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[struggler_guts]

I appreciate more realistic lighting simulations, and the new doom says they're using raytracing for gameplay systems like accurate bullet trajectory so if that works out well then raytracing is definitely needed

 

[Physiognomonics]

RT is a necessity for developers and is starting to be a necessity for gamers. For instance those SSR reflections are really awful and immersion breaking in so many games. Also playing games with really well done RT shadows like GTA5 on consoles you can understand it's the future. They are so much more natural and realistic. We were just used to awful raster rendering without realising it's mostly terrible.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

The whole point was to save dev’s time wasted by having to bake lighting and having to repeatedly undo everything when a level changes.

We now have a scenario where devs are doing baked lighting and ray tracing modes in the same games!

It’ll be worth it when it can be run on every game next generation, but this gen was one too early.

 

[ThisIsMyDog]

 

[Angry_Megalodon]

One of the dumbest gimmicks that, in very rare occasions, add positively to the game experience.

 

[Mr.Phoenix]

The short answer is no.

The long answer is YES. Absofuckinglutely yes.

Best way to look at it is that its just the next step. And whenever that next step is taken, it tanks the hardware. This has always happened. Eg. Look at 3D HD gaming. Just when we thought we were getting the handle of 3D gaming and finally had the hardware to pull it off, PS2/Xbox gen going into PS360 gen, they now threw HD into the mix, which brought those PS360 consoles to their knees.

We only reached a point where we were at the pinnacle of 3D graphics with the PS4XB1 gen + HD, a journey that took all of 3 console generations (over 20 years) to make.

RT, is just the next step, and as usual, the hardware on the market at the time, can barely keep up. But if you look at the history of these things, you know that the next-gen consoles is where it's at. Between having better RT hardware and AI upscaling, we will finally have hardware that can handle RT without tanking its performance.

And this is just looking at the gamer side of things. RT is even more important in the development side. It would make game development easier, a full suite of RT features will cut out a LOT of extra dev work that would have gone into making "fake" lighting. RT, is just one feature, whether you use it for illumination, reflection, shadows, bounce... or even audio... its one feature asset. As opposed to the extremely complex and convoluted nature of what needs to happen to render fake light and all its properties.

So yes, it's necessary, we just have to get to the next-gen consoles to actually appreciate it.

 

[Gaiff]

The short answer is no.

The long answer is YES. Absofuckinglutely yes.

Best way to look at it is that its just the next step. And whenever that next step is taken, it tanks the hardware. This has always happened. Eg. Look at 3D HD gaming. Just when we thought we were getting the handle of 3D gaming and finally had the hardware to pull it off, PS2/Xbox gen going into PS360 gen, they now threw HD into the mix, which brought those PS360 consoles to their knees.

We only reached a point where we were at the pinnacle of 3D graphics with the PS4XB1 gen + HD, a journey that took all of 3 console generations (over 20 years) to make.

RT, is just the next step, and as usual, the hardware on the market at the time, can barely keep up. But if you look at the history of these things, you know that the next-gen consoles is where it's at. Between having better RT hardware and AI upscaling, we will finally have hardware that can handle RT without tanking its performance.

And this is just looking at the gamer side of things. RT is even more important in the development side. It would make game development easier, a full suite of RT features will cut out a LOT of extra dev work that would have gone into making "fake" lighting. RT, is just one feature, whether you use it for illumination, reflection, shadows, bounce... or even audio... its the one feature asset. As opposed to the extremely complex and convoluted nature of what needs to happen to render fake light.

So yes, it's necessary, we just have to get to the next-gen consoles to actually appreciate it.

This. People want their CG-movies-looking games? We need ray tracing. The posts calling it a marketing gimmick are beyond ignorant.

No, biggest scam tech in gaming history. Most games look worse now than they used to a decade ago because of it.

Now that’s a silly and utterly false statement.

I just went from Indiana Jones to Cyberpunk. How in the world does an OpenWorld game from last gen look vastly better than a linear action game from this gen? It’s a scam to sell overpriced hardware.

For one, Cyberpunk’s budget was much, much higher and the team far bigger and for two, Cyberpunk isn’t a last-gen game. Last-gen consoles cannot handle it. Oh, and it released just 4 years before Indiana Jones, so acting like we’re comparing a PS4 game to a PS5 one is silly.

 

[Parazels]

It's simply inevitable. No reason to persist, just wait until it's a baseline for 3d games.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

The cost is generally too high to warrant it in most games right now.

Maybe at 40 FPS it can be worth it if there is a big difference with the right LFC and VRR enabled, but in most cases I'd rather just have the 60+ fps mode.

I think next gen will be different though. These advancements tend to run a generation or two behind.

 

[Saber]

No.
Stupid and useless technology that allows what? Reflections?
And those are good for what in terms of gameplay experience? Oh righ, the weirdo want to stop what he is doing just to see refections. It's just like DF stoping to play just to see the quality of the dirt and rocks in the ground.
Its just a silly gimmick, not a necessity.

 

[moogman]

Ray Tracing has been the holy grail with lighting for decades, so it's definitely not a gimmick it's just very intensive. I did it on my Atari ST watching it generate a pixel at a time and came back hours later to find it 10% done on one static picture.

I probably needed an Amiga

 

[STARSBarry]

Bump mapping didn't cause the huge performance drop, that RT causes. So it's not a justified comparison.

Again all I'm reading here is "I don't have the money to do this, therefore it's not important"

As tech improves it will become the new norm, the fact some games are requiring it like Doom going forward means they know what's up. In a few gens it won't even be a question to include it or not, it will just be there

 

[Mr.Phoenix]

The whole point was to save dev’s time wasted by having to bake lighting and having to repeatedly undo everything when a level changes.

We now have a scenario where devs are doing baked lighting and ray tracing modes in the same games!

It’ll be worth it when it can be run on every game next generation, but this gen was one too early.

Its already worth it. Its just that it comes at a frustrating cost. But that is only because of the hardware we have now. And as I said, that happens every time there is a generational shift in rendering techniques.

Every single time. Be it going from sprites to polygons, from SD to HD, from phong rendering to physical-based rendering....etc.

And the reason devs still have both baked and RT stuff, is simply because the hardware cant handle everything in RT. But we should be happy they are even doing that, as it means they are sharpening their teeth on the techniques and practices that would make the most of said RT when we actually have the hardware that can handle it.

Again, this happens every time. Hell, even to this day, with the best 3D-looking games out there... we still have objects that are rendered using sprites.

 

[winjer]

Again all I'm reading here is "I don't have the money to do this, therefore it's not important"

As tech improves it will become the new norm, the fact some games are requiring it like Doom going forward means they know what's up. In a few gens it won't even be a question to include it or not, it will just be there

Even a 5090 will drop performance to half, of less, when turning on RT.
We never had a feature that kills performance this much. And we never had GPUs as expensive as today.
So what if the 1% of rich people can buy a top end GPU. Performance will still drop.
And most consumers don't care about a feature that no one can use properly.
Maybe a decade from now RT can be turn on with a marginal performance loss, but today, it's a waste of resources.

 

[spons]

Again all I'm reading here is "I don't have the money to do this, therefore it's not important"

As tech improves it will become the new norm, the fact some games are requiring it like Doom going forward means they know what's up. In a few gens it won't even be a question to include it or not, it will just be there

Gating games behind expensive hardware is an utterly terrible idea. Until ray tracing is available in budget-tier hardware I'm going to hate on it.
In the meantime, just let me turn it off.

 

[RCX]

No.

Too big a performance cost for zero benefit to gameplay.

Sure it looks nice when you stop and look. But once you're in motion and focused on the actual game it's easily forgotten and never missed.

 

[AMC124c41]

I think the very foundation of this thread is wrong and let me explain why. What do you guys think the reaction was when the first real-time lighting solutions were introduced?!? Back when Doom 3 was showing off per pixel light and shadows and was tanking PCs?!? Should devs have not used that tech, should we still be using the same graphics tech that was used in 1998?!?
I think that this type of complaints are completely ignorant of the history of the video game medium and how graphics tech has evolved. There has always been a steep performance penalty when any new game introduced new tech and then with time said tech got optimised and then widely used. RT now is much more performant than when it was first introduced with games like Battlefield and it will continue to become even more performant as it turns into an industry standard.
Honestly, this thread is like saying steam boats were good enough why are we bothering with diesel-electric engines on ships...come on guys, use a bit of critical thinking and do a little bit of research on the evolution of graphics tech.

 

[Hohenheim]

It's obviously not neccesary, unless it's packed into the engine (like Indy Jones and the upcoming Doom)
But it sure as hell makes games better looking if you got the hardware for it!

 

[Lokaum D+]

RTGI is very good

 

[TheAssist]

The better questions is: Whats more importan to the perceived realism in current games:

- Better lighting
- Better Hair Rendering
- Less image artifacts (from for example upscaling)

I am currently playing Cyberpunk on PS5 without RT and the game at times looks amazing. The colors and lighting are great even without any RT. What always destroys the illusion is the probably worst image clarity I have ever seen, I mean the game ghosts you more than Jonny Silverhand ever could and hair rendering makes everyone with long hair look like a monster. There is only few games that really have good hair rendering, but usually only on the protagonist since it would be too costly to do it for anything else.

I guess this is kinda my problem with RT. You need very specialized hardware to run it, and then this hardware cant really be used for much else. So if a dev decides to not do any RT they cant use those RT cores for other rendering stuff (or I am mistaken, but I have not heard devs speak about these kind of possibilities)

 

[nnytk]

No, it is ridiculously demanding and we shouldn't have shit like raytracing being pushed if most games struggle to hit 60fps on consoles.

Especially since raytracing rarely provides a much better image.

I have yet to see it integrated artistically or impressive. Maybe some points in Astro Boy had raytracing and we're extra impressive because of this.

But most of the time, extremely demanding for marginal difference in image quality/vibe/aesthetic.

 

[SpokkX]

Of course it is - eventually

You might have asked in 1995: ”are filtered/non warped textures and higher res than 320x200 really necessary?”

In 1996 ps1 graphics at higher fps might have been prefered. But look ahead a few years.. ray tracing is asking like asking that in 1996

 

[kikkis]

People kind of bet on that rt would get a lot faster gen over gen like rasterization on the past, but rtx 5000 series barely improved rt.

 

[Gaiff]

Its already worth it. Its just that it comes at a frustrating cost. But that is only because of the hardware we have now. And as I said, that happens every time there is a generational shift in rendering techniques.

Every single time. Be it going from sprites to polygons, from SD to HD, from phong rendering to physical-based rendering....etc.

And the reason devs still have both baked and RT stuff, is simply because the hardware cant handle everything in RT. But we should be happy they are even doing that, as it means they are sharpening their teeth on the techniques and practices that would make the most of said RT when we actually have the hardware that can handle it.

Again, this happens every time. Hell, even to this day, with the best 3D-looking games out there... we still have objects that are rendered using sprites.

The premise of the thread is flawed. That's why you have to explain it this way. The way the question is presented has several problems:

1. The thread title just asks if it's necessary without a context. It then proceeds to imply that it's talking about current games, at which point the answer is self-explanatory. Ray tracing is still used sparingly, so is it currently "necessary"? Of course, not, because games still work without it.

2. It uses the numerous shoddy implementations to argue that it's useless and not worth having.

The correct question should have been: is ray tracing currently worth it OR is ray tracing a necessity moving forward.

 

[Black_Stride]

Necessity absolutely not.
The way forward absolutely.


Kinda like AO, Normals and PBR materials (and many other techniques too) before it, advancing graphical tech is something we should all embrace.
I sometimes go back to games that dont have AO and wonder to myself how i ever thought those graphics looked good.
Same with PBR materials......yes it was possible to "fake" material responses, but a lot of games just didnt bother.
Now I cant imagine gaming without some form of AO or more realistic matarial response to lighting conditions.

In future we will look back at GI-less games and wonder similar things.......were we just peasants and enjoyed dynamic objects glowing inexplicably, did we really enjoy game with terrible object grounding, why did we not question where light sources were?


P.S Atelier games are consistently on my list of favorite games of the year whenever they release.
They barely use any advanced rendering techniques and I think they are better for it.
By contrast my most anticipated game of the year is another turn based RPG by the name Clair Obscur Expedition 33.....a bunch of advanced techniques in use.

Its possible and totally fair for both artstyles and execectuions to exist at the same time.
Though I would like to see what GUST could do if they leveraged more advanced rendering features considering PhyreEngine and Katana engine are both capable.
Katana powers Rise of the Ronin and Dynasty Warriors Origins.

 

[ShaiKhulud1989]

Ever since the tailgate of PS4 Pro gen we've reached the ceiling where tech was not a real problem. Competent art and manhours/budget is a real problem.

RT was billed as a silver bullet to solve some problems like light baking (it's a very tedious and time-consuming process) and cubemap/SSR shenanigans. But in practice RT still don't provide enough tangible visual benefits, tanks the performance no matter the hardware and require a lot of hand made tweaks to look good, wich kinda defeats the purpose. RT will be dominant, but only when the RT perfomance will be on par with current 5090 on a lower end of the spectrum.

Reflections are nice for games like GT7 and sound RT in Tempest 3D is truly wonderful tho, but so far that's about it. One of the most visually striking game of this gen, Forbidden West, ignores RT altogether and I'm sure DS2 will use RT in very basic ways.

 

[Fess]

Of course not but it’s nice that it exist as a choice if you have the hardware needed for it.

 

[64gigabyteram]

For us, right now? no. Not many games being made right now need it.

For devs, in the future? yes. It's easier to make directly raytraced lighting as opposed to baking it and they've come out and said it quite a few times.

Raytracing will be common in most games by next-gen. It's gonna be a painful transition for many people with lower end cards, but ultimately what will have to happen.

Now that AMD has good RT performance, there's not going to be much excuse to not have a decently very RT capable card in the future.

 

[Gonzito]

Yes it is, otherwise the lighting looks unrealistic in character models and assets in general

What I hope is the in the near future, developers find the way to make raytracing cost less

 

[Ceadeus]

I don't know how they did it for Dead Island 2 but it looked incredible and the game still ran 60!

RT makes your game looks fancy but I've yet to see it being utilized for gameplay purpose. For example you're playing a survival horror and your crawling under something, hiding from a murderer. With good RT you could follow his silhouette from the reflection of the floor or large bloodstain

It's more of a immersion feature. To me, I'll always prioritize performance over anything else, and RT makes you feel like your hardware is never good enough.

 

[SimTourist]

People always kick and scream when being dragged into the future. RT has been the holy grail since the inception of computer generated graphics and has until recently been reserved only for movie CGI and animation, the fact that we have consumer grade hardware that can do RT in realtime at all is incredible in itself.

 

[San Dan Glokta]

I think the very foundation of this thread is wrong and let me explain why. What do you guys think the reaction was when the first real-time lighting solutions were introduced?!? Back when Doom 3 was showing off per pixel light and shadows and was tanking PCs?!? Should devs have not used that tech, should we still be using the same graphics tech that was used in 1998?!?
I think that this type of complaints are completely ignorant of the history of the video game medium and how graphics tech has evolved. There has always been a steep performance penalty when any new game introduced new tech and then with time said tech got optimised and then widely used. RT now is much more performant than when it was first introduced with games like Battlefield and it will continue to become even more performant as it turns into an industry standard.
Honestly, this thread is like saying steam boats were good enough why are we bothering with diesel-electric engines on ships...come on guys, use a bit of critical thinking and do a little bit of research on the evolution of graphics tech.

Well people are slowly but surely upgrading all their hardware regardless of what they think, so I don't think rejection of RT is the issue; its more like we were promised a lot more, and its been 7-8 years but we've seen very little, and thats disappointing.

 

[Sooner]

inFamous Second Son has the best lighting and 0 RT.

InFamous SS and its neon effects are still awesome. I'm ready for a new entry.

 

[TheRedRiders]

Honestly it’s a pleasant visual upgrade in my opinion, but only for the people who care about it… who are mostly us enthusiasts. Other than that, it’s a hard sell for your casual gamers.

I do also attribute it partly to the decline in overall graphics, visuals and optimisation efforts by developers. Current generation hardware advancements especially in the CPU space (like consoles) and a focus on ray-tracing effects has meant that developers are now targeting 60 FPS as a minimum, which means we get less detailed visuals, and then we get an RT bolt on like AO or RT shadows, and the uplift gen on gen in visuals is modest honestly.

Things like geometry, textures, materials, hair and skin get less priority even though they offer a more meaningful visual upgrade in my opinion.

 

[Topher]

I have no qualms turning off ray tracing in a game if it tanks performance so no, it isn't necessary for me.

 

[ReBurn]

I like it when it adds something to the game but I wouldn't say it's a necessity. I don't usually care how shiny puddles are unless the game is about shiny puddles.

 

[Buggy Loop]

The problem with RT is that it still has a gigantic performance drop.
And this means that for most games, t's not worth it.

Are we not including software solution? Lumen & SVOGI are still ray tracing.

4A games' Metro Exodus EE is basically the counter-point. ID tech's 7 with Indiana Jones ray tracing is another one. GTA 6 will have ray tracing on base consoles with a massive open world. If we go into software solutions then even KCD 2 with SVOGI is a counterpoint. No doubt Doom dark ages will be RT only too and perform well.

UE5 seems mostly to be the problem.

The thing is that, without the performance drop, who has shown a raster exclusive game eclipse the best showcases that have RT? Are we seeing a raster game 2x better looking? Not really. So what are they doing with that gigantic performance drop?

For me, the truely next gen feeling games have been the ones with RTGI. To me if a game beyond 2025 does not have RTGI (outside a nintendo console of course) then its an graphic engine engineering flop.

The 5090 dropping framerates over RT is a moot argument, who the fuck needs 300 fps raster for single player games.

There's bad implementations of RT clearly. Just like there's also pure raster games fuckups like Monster Hunter wilds & TLoU part 1 port

 

[winjer]

Are we not including software solution? Lumen & SVOGI are still ray tracing.

4A games' Metro Exodus EE is basically the counter-point. ID tech's 7 with Indiana Jones ray tracing is another one. GTA 6 will have ray tracing on base consoles with a massive open world. If we go into software solutions then even KCD 2 with SVOGI is a counterpoint. No doubt Doom dark ages will be RT only too and perform well.

UE5 seems mostly to be the problem.

The thing is that, without the performance drop, who has shown a raster exclusive game eclipse the best showcases that have RT? Are we seeing a raster game 2x better looking? Not really. So what are they doing with that gigantic performance drop?

For me, the truely next gen feeling games have been the ones with RTGI. To me if a game beyond 2025 does not have RTGI (outside a nintendo console of course) then its an graphic engine engineering flop.

Let me point out that I think that RT is the future of graphics.
But we are not there yet. As long as performance falls of a cliff when we turn on RT, it can't be the standard.
We need much better hardware and software.
And until that happens, it is a feature I have no problem turning off.

 

[Gojiira]

Gimmick at this point.
I havent seen a single game that uses RT that has lighting as good as FEAR, I would much MUCH prefer actual dynamic lighting and interactive light sources.

 

[RafterXL]

The best part about people crying about Ray Tracing is that they blame video card makers needing it when people in computer graphics circles were talking about it in the 90's. Ray Tracing was always the end game, but it was basically impossible on consumer grade hardware back then. Just because you learned about it yesterday doesn't make it some useless feature being pushed to sell hardware. It's actually the exact opposite, the desire was always to go this direction and now the hardware is finally catching up.

Better tech should replace it well before then.

There is no better tech. There may be better use cases, better optimization, but Path Tracing, which is just Ray Tracing is as good as it gets.

inFamous Second Son has the best lighting and 0 RT.

And the fact that you used this image shows you don't really understand what RT does at all. This isn't even lighting, it's a visual effect, and Second Sons actual lighting is sub par compared to RTGI.

 

[Fbh]

Necesity? No.
The performance hit is still too big.
On current consoles I'd always choose 60fps with good image quality over RT at 30fps (or 60fps at a very low resolutions).

That said, I do think RT is one of the key features for the continued evolution of game graphics. Lighting in particular is just so important, it's crazy seeing how dramatically better some scenes look in Cyberpunk with RT on despite it still using literally the same 3d models, textures, geometry, etc.

 

[Buggy Loop]

Let me point out that I think that RT is the future of graphics.
But we are not there yet. As long as performance falls of a cliff when we turn on RT, it can't be the standard.
We need much better hardware and software.
And until that happens, it is a feature I have no problem turning off.

Let me point out that it seems to be more and more correctly implemented with RTGI finding its way on base consoles and totally fine performance wise.

Hellblade 2 & Avowed with UE5 Lumen. Indiana Jones with RT. Doom dark ages coming soon with RT. GTA 6 coming later this year with RTGI. And again, KCD2's SVOGI I consider RT, software RT is still an implementation that raster methods would have not have matched.

The devs trying to implement RT in early days with shit effects like RT shadows seem to be slowly fading away to better practices and experiences.

Again, good implementations we forgot ?



There's shit RT implementations just like there's total crap raster games like Capcom has been showcasing us with Monster hunter wilds

The tech per say has proven itself to be able to perform well.

 

[Mister Wolf]

Raytraced lighting, even software based variants like Lumen and SVOGI are absolutely worthwhile and for me a necessity for large open area games. Especially if those games have a dynamic day/night cycle.

 

[winjer]

Let me point out that it seems to be more and more correctly implemented with RTGI finding its way on base consoles and totally fine performance wise.

Hellblade 2 & Avowed with UE5 Lumen. Indiana Jones with RT. Doom dark ages coming soon with RT. GTA 6 coming later this year with RTGI.

The devs trying to implement RT in early days with shit effects like RT shadows seem to be slowly fading away to better practices and experiences.

But always sacrificing resolution and/or frame rate.

 

[Closer]

I love 2D games so it's a No from me.

 

[Kings Field]

No, I care about fps and gameplay more than gimmicks.

 

[rodrigolfp]

Necessity is the bare minimum to see the game. Everything else is not necessary.

 

[memoryman3]

Yes. It’s time to ditch 60FPS, old and slow handheld hardware, and hardware based tricks entirely and build every 3D game around realistic software based raytracing techniques.

 

[Buggy Loop]

But always sacrificing resolution and/or frame rate.

And what do devs do when they don't enable RTGI? Which raster game is rocking the world right now with that extra power?

Not a single raster pushed something that would look 2x better than with enabling this setting. So what gives? Oh, you mean they should just keep status quo and enable native 4k 60 fps? That's is pretty much why this gen has been so badly regarded as far as leap from gen to gen consoles go.

Watch peoples be blown away by GTA 6... again, what does it take for peoples to understand that the generational leap is through RTGI.

 

[RoboFu]

Devs don't want RT for better graphics alone as also it brings ease of use. A full rt engine is straight forward .. no layering separate systems for lighting , shadows ect.

The down side is even though it's as flexible as current raster techniques it will be easy to get a lot of " same " looking games.