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What do gamers actually think about Ray-Tracing?

I don't think people are against RT being the future, it clearly is going to be, I just think we've all had it dumped on us way too early without sufficient hardware to use it adequately. And then selling us the idea of bandage tech, dlss, fsr, frame gen etc to fix a problem that wouldn't have been there if RT waited a few more years and devs focused other things such as NPC AI in the meantime.

There is a disgust amongst a few in this thread when you suggest that RT is the way forward and raster will eventually die, I think it's largely because nvidia have very much spearheaded in this area and whether intentional or not, made it out that RT is "their" thing. The most valid reasoning to be against RT is definetly the price entry point but again, we do have examples of where RT runs very well on older/weaker hardware so the blame shouldn't be entirely down to hardware side of things but also the devs for not doing a better job but then again, this is also down to them focussing on old raster methods too as well as games already being half way through development, which doesn't make it easy to add RT (in a proper manner) so it's a mixture of multiple factors outside of everyones control.

The only thing that is certain/somewhat right is how RT is being done at the moment though, there is no way could we just wait till "the hardware is there/ready" (especially when MLID is somewhat true) and then have devs just flip a switch to move into the RT/PT only era.

We have games without RT which run just as bad, if not worse than games which have RT too so upscaling and frame gen tech was going to come around regardless of RT imo but obviously this tech. has very much been the catalyst in making real RT in games a reality.
 
I don't think I get your argument. You are laughing at "RT is the future" because you don't believe it? And your justification for this is because today the vast majority of games are raster? It's not like it was a choice between the two and devs chose not to use RT - its new tech. It's been said a few times in this thread that it's a benefit to game devs. It is a significant time saver and they WILL use it over raster. It's not even debatable. Raster will eventually die. Raster was just a workaround for visualisation, a means to an end for the hardware limitations of its time. RT allows lighting to be done correctly, and accurately, and with almost zero effort.

I lol at the RT is the future comments because they are so hyperbolic and fanciful and lack any kind of grounding in the current and even near future reality. The reality is by the time RT becomes mainstream in all new game releases, todays GPUs will be distant memories. The vast majority of new game releases are still raster games and that won't be changing until console hardware is able to do pure RT, while staying within a cost and power budget. Or to put it in simple terms, not any time soon.

I am not anti RT, that is a strawman many pro RT seem keen to use to attack anyone who's not onboard with the RT hype. I simply look at the reality and extrapolate based on visible trends. The facts are:
  • RTX 20x0 range were released over 5 (five) years ago and NV are now on their 3rd gen of RT cards and they still struggle with RT.
  • From the above it is wrong to declare RT "new tech" as per your claim.
  • RT is still not a standard feature in the majority of new game releases.
  • RT still takes a massive performance hit when enabled.
  • The top dog 4090 still needs to use upscaling on most RT games.
  • Lesser mainstream GPUs are massively expensive and cannot do RT without upscaling and below a certain price point the RT feature is actually pointless.
  • The majority of PC gamers are still on non RT capable hardware (according to steam survey).
  • RT being the future is utterly irrelevant in the here and now because even an RTX 4090 will be outdated by the arbitrary future event.
All of this points to the fact that any grossly hyperbolic prediction that "RT is the future" won't happen for many, many years. Now do you see why I lol at such hyperbolic claims?
 
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Yup it's very weird why people are so against ray tracing "being the future" (well I know one of the main reasons why but lets not go down that path.....) and always such a silly argument/statement "but but but most games are raster", well most games were also 2d at one point....

I wouldn't say "zero effort" though as like anything in development especially new technology that will have an impact on various other areas, it does require a significant amount of effort and time to learn new ways of doing things especially if you're having to shoehorn it in to legacy methods.... But once over that initial hurdle and devs build around this new workflow, well, a picture is worth a thousand words, just ONE FRAME/SCENE with ONE LIGHT SOURCE:

XMbGFnth.png

If the workflow for game dev can be representative of the workflow in generating CGI scenes, then it will simply be a case of placing the geometry, materials and light sources, and then choosing a renderer. Assuming that's already familiar to devs, then it really should be zero effort, at least beyond learning the nuances of material definitions and light properties (which they should already be familiar with tbh). That said, I am not knowledgeable on what the current state of developing with RT for video games is, there may be smore hoops to jump through.
 
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Literally your entire post. But thanks for agreeing that RT is the future.

Show me anywhere I said it wasn't? You failed to address a single point I posted and instead focused on attacking a claim I never made. That is the very epitome of a strawman.

I am actually starting to think you have some sort of reading comprehension because you attribute claims to me that I have not made, you idn't know what an oxymoron was and now clearly don't know what a strawman fallacy is.
 
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I lol at the RT is the future comments because they are so hyperbolic and fanciful and lack any kind of grounding in the current and even near future reality. The reality is by the time RT becomes mainstream in all new game releases, todays GPUs will be distant memories. The vast majority of new game releases are still raster games and that won't be changing until console hardware is able to do pure RT, while staying within a cost and power budget. Or to put it in simple terms, not any time soon.

I am not anti RT, that is a strawman many pro RT seem keen to use to attack anyone who's not onboard with the RT hype. I simply look at the reality and extrapolate based on visible trends. The facts are:
  • RTX 20x0 range were released over 5 (five) years ago and NV are now on their 3rd gen of RT cards and they still struggle with RT.
  • From the above it is wrong to declare RT "new tech" as per your claim.
  • RT is still not a standard feature in the majority of new game releases.
  • RT still takes a massive performance hit when enabled.
  • The top dog 4090 still needs to use upscaling on most RT games.
  • Lesser mainstream GPUs are massively expensive and cannot do RT without upscaling and below a certain price point the RT feature is actually pointless.
  • The majority of PC gamers are still on non RT capable hardware (according to steam survey).
  • RT being the future is utterly irrelevant in the here and now because even an RTX 4090 will be outdated by the arbitrary future event.
All of this points to the fact that any grossly hyperbolic prediction that "RT is the future" won't happen for many, many years. Now do you see why I lol at such hyperbolic claims?

Thoughts on metro ee, avatar and spiderman 2?
 
RT is utterly pointless- struggle to tell the difference between RT and pure raster. I never admire the puddles in Avatar or in COD where you can enable RT.

Marketing gimmick imo.
 
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RT is utterly pointless- struggle to tell the difference between RT and pure raster. I never admire the puddles in Avatar or in COD where you can enable RT.

Marketing gimmick imo.

If you don't like RT, just simply say that.

Making statements like marketing gimmick is completely and utterly wrong or/and shows you don't understand what it is, which is backed up by comments such as "shiny puddles" or whatever, this usally indicates a severe lack of understanding on the topic.
 
If you don't like RT, just simply say that.

Making statements like marketing gimmick is completely and utterly wrong or/and shows you don't understand what it is, which is backed up by comments such as "shiny puddles" or whatever, this usally indicates a severe lack of understanding on the topic.
Maybe I don’t understand it but the majority of users are like me and hence RT won’t gain a big traction until the next gen consoles employ it more in their game development.

Thanks for pointing out that my observation that RT was a marketing tool to sell more GPUs for Nvidia was wrong.
 
hence RT won’t gain a big traction until the next gen consoles employ it more in their game development.

While I agree with this, I think RT would have gained a lot more traction if GPU prices had been more reasonable. Imagine if the RTX 4060 had launched as the RTX 4050 at £149 in late 2022 - in time for Christmas. (It's a 50 class card at 60 ti prices.)
 
Maybe I don’t understand it but the majority of users are like me and hence RT won’t gain a big traction until the next gen consoles employ it more in their game development.

Thanks for pointing out that my observation that RT was a marketing tool to sell more GPUs for Nvidia was wrong.

You and other games don't need to understand or care for it, as shown and backed up by various devs (not just of games but also the game engines), the hardware manufacturers (not just nvidia....), it is what everyone is working towards whether you and other gamers like it or not.
 
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You and other games don't need to understand or care for it, as shown and backed up by various devs (not just of games but also the game engines), the hardware manufacturers (not just nvidia....), it is what everyone is working towards whether you and other gamers like it or not.
Let’s revisit this in another 4 years and compare the progress. :D
 
Let’s revisit this in another 4 years and compare the progress.
:D

I've already stated what the 2 main hurdles are here:

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.

i.e. until either devs do a spiderman 2, avatar or/and metro ee approach, we aren't going to see anything much different/new here till new gen consoles arrive. That and you forget how long most games are in development for, some are in development for up to 7 or maybe even more years. AMDs lack of pushing FSR for the xbox and ps 5 hasn't helped at all either, probably why Sony are looking to do their own upscaling solution.

Can't speak for others but I play a considerable amount of games, mainly triple a ones and it's safe to say 90+% have had RT to some extent and so far all of 2024 titles I am interested in will have RT.....
 
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I still can't believe there are people that 'don't do RT'.

When you're on your death bed and you think about your life, how much of it will have been ray traced?

I mean...the 4090...just buy it!

;)

Jensen, is that you? ;)

Didn’t we hear this very argument almost 5 years ago when these same people said the 2080Ti was worth the premium as it was future proofing for RT because “RT is the future” :cry:

Then they said the same about the 3090, then the 3090Ti and now the 4090.

Strangely we keep seeing more and more pointless levels of RT that seems to need the best NV tech to run. Yet the last gen bestest ever GPU suddenly isn’t compatible with the new shiny shiny. It’s like old mate Jensen has some planned obsolescence built in to his so people keep on “future proofing”.
 
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One of the best examples of what ray tracing can bring I think is in the door reflection here:


Sadly few games really do the other thing ray tracing does well - the transfer of colour as light bounces around a scene, combine that with specular which has real time, scene accurate, fidelity and you will really notice the difference in games which don't have it.
 
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