Old by current standards UE 4 in 2017 had already near unlimited lights in the scene casting shadows. The only requirement in their case was (at least in 2017, as per their docs) to not have more than 4 overlapping at the same time. Which apparently wasn't a very big limitation, as per few different devs talking about it, that I found - you hardly need more than 4 lights per object to cast shadows. Sure, PT gives more freedom but again, that's for devs to worry about how they cook the meal, not for consumer.
Also, indie devs of the game Riftbreaker have a bunch of very detailed articles, with descriptions of their engine and how they made things faster, better, prettier in said engine over time - really worth reading, no marketing talk at all there. They even show why and how they used bits and bobs of raycasting and raytracing for various elements, as performance loss was negligible, it works great with the rest being rasterised and looks really good. This is what one can do without marketing machine dictating how things should be done - pick and choose various tech and apply them where they make an actual difference, instead of just "Full PT and done, who needs good performance, let's count NVIDIA monies!".
CGI in films has potential to have superior quality, PT in games is pathetic in comparison (considering miniscule number of rays, loads of noise and other limitations). And even CGI in films rarely looks really good and real, whilst being designed offline by great artists and computed for months on whole server farms. We're not there yet with computational power, or technology in general, and won't be for a long while. This is also consistent with NVIDIA's CEO pushing hard for AI generation, as he claim himself silicon tech speedups are over - you can't make graphics much faster without pumping it with more and more power, so perhaps AI can generate it better/faster than current PT tech can, but could you call AI "dreams" an actual realism? Time will tell.
3D printing wouldn't make cars safer, neither RT/PT makes games more fun - in such comparison. It's just different ways of producing product, which consumer (again) should care 0 about, because it doesn't matter for the end result. What matters is actual effort by devs/car manufacturer/chef (etc.) put in to make it good - and that's where it end. How it's made is really irrelevant for most consumers. Do you also care that SOC in the phone has been manufactured on a specific process or they used this or that antennae etc., or you care instead for good performance, battery life etc. for a good price, instead? The former being worry of manufacturer, the latter being actually important things to the consumer.
