Nearly 7 years later, Ray Tracing still isn’t worth the performance hit nor does it enhance the experience much.

D

DoubleClutch

Banned
Firstly, this is a testament to how good devs are at fake lighting and shadows using raster.

Now, is Ray Tracing nicer? Yes, in some cases, but even then not by a whole lot. Certainly not where it's worth spending an extra $1,000 or more just to be able to run it well. Or to play with a massive performance penalty in turn.

I've been far more impressed by ultra high displays (think 480Hz) that handle motion really well.

I feel like Ray Tracing is a lazy add in to help sell video cards and drive marketing initiatives. I wish more effort was put into developing vibrant worlds that you can interact with. Less focus on upscaling and Ray Tracing and more focus on physics and how gameplay changes with the environment. Such as pouring gasoline to increase flammability, or breaking something to combine a piece of it with another, stuff like that. It's like these aspects of gaming have gotten much dumber over the years, generally speaking. Look at Star Wars Outlaws for example. And that's a high budget production no less.

Two decades later Half Life 2 is still one of the best example of physics. I expected way more evolution on this front than better shadows and contrasting effects.

Don't me wrong, Ray Tracing is welcome, it just hasn't fundamentally changed any game from not fun to fun, or fun to suddenly very fun.

EDIT: Another special thanks to clarky clarky for being the best donor a guy could ever have. Thank you for another gold my brother.
 
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I agree, they need to focus more on realistic cinematic human kinematics, facial expressions and interactions where you cannot differentiate between a video game and a movie. Characters (for games aiming for realism) still look like manikins with stiff movements. Physics and frames per second is more important. Light will always improve over time, and it can take a back seat IMO.
 
Kazekage1981 said:
I agree, they need to focus more on realistic cinematic human kinematics, facial expressions and interactions where you cannot differentiate between a video game and a movie. Characters (for games aiming for realism) still look like manikins with stiff movements. Physics and frames per second is more important. Light will always improve over time, and it can take a back seat IMO.
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If you make kinematics too real players won't like the realism
 
Indiana Jones made me a believer. But only after they patched up Frame Generation which was galopping around for nearly half my playthrough. When it's stable it's reeeally elevating the visuals imo.
 
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Ray tracing was never supposed to make video games fun though. its a graphics technique thats biggest use right now is reducing dev time. Like you said, devs got good at faking lighting but it came at a cost.

i would rather have devs add fun physics in games than ray tracing but we are not getting that ever so might as well get games a little quicker with slightly more accurate shadows, AO, and better global illumination coverage.

I wish we as a collective spent more of our energy taking devs to task over lack of physics and interaction in games rather than the woke stuff. But priorities of gamers are just as fucked as developer's who focus more on creating massive worlds than interactive worlds.
 
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Cyberpunk 2077 with path tracing disagrees but I agree it's wasted in most games. A lot of devs don't know how to use it properly and just use RT as an excuse to cover up their shitty unoptimized games.
 
If youre someone who loves puddles, mirrors and office building glass reflections, youre a gamer who probably loves RT even if the performance tanks.

I believe most gamers dont care. They'd take non-RT 60 fps performance mode over quality mode.

Wasnt there a survey done one time saying console gamers prefer performance mode 75% to 25%? Or something like that.
 
StreetsofBeige said:
If youre someone who loves puddles, mirrors and office building glass reflections, youre a gamer who probably loves RT even if the performance tanks.

I believe most gamers dont care. They'd take non-RT 60 fps performance mode over quality mode.

Wasnt there a survey done one time saying console gamers prefer performance mode 75% to 25%? Or something like that.
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Console?
 
I never needed graphics better than this:

LBSeiFm.jpeg


As far as I'm concerned, all games should drop or reduce all graphical features that prevent them from running at least 60fps.
 
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On anything below a 4070 Ti, it probably isn't worth the performance penalty. On top-tier GPUs, it's absolutely worth it when implemented properly.
 
The Cockatrice said:
None of us is playing Minecraft nor is anyone that plays Minecraft playing with RTX, just a small minority. You failed. Next (y)

Anyway, OP you are correct.

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Actually, I like lens flare. Cool effect when playing a racing game. Even the faked in shit you'd get in PS1 F1 games.

But motion blur is the worst. I dont know if motion blur was around in the PS1/PS2 eras, but when I got my 360 holy shit. You got games like COD which panned the camera super smooth, then youd get stuff like Mass Effect where the entire game looks like a comet trail.
 
I'd tend to agree, OP. It's still the sort of feature that's best appreciated in side-to-side comparison shots where you look at the original image, then look at the raytracing one, and go "oh, wow."

In practice? Still usually not worth the performance hit, and I feel like it's largely to blame for all the performance band-aids we have today, like half-assed scaling solutions.
 
I am inclined to agree about RT not being worth the performance hit. I can only easily tell apart RT reflections and in some cases GI, of which i think only reflections are worth the hit. If you enable RT shadows or RTAO in most games, its nearly impossible to tell because the visual difference is so minimal, that getting more frames or using less power becomes a no brainer.

Pathtracing though is 100% worth it, makes bigger difference than most remasters and i am talking about the good remasters.
 
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FIREKNIGHT2029 said:
Cyberpunk 2077 with path tracing disagrees but I agree it's wasted in most games. A lot of devs don't know how to use it properly and just use RT as an excuse to cover up their shitty unoptimized games.
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Yep, Cyberpunk was one of the very few games where i didnt switch raytracing/pathtracing off.
 
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RT is there to improve fundamental problems with raster and bring in game graphics closer to CGI.

Nothing to do with enhancing experience...
 
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DoubleClutch said:
Don't me wrong, Ray Tracing is welcome, it just hasn't fundamentally changed any game from not fun to fun, or fun to suddenly very fun.
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What kind of utterly stupid take is this?
You're whining about a so far optional graphics feature while actually talking about gameplay design as if that was related in any way....
 
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If you have the hardware for raytracing it looks awesome. Cyberpunk with the path tracing update? Ugh. So good. And I'm able to keep my framerate at a great spot with it all maxed out so..

It's all scalability man. If you have the performance headroom, it's a considerable visual boost. If you don't then turn it off and the game will run better on less performat hardware.

I don't see the problem.
 
Raytracing has been a net positive to the industry, and if anything, it's older rigs that can't handle it that are holding the entire industry back.

This is not a nice thing to say, but it is what it is.
 
SlimySnake said:
I wish we as a collective spent more of our energy taking devs to task over lack of physics and interaction in games rather than the woke stuff.
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Baby steps. First they can stop targeting a demographic that barely exist and rarely buy games anyway. Then studios might actually survive. Then they can start adding physics and interactivity.

Right now we're in a lose-lose timeline. Studios are closing left and right and they blame and openly hate Gamers™ for not buying their games as if the majority ever asked for what they're desperately shoehorning into games. And most games are just smoke and mirrors with static props glued to the ground and furnitures not even a bazooka could budge, and even the best worlds don't have any world destruction.
 
Asides for a handfull of games, RT is worse than useless. It takes so much performance, for little to no image quality gains, that it becomes a detriment to most games.
 
StreetsofBeige said:
If youre someone who loves puddles, mirrors and office building glass reflections, youre a gamer who probably loves RT even if the performance tanks.

I believe most gamers dont care. They'd take non-RT 60 fps performance mode over quality mode.

Wasnt there a survey done one time saying console gamers prefer performance mode 75% to 25%? Or something like that.
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To be fair 75% probably don't know what Raytraying is or can actually tell that a game is running at 60fps and probably enable Motion Flow on their TV's because they think it looks more realistic..
But honestly? Ray tracing is nice when it done well and can not be matched, very few games do it right on consoles.
But a lot do it wrong and it looks like shit and runs like shit.
 
When you can use RT and still get 100+ FPS at ultra settings, it's glorious.

When this doesn't happen, I'll pass.
 
Parazels said:
The technology is still too demanding. But it will become default sooner or later.
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Thats why i prefer "fake" lighting and performance over ray tracing, but i understand RT make the life easier for devs and GPU makers are banking. ND is one example of what is possible to achieve with talent.
 
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As much as people bashed native 4k for killing resources raytracing is entirely new shit show most reflections look no better then well done pre baked from 15 years ago and it destroys games performance what a joke
 
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PSYGN said:
Devs seemed to have focused way too hard on something hardly noticeable to most players.
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GPU makers always needs a new thing to sell GPUs, it's not devs fault… they are not pushing 8K a lot because RT is going to be enough for a long time + AI upscalers as the second coming of Jesus.
 
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PSYGN said:
Devs seemed to have focused way too hard on something hardly noticeable to most players.
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Easy to wow gamers with uber lighting and shadows, than make good gameplay clips, smart enemy AI, or physics.

Just imagine how awesome it would be for an open world RPG or action game to have crazy physics like an old BF game with crumbling buildings, castle walls destroyed or cave-ins. Yet it seems the only games that have that are tech demo indie games or a shooter.
 
It seems like most of the people who can't see the point with RT is the same folks who don't have good enough hardware to use it properly.
Hmm. Strange, indeed.
 
StreetsofBeige said:
Easy to wow gamers with uber lighting and shadows, than make good gameplay clips, smart enemy AI, or physics.

Just imagine how awesome it would be for an open world RPG or action game to have crazy physics like an old BF game with crumbling buildings, castle walls destroyed or cave-ins. Yet it seems the only games that have that are tech demo indie games or a shooter.
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Hmm, I would have agreed maybe 7+ years ago, but its been diminishing returns with graphics. I think you'll find players aren't being wowed by graphics like they used to be, at least not this generation of consoles. Great physics and smart AI in todays landscape would definitely be noticeable, if only because it seems they are getting worse somehow. Sadly I think only few devs really push these frontiers like Rockstar and Naughty Dog. Recent fun physics like Astro Bots. Of course the indie games also have some cool bits of tech and often centers its game around it.
 
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