aug 2018 at 15:27

melmac said:
This is my explanation in very simplified English lol. From What I understand, in Dx12 and Vulkan, that when Ray Tracing is turned on, it calls in the manufacturers specific code/API. Example. For AMD and Vulkan, Ray Tracing turned on, call in Radeon Rays 2. Run scene. It's up to the Radeon Rays 2. instruction set to utilise the hardware as best it can. IF a Nvida card is detected it runs Gameworks.

Ah,OK so RTX is just a kind of a middleman between the Nvidia specific units and the MS raytracing API??