What do gamers actually think about Ray-Tracing?

[sparkymark75]

Well in the poll on these very forums, RT came last in the list of requirements that were important when purchasing a new GPU.

 

[Joxeon]

A gimmick even though it is in countless titles (and games are now providing no fallback to raster either and this will continue but yet still a "gimmick"......) and developers have all stated the benefits for them.....

The benefits I see are for GPU manufacturers because if there is no raster fall back then that obsoletes the majority of the GPUs in service today and forces people to pay the already overpriced premiums for new hardware that they wouldn’t have originally required to continue playing new games.

 

[Nexus18]

Well in the poll on these very forums, RT came last in the list of requirements that were important when purchasing a new GPU.

A poll where people chose vram, raster, power efficiency as their main options 2 years ago yet most of them people still went with nvidia A lot has changed now and I'm sure come the recreation of the poll/thread for when the next gpus are out will have results looking quite different as since bumping the thread, certain things have gone down a bit and others gone up i.e. feature set, vram and rt went up and raster and power efficiency went down.

But alas as stated so many times, it doesn't matter what the gamers want, there is no going back now and devs are embracing the RT workflow more and more as evidenced.

The benefits I see are for GPU manufacturers because if there is no raster fall back then that obsoletes the majority of the GPUs in service today and forces people to pay the already overpriced premiums for new hardware that they wouldn’t have originally required to continue playing new games.

Are you just ignoring developers statements then? Thney have clearly stated and shown their workflow time comparisons to show why RT is better for them and also will benefit gamers in the end too....

A good video to watch to understand RT more:

Majorty of gamers/gpus now support RT too btw, it's time to move on and leave dated tech in the background, well not like people will have the choice anyway, even consoles are going down this path, I suppose people can just play old games to send a message..... Also, GPUs regardless of RT will also be overpriced, wouldn't make a difference if there was no RT.

 

[JediFragger]

Majorty of gamers/gpus now support RT too btw

Objection, presumption.

Maybe we can have an updated poll to see how much 'gamers' care about it today?

edit - For instance I'm looking forward to playing Space Marine 2 later today, that looks fantastic and not an RT ray in sight! Give me a great game over RT gubbins any day...

 

[Nexus18]

Objection, presumption.

Maybe we can have an updated poll to see how much 'gamers' care about it today?

edit - For instance I'm looking forward to playing Space Marine 2 later today, that looks fantastic and not an RT ray in sight! Give me a great game over RT gubbins any day...

I mean in terms of hardware support.

 

[Sc00p007]

Haha is it so hard to accept someone else's opinion? I'm a tech head, I have an eye for gfx, I like ray tracing. My nephew on the other hand doesn't even notice the difference most the time unless I show him what to look for.
DLSS quality vs native etc is different for different games. Sometimes it can look better others not. Much more apparent on a very large 4k screen.
Imo, ray tracing is nice and will make making games easier. However, it mostly isn't a night and day difference but again depending on game and scene. In a lot of games, I totally get why someone would prefer to turn off ray tracing for a bump in fps.

 

[Nexus18]

edit - For instance I'm looking forward to playing Space Marine 2 later today, that looks fantastic and not an RT ray in sight! Give me a great game over RT gubbins any day...

On topic of this, been playing that and the visuals are incredibly dated looking, RT would have helped a lot but it is more the textures, just look blurry/mushy especially in the jungle areas and this is at 4k native taa and dlss too so nothing to do with upscaling. The art style, level design are very good though and saves the game visuals somewhat.... Darktide is much better looking especially on textures front but then it had RT too so not really a fair comparison.

Also, no HDR support is a killer for a game like this but thankfully RTX HDR sorts that out. I believe there are other ways to get HDR which helps i.e. via reshade.

Game itself is pretty meh too (well more so over rated) imo, it's basically just gears of war reskinned.

Haha is it so hard to accept someone else's opinion? I'm a tech head, I have an eye for gfx, I like ray tracing. My nephew on the other hand doesn't even notice the difference most the time unless I show him what to look for.
DLSS quality vs native etc is different for different games. Sometimes it can look better others not. Much more apparent on a very large 4k screen.
Imo, ray tracing is nice and will make making games easier. However, it mostly isn't a night and day difference but again depending on game and scene. In a lot of games, I totally get why someone would prefer to turn off ray tracing for a bump in fps.

Opinion is one thing and that's fine i.e. "I don't really care for RT", grand but then when people go on to justify their reasoning, that's when their justifications are full of more plot holes than any Hollywood blockbuster film "FPS is so important, fps over visuals any day of the week etc." yet the same people go onto say they refuse to use DLSS because they can see a big loss in IQ (even though they just said they can't see a difference with RT despite every single tech press showing that dlss has little to no impact to iq where as rt has a bigger impact to iq... and the cherry on the top of the cake is they then go onto to say they use taa which has even more iq issues than dlss or worse they turn off taa and can't see the jaggies, aliasing and temporal stability issues....... Then you have sheer bs one liners with no evidence which goes against several reputable tech press and other users posting evidence/comparisons

 

[Rogueywon]

I played through Space Marine 2 over the weekend and it reinforced for me how much of an advance RT is on raster. While there are some good bits of visual design in the game, the lighting looks flat, bland and artificial throughout.

 

[Nexus18]

I played through Space Marine 2 over the weekend and it reinforced for me how much of an advance RT is on raster. While there are some good bits of visual design in the game, the lighting looks flat, bland and artificial throughout.

Yup it was very underwhelming even coming from something like TLOU (no RT either). The reflections were non existent in SM 2 too I think SM 2 has been in development for quite a while now though so not surprising it didn't feature any RT in the end, that and also the performance is already so so without anymore taxing graphical effects being shoehorned in.

 

[G J]

Well in the poll on these very forums, RT came last in the list of requirements that were important when purchasing a new GPU.

Bottom of the list of requirements though a lot of people cant keep RT out of their mouths of which many are some AMD card owners in denial over multiple threads trying to convince people they dont care for it.

The benefits I see are for GPU manufacturers because if there is no raster fall back then that obsoletes the majority of the GPUs in service today and forces people to pay the already overpriced premiums for new hardware that they wouldn’t have originally required to continue playing new games.

The non pro PS5/XBOX/Switch/Switch2 will still need to be developed for so I think most cards will be fine though a very similar and valid point was brought up many times during the VRAM debate and promptly discarded by certain people being disingenuous/trolling now are all for playing your way and adjusting settings regarding RT which again was another point regrading VRAM that was pushed aside.

 

[Nexus18]

Bottom of the list of requirements though a lot of people cant keep RT out of their mouths of which many are some AMD card owners in denial over multiple threads trying to convince people they dont care for it.

The non pro PS5/XBOX/Switch/Switch2 will still need to be developed for so I think most cards will be fine though a very similar and valid point was brought up many times during the VRAM debate and promptly discarded by certain people being disingenuous/trolling now are all for playing your way and adjusting settings regarding RT which again was another point regrading VRAM that was pushed aside.

Pretty much. I don't doubt there are nvidia owners with the same thoughts too though. It's just such a funny take from many people especially from pc gamers on an enthusiast forum like this where people are basically saying they don't want better visuals, more dynamic worlds (RT makes this easier to achieve because lighting etc. is not baked in....) and so on...

My first post in this thread is still how I view things:

Personally my take is, there is nothing wrong with the RT tech itself but as they somewhat touched upon the issue is the price point to get a decent experience, you basically need a 7900xt or 3080+ to really enjoy it and appreciate it and going forward when as shown, games start to use heavier RT, you ideally need a 4070ti super/4080+ so sadly, lots just won't use it, which is a valid view point of course, for me, as long as I can maintain ideally 70/80 fps, I'm good, although ideally do want to get 100+ fps, which is somewhat possible tbf with upscaling and frame gen, even on the 3+ year old 3080 with the exception of AW 2 and cp 2077 PT.

Not to be that guy..... but the biggest issue is there is a massive lack of knowledge and awareness on what RT actually is and what it sets out to achieve as well as who really benefits from it as well as just being outright oblivious to the advantages it offers over dated methods. The other problem is people who just look at something like BF 5, tomb raider and go "rt sucks!!!" and ignore every other game.

RT is primarily a way to benefit developers first and foremost, games are incredibly hard to make and in a world where cost cutting is more important than ever (particularly in the development/tech world), this is to aid them in being able to deliver quicker, remember that scene showing 4a enhanced workflow, 1 scene/frame for lighting, shadows etc. where it took them 30-50 minutes to get somewhat ok looking compared to the instantaneous setup of RT? That's an incredible amount of time and money saved there but obviously to get the most from this, developers will have to stop supporting raster methods too otherwise it is a duplicate effort in some ways (but alas with any new tech, there is also a learning curve). This will naturally happen over time where RT will be always on to some form and you won't even have a choice to disable it entirely as we are starting to see now, ps 5 being the main platform to showcase this (avatar is on all platforms and of course metro ee [although was more of a tech demo really]), this is also showing in the raster vs rt scenes where devs are basically putting no effort into raster to get it looking great and it is starting to become more evident.

The 2 main hurdles for RT advancement is the weak console hardware and devs still supporting raster, I think the biggest step in RT progress will come with the next gen consoles where next gen consoles will have better RT hardware support and probably use hardware mode for RT and the current gen consoles will fall back to more software based RT. IIRC, on steam, isn't it something like 70/80% of hardware has support for RT now?

I also think a large part of the hate/anti RT is also because nvidia have done a rather clever game with all their RTX marketing to make people think RT is a nvidia thing and naturally, when nvidia are first to something or leading the way, it gets hated on or rather it's not an important feature/advantage to have but then when/if amd catch up or overtake, it's the next best thing and vice versa to when amd are first and nvidia are catching up e.g. just look at the upscaling and frame gen situation.

Ultimately I think people just need to accept that raster is on its way out, majority of games coming out (since RT became a thing in the gaming scene) is only growing and growing, most game engines have RT built in now, UE 5 (which a lot of games are using going forward) uses software RT with support for hardware RT, console games are using RT and some are providing no option to disable it, amd, intel are all onboard with it too not to mention, chipset makers too.

Recently replayed TLOU since switching the a 4k qd oled screen and that game is stunning looking, probably one of the best looking raster only games but alas, it has been so carefully crafted to make the most of it i.e. main thing being how linear/tunnel like it is but even then, when you know what to look for or have become accustomed to RT/PT, you can still see all the issues with raster effects and some of the scenery looking like a childrens pop up book at times.

Also, since this thread was created, there have been numerous developments in the optimisation of RT especially in UE 5 to make RT run better, this will only continue especially since more devs focus more on RT side of things than raster, could be argued that with the recent game show reveals, raster will very much be going on life support going forward, as in, just having that there to provide some kind of fallback for the few gamers still left on non RT capable hardware.

 

[JediFragger]

many are some AMD card owners in denial over multiple threads trying to convince people they dont care for it.

I've had 4090s/4080s and various cards inc my current XTX, so at least I've had the experience to back up my opinion

I've nothing against a good RT implementation and it's certainly the future, just want a game to be a good game regardless.

 

[Ayahuasca]

I've nothing against a good RT implementation and it's certainly the future, just want a game to be a good game regardless.

That's the thing for me, even good RT isn't going to make me play a game more as I'm not a screenshot Stan.

It's not going anywhere though, and hopefully once it's less demanding and implemented well across the board, it'll just become the new norm and people won't have to worry too much about buying £1500 GPUs (or whatever the new going rate is) to enjoy it properly at 4k and beyond. A lot of people will want a 5120x2160 UW OLED when they release.

This last point is probably me living in dreamland though, and I'll always have to go for the top of the range card or the one below to get the most out of these features. Hopefully it will end up being a bit like DLSS, and even the lower RT settings still look great and don't make much of a difference unless you're really looking.

 

[Nexus18]

I've had 4090s/4080s and various cards inc my current XTX, so at least I've had the experience to back up my opinion

I've nothing against a good RT implementation and it's certainly the future, just want a game to be a good game regardless.

This is ultimately it really for me too. Some of my fav games have no RT. I view RT the same as any other graphical effect or/and peripheral kind of device, it simply adds to the immersion and enjoyment of a game. I do find when games lack RT or/and just really poor raster effects that it can somewhat kill the enjoyment aspect as in be very jarring and somewhat pull me out of the game but it certainly won't stop me from playing a game if the game itself is good.

The main thing I really do want to see more of is dynamic worlds in terms of better day/night, weather systems and especially destruction of said game world, RT is made to aid this but we won't see this done well until raster is dropped. The finals is a great example for destruction of buildings etc. which just looks seamless in motion, yes we have had destruction done before in likes of bc 2, red faction and so on but it is very dated looking when you look back at it i.e. objects stand out like a childrens pop up book with no depth/grounded feeling.

 

[Sc00p007]

If we're talking immersion, VR>RT. Even 3d vision was better than RT for immersion. I'd really like another go at 3d vision. Oled 3dtv is way better than the lcd displays and only needs passive glasses. The main blocker back in the day was games started to use many tricks by using 2d for a 3d effect, eg clouds smoke. Ray tracing would be much easier to work with.
Any game I played in 3d vision such as tomb raider, feels like a huge downgrade when the next gen ray traced version without 3d vision is released.

 

[TheRealDeal]

What this thread really shows is peoples priority's in gaming vary drastically depending on the type of gamer you are. Like myself who plays competitive Multiplayer in the main on PC so high visuals are not my priority. Jump to Nexus who plays SP high visual games and wants the best looking game at a playable frame rate for immersion. None of us are wrong it's just different priorities for what's needed to get the best experience.

 

[tommybhoy]

Existing RT GPUs are still taking an absolute hiding on HW RT'ing:

RT-Software v Hardware running on the 4090.

Now start watering that performance down the tiers, then water it down again for previous gen(if vram isn't an issue and you can enable it)-for imo very marginal IQ difference.

Imo until that performance hit is minimised with capable hardware it'll remain exclusive to the very top end of the market gen on gen due to increased RT'ing cost-every new gen.

Even then RT is still more or less bolted/added into the games very late on in development.

Once the hit becomes 'normalised' that's when it becomes mainstream.

Then NV will bring out another new tech to tank performance just like PhysX, GW's etc.

 

[Nexus18]

If we're talking immersion, VR>RT. Even 3d vision was better than RT for immersion. I'd really like another go at 3d vision. Oled 3dtv is way better than the lcd displays and only needs passive glasses. The main blocker back in the day was games started to use many tricks by using 2d for a 3d effect, eg clouds smoke. Ray tracing would be much easier to work with.
Any game I played in 3d vision such as tomb raider, feels like a huge downgrade when the next gen ray traced version without 3d vision is released.

Why not have both?

It's like people who say HDR is better than RT, they are both completely different things, you can have both. I want to experience both HDR and RT.

What this thread really shows is peoples priority's in gaming vary drastically depending on the type of gamer you are. Like myself who plays competitive Multiplayer in the main on PC so high visuals are not my priority. Jump to Nexus who plays SP high visual games and wants the best looking game at a playable frame rate for immersion. None of us are wrong it's just different priorities for what's needed to get the best experience.

Yup, again, nothing wrong with that, it's just the flaws in peoples logic when they say something that then contradicts something else they have said. It does depend a lot on the game and what you prefer e.g. for PVP/MP, I will also favour higher FPS over visuals especially since I am gaming on a 240hz display now where I absolutely will need to sacrifice graphical settings even for raster only games.

 

[Sc00p007]

Why not have both?

It's like people who say HDR is better than RT, they are both completely different things, you can have both. I want to experience both HDR and RT.

Could try both, but vr really needs high res and fps so ray tracing isn't really a great option and dlss is very obvious in vr and noticeably loses sharpness.
I only mentioned around vr and 3d vision as I see them as far more immersive than raytracing and thought I'd throw it out there for the peeps who prefer immersion. Maybe something to try out.
I just wish there was so much strong advocacy for 3d vision back in the day, as there has been for ray tracing. Imo 3d vision was the best most immersive gfx I have experienced in gaming and I recently redid tomb raider and gutted to go back to pancake. This was on oled so didn't come with the ghosting or heavy battery glasses.

 

[Nexus18]

Could try both, but vr really needs high res and fps so ray tracing isn't really a great option and dlss is very obvious in vr and noticeably loses sharpness.
I only mentioned around vr and 3d vision as I see them as far more immersive than raytracing and thought I'd throw it out there for the peeps who prefer immersion. Maybe something to try out.
I just wish there was so much strong advocacy for 3d vision back in the day, as there has been for ray tracing. Imo 3d vision was the best most immersive gfx I have experienced in gaming and I recently redid tomb raider and gutted to go back to pancake. This was on oled so didn't come with the ghosting or heavy battery glasses.

Would like to try VR but sadly its adoption rate is so poor, I think the main and only good game for it in terms of game styles I like is half life alyx. Never got a chance to try 3d on oled but did hear very good things about it.

When I refer to immersion breaking things because of raster, it is usually things like light bleeding into other rooms or areas where it shouldn't, stuff most wouldn't notice but the more annoying ones are when it comes to reflections e.g.

Even now, shadows and AO is quite jarring as with raster methods, this is mostly missing and just doesn't look right: