What do gamers actually think about Ray-Tracing?

[sx_turbo]

. YOu literally cannot play Metro Enhanced if you don't have an RT card.

That's because that's how they have programmed it, if the GPU can't interpret the ray trace code it cannot render it to the screen. The developer has purposely not included a function to turn RT off I suppose the developer decided that if you don't have a RT biased card then you might aswell just buy the standard game as they weren't going to re-develop the entire game.

This does not necessarily mean the game is not rasterized first, with the ray tracing then working over that around the objects.

 

[RGAF]

Let's give this a theoretical scenario. Keep everything in a game except for the RT lighting and replace with rasterised lighting and what do you have? A game without RT lighting. Now let's take everything out of a game except for the RT lighting and what do we have? Nothing. You can't RT light a game with nothing there.

 

[Calin Banc]

Also, the point has never been to say it's not impossible to get good visuals without ray tracing, as shown, this is entirely possible, however:

- the devs need to spend a considerable amount of time doing this in order to achieve good results (which nowadays they don't have the luxury of), this is why devs are moving away from raster first and foremost
- they might make their games more limited in terms of being less open, less exporable, less dynamic in terms of destruction because of static lights, shadows and so on

Raster works well for linear/tunnel games although even then, it is arguable as to how good these are at times. The biggest problem is with open world games where it's impossible to get everything look correct. Even RDR 2 (incredible visuals) has many shortcomings/issues because of raster.

BTW, from that list, batman arkham knight is one that looks great but it's lighting etc. is actually pretty awful, the city/buildings etc. do not look grounded/apart of the ground, it's like a cardbox popup childrens book when you look at the skyline.

Ghost of tshumia could badly do with RT shadows at the very least, in wooded areas, all of the shadows are hard, they're not soft or diffused which makes it actually quite hard to see/play without being distracted by this.

Raster is akin to prebacked physics such as Battlefield. RT/PT is the Red Faction. The later will always be better.

Let's give this a theoretical scenario. Keep everything in a game except for the RT lighting and replace with rasterised lighting and what do you have? A game without RT lighting. Now let's take everything out of a game except for the RT lighting and what do we have? Nothing. You can't RT light a game with nothing there.

Everything works together, is just a matter of how much you can stomach something. If lighting and shadows wouldn't matter that much, then cinema, photography and painting would be a lot duller. A game where each light cast a shadow (not just a handful), with full destructible light sources (well, leaving aside the Sun, Moon, etc.), would be able to create a more palpable and realistic world.

Crysis 3 is decent, even with the update RT features, but stuff like CB77 with PT shows a glimpse of what's possible.

LE: Raster, with light "spilling" allover

 

[humbug]

Lighting is an art form, there are talented people who do that, its as much for fidelity as an art form as visual accuracy, often the former at the expense of the later.

I wouldn't like to see those skills lost.

 

[D3K]

Someone on their alt account is confused over the roadmap we’re on towards full path tracing and decided to skip the entire discussion in this thread that’s covered ad nauseum.

Yes hybrid rendering is a necessity right now, it’s a means to an end.

When gpus are powerful and common enough, it will be full ray tracing and no raster.

Thread is going round in circles

 

[RGAF]

I'm not saying ray tracing or path tracing don't have their place. Of course they do. But all they affect is the lighting and how it reacts with the models or materials or textures. You cannot replace the models or textures or materials with light. It just does not work like that. You cannot have full ray tracing or path tracing, it is actually an impossibility no matter how much some might like to think otherwise. How are you going to get light to react with things that are not there unless they are geometry or models or polygons or materials or textures.

I guarantee if you went into a game studio and said you would make a game with just RT/PT with no models/materials/textures you would get laughed out of said studio. Even ray tracing programs have to put raster models/materials/textures on screen first to be ray traced.

We've had over 50 years of games being made. There's more sprites, colours, polygons, better materials/textures, better lighting but there has never, ever been a fully built from the ground up made with ray tracing game. You still need all the aforementioned in some shape or form to be ray traced.

 

[Rroff]

If you go down that path you come to voxel engines - ultimately it is all just 2D coloured pixels.

 

[RGAF]

If you go down that path you come to voxel engines - ultimately it is all just 2D coloured pixels.

Which interestingly is the closest you could probably get to a ray traced game. Voxel engines work via dots or pixels so each individual pixel could be coloured or moulded or manipulated into places to make a scene. Those pixels will still be raster though.

 

[Calin Banc]

Lighting is an art form, there are talented people who do that, its as much for fidelity as an art form as visual accuracy, often the former at the expense of the later.

I wouldn't like to see those skills lost.

You don't lose any talent, just enhance the final result.

A DP in cinema or a photographer work with perfect path tracing, too. Those jobs have no meaning? Can you light up a scene or use available light like they do? No, you still need them.

It's a false path you're taking in believing that you don't need talented people for design with RT/PT.

 

[Nexus18]

Lighting is an art form, there are talented people who do that, its as much for fidelity as an art form as visual accuracy, often the former at the expense of the later.

I wouldn't like to see those skills lost.

They won't be as confirmed by lighting artists themselves on ray tracing and how it helps in their jobs, ray tracing is just another tool in their arsenal.

Same as with software developers, the AI we have isn't replacing them, it's simply aiding them in their work tasks and changing their workflows.

 

[Pottsey]

I'm not saying ray tracing or path tracing don't have their place. Of course they do. But all they affect is the lighting and how it reacts with the models or materials or textures. You cannot replace the models or textures or materials with light. It just does not work like that. You cannot have full ray tracing or path tracing, it is actually an impossibility no matter how much some might like to think otherwise. How are you going to get light to react with things that are not there unless they are geometry or models or polygons or materials or textures.

I guarantee if you went into a game studio and said you would make a game with just RT/PT with no models/materials/textures you would get laughed out of said studio. Even ray tracing programs have to put raster models/materials/textures on screen first to be ray traced.

We've had over 50 years of games being made. There's more sprites, colours, polygons, better materials/textures, better lighting but there has never, ever been a fully built from the ground up made with ray tracing game. You still need all the aforementioned in some shape or form to be ray traced.

Not had my morning caffeine so I might be partly wrong here. But from what I recall when I was playing around with full ray tracing back in the 1993 without a GPU without any raster models. I could still do full ray tracing without rasterization 3D objects. The full Ray Tracing handled the materials, textures and models. Not 3D rasterization models from a GPU. Yes you would get laughed at for saying make a game with no models/materials/textures. What I am trying to say is there are methods other then rasterization.

Ray Tracing is like Hardware T&L, Shaders and all the other features. RT will become a standard feature and a fixed element in almost everything with no way to switch it off. Its the way forward.

 

[D3K]

I guarantee if you went into a game studio and said you would make a game with just RT/PT with no models/materials/textures you would get laughed out of said studio. Even ray tracing programs have to put raster models/materials/textures on screen first to be ray traced.

You're conflating material definitions with rasterisation. Of course you need material definitions to tell the light how to react after contact. The materials used in raster games are not comprehensive enough for ray tracing and thats why you cant just throw ray tracing into any game and expect reasonable results.

Devs use raster because designing in a purely ray traced environment has been a terrible UX. I've worked with 3DS Max users in the days before RTX and designing in a purely RT env wasnt even a thought let alone a possibility. You pressed render and then you get seconds-per-frame as opposed to frames-per-second.

That's something else that will change. Why work with your scenes in raster when it's not representative of the final form. Devs will also start working exclusively in RT (if some havent already)

 

[Tinek]

When I look at people working on visual effects for Hollywood and TV series recently (interviews, tutorials on YouTube etc ), they seem to be more and more leaning towards UE5 and simplified RT with Lumen. Because, in the end, time and cost matter more than a bit better rendering (full PT) as in most cases best RT/PT in film is still far from perfect - technology isn't there yet. If Hollywood moves away from traditional methods, gaming industry will definitely not go there either, for same reasons. As I see it, industry from both sides will settle most likely on something like software Lumen from UE5. It works well, it looks good enough. PT is not worth pursuing it seems (cost/effect) and even hardware RT is mostly not worth it currently. Which is also one of the reasons Epic is improving UE5 constantly with things that are used in film making more than gaming - it's a bigger industry with much more money, after all.

 

[D3K]

When I look at people working on visual effects for Hollywood and TV series recently (interviews, tutorials on YouTube etc ), they seem to be more and more leaning towards UE5 and simplified RT with Lumen. Because, in the end, time and cost matter more than a bit better rendering (full PT) as in most cases best RT/PT in film is still far from perfect - technology isn't there yet. If Hollywood moves away from traditional methods, gaming industry will definitely not go there either, for same reasons. As I see it, industry from both sides will settle most likely on something like software Lumen from UE5. It works well, it looks good enough. PT is not worth pursuing it seems (cost/effect) and even hardware RT is mostly not worth it currently. Which is also one of the reasons Epic is improving UE5 constantly with things that are used in film making more than gaming - it's a bigger industry with much more money, after all.

Id have to see evidence of movie houses plumping for lumen over higher quality Ray tracing models, given that the movie industry is very used to rendering vfx for weeks on end to get the best quality they can.

Also games industry is 4 or 5x larger than movie industry, depending on your sources.

 

[Tinek]

Id have to see evidence of movie houses plumping for lumen over higher quality Ray tracing models, given that the movie industry is very used to rendering vfx for weeks on end to get the best quality they can.

Also games industry is 4 or 5x larger than movie industry, depending on your sources.

You can search on YouTube, there are a few tutorials made in UE5 by film industry veterans by now. They like to talk about why it's a big thing - if you look closely at VFX in Hollywood films (there are channels doing that) you can see a lot of errors - things clipping, wrong light, and other issues. They would've fixed it but it took too long to render so they left it as is. With UE rendering that's not a problem to fix at all. As one example. Also, used to and cost cutting are 2 different things - corporations will cut cost however they can. Each day working on the film is very expensive. There are a few Netflix series for example where most if not all vfx has already been done in UE5 and it was said to be a gigantic cost saving for them, with very good end result.

 

[D3K]

You can search on YouTube, there are a few tutorials made in UE5 by film industry veterans by now. They like to talk about why it's a big thing - if you look closely at VFX in Hollywood films (there are channels doing that) you can see a lot of errors - things clipping, wrong light, and other issues. They would've fixed it but it took too long to render so they left it as is. With UE rendering that's not a problem to fix at all. As one example. Also, used to and cost cutting are 2 different things - corporations will cut cost however they can. Each day working on the film is very expensive. There are a few Netflix series for example where most if not all vfx has already been done in UE5 and it was said to be a gigantic cost saving for them, with very good end result.

I think the bigger pull with ue5 is its end end support for vfx production. Being able to shoot a whole scene with the vfx in the shot at the same time is a game changer for studios.
I still expect some post production renderings from larger studios, but smaller studios can probably get away with 1 n done

 

[Tinek]

I think the bigger pull with ue5 is its end end support for vfx production. Being able to shoot a whole scene with the vfx in the shot at the same time is a game changer for studios.
I still expect some post production renderings from larger studios, but smaller studios can probably get away with 1 n done

Yes, that's a big advantage as well. And you can instantly see almost end result. Editing is very easy as well. And, as I mentioned multiple times in the past, most viewers will see no difference between that and full PT. They just won't. As is now, people constantly fall for the lie of "we didn't use any CGI in our film" whilst they film is loaded with it, whereas in other films people complain about bad CGI in moments that had 0 on the screen etc. It's the same in games - most people really see no difference between proper or fake lighting, and even basic things like AA on vs off in 1080p (I've seen it myself, very face-palming moments to me).

That said, one of the senior Dune 2 vfx creators shown how easily it is too make very similar shots in UE5 - it took them weeks in Dune to make and render the flying over city, whereas very similar shot done in ue5 took about 2h from 0. End result was close enough to fool most average film watchers and he wasn't even really trying hard.

To be very clear, I'm not saying PT doesn't give better results in games here, instead I'm saying I highly doubt that's the direction industry will move to where Lumen and the likes is really good enough to convince most gamers for a very long time to come. And it will only get better in time.

 

[Calin Banc]

When I look at people working on visual effects for Hollywood and TV series recently (interviews, tutorials on YouTube etc ), they seem to be more and more leaning towards UE5 and simplified RT with Lumen. Because, in the end, time and cost matter more than a bit better rendering (full PT) as in most cases best RT/PT in film is still far from perfect - technology isn't there yet. If Hollywood moves away from traditional methods, gaming industry will definitely not go there either, for same reasons. As I see it, industry from both sides will settle most likely on something like software Lumen from UE5. It works well, it looks good enough. PT is not worth pursuing it seems (cost/effect) and even hardware RT is mostly not worth it currently. Which is also one of the reasons Epic is improving UE5 constantly with things that are used in film making more than gaming - it's a bigger industry with much more money, after all.

Software Lumen has problems with reflections and while that can be deem acceptable in games, it isn't something you'll get over in a movie.

Gaming is driven basically by consoles - in general. That will most likely go with software Lumen since AMD isn't willing to pick up the pace. Even so, raster is out the window... Moreover, since some demos I've seen (including Matrix city demo), are just a click away in settings between software and hardware Lumen, my guess is that PCs will have the options of at least more advanced/higher quality RT effects if not PT.

Hopefully next gen will bring the entry price a bit lower. 4080 and 4090 can do PT in CB77 and simpler games should do it even better.

For movies... can't UE5 do multi GPU? A few 4090 should handle things well and be relative (very) cheap.

 

[Tinek]

Soft Lumen is getting constant improvements. There are few channels on YouTube there render scenes (not in games, CGI videos instead) using UE5 with software Lumen, (at times hardware Lumen too) and then full PT. Then they show direct comparison and time used to render each. Comments underneath are usually confusing Lumen with PT, unless there's some glaring error (less and less common with new versions of UE5). Often people seem to prefer it, thinking it's more realistic - even though it physically can't be. It just shows how much personal perception matter more than anything else in such cases.

 

[novalis]

Still on a GTX here. Hoping to get an RTX and Ray Tracing is one of the features I'm excited about especially for Cyberpunk and Control