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What do gamers actually think about Ray-Tracing?

Tinek said:
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.
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Oh, definitely some scenes will be a close match, while others seen as better with "simpler" Lumen due to artistic/esthetic view -> maybe PT will make it too dark for the light available, for instance, but also being used to a little bit of fakery here and there, seeing something not "life like" doesn't break the magic. I'm not into movie vfx, so if you have a link with such comparisons it will be appreciated.

The original demo of UE5 makes an incredible proposition with cinematic quality assets, pixel accurate shadows, 8k textures due to virtual texture, etc.


4 years and some versions later... all that is kinda missing in action.

Anyway, the below example puts into light (pun intended), the visual differences and the ability of path tracing to render the game / virtual world to a higher fidelity, with differences being obvious and direct. Digital Foundry also offers an answer to why that is.


As for the software, it will evolve. DLSS and RR are the proof of that, but so does the hardware. I think next gens consoles (PS6 and whatever the xbox will be called), will be RT only (Lumen style), perhaps with PT for certain games, further into their life cycles as devs get use to it.

LE: something interesting regarding the talk (working in path tracing only)

 
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Calin Banc said:
Anyway, the below example puts into light (pun intended), the visual differences and the ability of path tracing to render the game / virtual world to a higher fidelity, with differences being obvious and direct. Digital Foundry also offers an answer to why that is.

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The light source in the Path Tracing scene is a different colour to the rest, red instead of white for example.
 
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humbug said:
The light source in the Path Tracing scene is a different colour to the rest, red instead of white for example.
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As someone said in the comments

"In path tracing mode, an additional light is added inside the cubes to create a realistic illumination of the cubes, thus enhancing the light on the cubes. The RTXDI option can be activated separately with Lumen, and it also activates the same light sources :"

There's also light that appears to come from outside of the structure which probably has its influence, too.

In the scene below you see the blueish color of the cubes in normal Lumen, just acts differently with path tracing.


With that said, I'll take lumen over regular raster.
 
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humbug said:
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.
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The first game I played that really impressed me and basically set the standard was Splinter Cell on the Xbox. Playing it on a CRT was amazing.
 
Calin Banc said:
As someone said in the comments

"In path tracing mode, an additional light is added inside the cubes to create a realistic illumination of the cubes, thus enhancing the light on the cubes. The RTXDI option can be activated separately with Lumen, and it also activates the same light sources :"

There's also light that appears to come from outside of the structure which probably has its influence, too.

In the scene below you see the blueish color of the cubes in normal Lumen, just acts differently with path tracing.


With that said, I'll take lumen over regular raster.
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This a hundred times! Even lumen is a million times better than the best raster implementations, you don't realise just how bad raster is until you see ray tracing and become accustomed to proper lit areas, reflections which are stable and don't disappear etc.
 
humbug said:
Lumen is screen space reflections / GI, its been in games for a decade.
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It's not just "screen space reflections"....


Lumen uses multiple ray-tracing methods to solve Global Illumination and Reflections. Screen Traces are done first, followed by a more reliable method.


Lumen uses Software Ray Tracing through Signed Distance Fields by default, but can achieve higher quality on supporting video cards when Hardware Ray Tracing is enabled.
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Lumen features trace rays against the screen first (called Screen Tracing or Screen Space Tracing), before using a more reliable method if no hit is found, or the ray passes behind a surface. Screen tracing supports any geometry type and is useful for covering up mismatches between the Lumen Scene and triangle scene.
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humbug said:
Watch the video i posted.

Screen space GI / Reflections = software RT
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Ok and what is your point then? :confused: Bearing in mind, your comment was in reference to this:

Nexus18 said:
This a hundred times! Even lumen is a million times better than the best raster implementations, you don't realise just how bad raster is until you see ray tracing and become accustomed to proper lit areas, reflections which are stable and don't disappear etc.
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We all know lumen is ray tracing based with it being software and the option to use hardware ray tracing....
 
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Nexus18 said:
Ok and what is your point then? :confused: Bearing in mind, your comment was in reference to this:



We all know lumen is ray tracing based with it being software based and the option to use hardware ray tracing....
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The point is its a technique that been used is rasterization for a decade, its not what Nvidia would call "RTX" its very limited in that it takes lighting data from only what's in the screen space. Its Ray Tracing, it always has been but its culling anything outside of the screen space for performance reasons.
That's the only difference between Lumen or screen space GI, what Nvidia calls RTX doesn't cull the ray bounces to inside the screen space.

RTX also is still primarily rasterization.
 
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humbug said:
The point is its a technique that been used is rasterization for a decade, its not what Nvidia would call "RTX" its very limited in that it takes lighting data from only what's in the screen space. Its Ray Tracing, it always has been but its culling anything outside of the screen space for performance reasons.
That's the only difference between Lumen or screen space GI, what Nvidia calls RTX doesn't cull the ray bounces to inside the screen space.

RTX also is still primarily rasterization.
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RTX is nothing to do with "ray tracing" in the grand scheme of things here...... It's nvidias umbrella PR name for nvidia specific features, which includes HDR, dlss, frame gen, reflex etc. (i.e. things which aren't even RT related)
 
Nexus18 said:
RTX is nothing to do with "ray tracing" in the grand scheme of things here...... It's nvidias umbrella PR name for nvidia specific features, which includes HDR, dlss, frame gen, reflex etc. (i.e. things which aren't even RT related)
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Yes its a brand umbrella, Like DLSS which falls under that umbrella, its not "nothing to do with ray tracing" it is "Ray Tracing X" but incorporates Nvidia's other branded feature sets for marketing purposes.
 
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What has a GTX got to do with anything though? It doesn't even support elements of the RTX suite of features, and stuff like DLSS didn't become a thing until 20 series which is when Nvidia came up with the naming convention for the umbrella of features.
 
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