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The_Observer
Member
At the moment definitely not. It’s the biggest performance wasting feature nowadays. It might be in the future but there are many ray-traced games that looks worse than some ps4 games.
TintoConCasera
I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
Only game I've played with RT is Metro Exodus, which looks amazing with it. Cyberpunk also seemed to look great with it but the rig I had at the time wasn't good enough.
Tried it on many other games but it wasn't worth it imo, barely any difference.
Tried it on many other games but it wasn't worth it imo, barely any difference.
The Cockatrice
Banned
As of now outside of Cyberpunk and Metro Exodus, I'd say no. I honestly didnt notice it much in ALan Wake 2 sicne the game is already very dark most of the times.
Angry_Megalodon
Member
Only in a few games. Typical marketing bullshit that in the end doesn't make any difference.
Kenpachii
Member
Games are getting hold back by consoles and AMD gpu's that simple suck at it. So if its there it ads absolutely nothing to the picture or its barely visible when games are focused for those platforms. When not however u see clear gains and its hard to go back to no raytracing.
Cyberpunk 2077 overdrive is just amazing.
Cyberpunk 2077 overdrive is just amazing.
RetroGamingUK
Member
My problem is that ray tracing was supposed to remove the need for developers/artists to “bake” lighting.
Removing this vastly speeds up development time and reduces cost
Instead we seem to have ended up with games that require them to have options for baked lighting and ray tracing which has just made things worse
Next gen shouldn’t happen until GPUs powerful enough and cheap enough to include ray/path tracing in any game and completely remove the need for “baking”
Removing this vastly speeds up development time and reduces cost
Instead we seem to have ended up with games that require them to have options for baked lighting and ray tracing which has just made things worse
Next gen shouldn’t happen until GPUs powerful enough and cheap enough to include ray/path tracing in any game and completely remove the need for “baking”
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StueyDuck
Member
The problem with ray tracing is that the engines pushing them currently run pretty poorly with or without RT as is. UE5 is still a stuttering mess, so having RT hit on performance isn't selling the technology.
the only games so far that make it worth it (at least the ones I've played) are Metro exodus and SM:remastered/Miles SM2, Rift apart. The reason i say these is that they add a decent amount of visual candy whilst not causing extra issues in real-time performance.
but for the majority of Modern titles, why turn on that FPS hit when the engines are already struggling to run on the standard PC's or Consoles that are available. The extra visual benefits aren't worth the performance hit.
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DenchDeckard
Moderated wildly
I think it is worth it as long as with DLSS im getting over 60FPS, ideally north of 80 which I find in most titles.
RT is transformative if done right.
RT is transformative if done right.
b0uncyfr0
Member
Youre missing out. HDR (when done correctly) can take your breath away. You need a good HDR monitor too. Even most OLED's suck here.
RT is definitely not worth it. I usually save the grunt for more fps.
HeWhoWalks
Gold Member
On PC, yes. Pro? We’ll see.
The_Observer
Member
Despite my opinion above, I would argue that it’s shadows where I find it worths it because flickering low-res shadows are taking a piss on otherwise beautiful pristine graphics in some games. But devs are wasting it on meaningless reflections and GI where there are better solutions performance-wise. They can produce insane visuals with baked GI, just see Last of Us 2.
Dr.Morris79
Gold Member
Not to me. Always turn it off
DirtyBast8rd
Member
Yes, I want it all. Full fidelity, 4k 120hz, RT, feed me.
Kvally
Member
My display has the latest and greatest in HDR. I am not missing out at all. I always tweak my games, and HDR gets the boot from me when tweaking. Everyone has different visual preferences, eyes, etc.
Schmendrick
Member
Full Pathtracing can be downright tranformative, RTGI can also have a pretty big impact but singular implementations like RT Reflections or partial GI implementations like shadows / AO are rarely worth the performance tradeoff.
RT is the way forward, but the median hardware isn`t far enough for Devs to go all in, yet.
Next gen we´ll probably simply have RTGI as the standard with no Raster-Fallback anymore (after the crossgen period ofc), maybe with more ML advancements we might even get specced down PT like in CP2077.
RT is the way forward, but the median hardware isn`t far enough for Devs to go all in, yet.
Next gen we´ll probably simply have RTGI as the standard with no Raster-Fallback anymore (after the crossgen period ofc), maybe with more ML advancements we might even get specced down PT like in CP2077.
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owandeseis
Member
It was kinda useless 2-4 years ago, just a couple reflections and that was it with a big performance cost.
Now with Cyberpunk, Silent Hill 2 or Metro it's a must for me, Hardware Lumen or Path Tracing can be gamechanging, the cost was too big a few years ago but with the series 4000 and frame generation it's doable now. For AMD cards tho i'd just turn it off and raise other settings.
IMO in previous generations, textures, polygons etc could make your game stand out graphically, it's hardly the case anymore, a lot of games have really good textures and look very good, but the best looking games this generation are the ones that have the best lightning effects.
Now with Cyberpunk, Silent Hill 2 or Metro it's a must for me, Hardware Lumen or Path Tracing can be gamechanging, the cost was too big a few years ago but with the series 4000 and frame generation it's doable now. For AMD cards tho i'd just turn it off and raise other settings.
IMO in previous generations, textures, polygons etc could make your game stand out graphically, it's hardly the case anymore, a lot of games have really good textures and look very good, but the best looking games this generation are the ones that have the best lightning effects.
BennyBlanco
aka IMurRIVAL69
Some games, yes. Cyberpunk, Wukong, and AW2 come to mind. These games still look good without but it brings them to the next level.
keefged4
Member
It depends on the game. Some games do benefit visually, however being honest I'd take fps over better GI/shadows/reflections any day. So I have if off the majority of the time. Silent Hill 2 is a recent example where I thought it dramatically changed the look of the game though, so for me at least it got left on.
TrebleShot
Member
Really comes down to the implementation, if its just a blanket replacement for lighting than its usually not worth it.
In fact I think the best use is relections sometimes shadows. RTGI can be nice but way too heavy.
Diablo IV may as well not be there.
AW2 still looks great with raster but looks shiny with RT.
Outlaws, Avatar, no point at all.
In fact I think the best use is relections sometimes shadows. RTGI can be nice but way too heavy.
Diablo IV may as well not be there.
AW2 still looks great with raster but looks shiny with RT.
Outlaws, Avatar, no point at all.
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ShaiKhulud1989
Gold Member
Might I chime in as a professional photographer and photo teacher?
Realistic doesn't mean good or even pretty. Half of my job consists of faking/alterating light sources or colors. Cutscene lighting is always fake through and through and even in-game lights are usually heavily modified for mood, artisric or navigational purposes.
Ray-tracing is solving the lightmap baking problem, yes. It can speed up the process if you lack artists or resources to re-bake the lights oftenly. But full RT/PT is too problematic for both art and level design departments, becase the 100% accurate lighting is usually dull, flat and just boring. That's why games, just like movies or photoshoots, will never drop fake light. And it's easier to fake the whole model with occasional inclusion of RT for contact shadows or reflections, not full-on RT. Even CP2077, a champion of the tech, while being good for most of the time with RT/PT is suffering in that mode. In some scenes and locations quite heavily, because art is not adjusted properly and cannot be realistically fully adjusted to full PT regardless. For example dark locations with PT/RT are just... Well, too dark. You need to either add a lot of subtle fake lights, mess with the contrast or just turn off the roof for cutscenes in darker locations. Plus static scenes tend to 'pop' more, because they are adjusted by hand and not by the laws of nature.
There is also a huge problem with faking lights with always-on RT, because of the great strain on hardware. You basically need to add fake reflectors, fake lighting rigs and even fake color panels. All to negate effects of realistic shadows and realistic color bleeding. PT/RT is basically bringing real life on-set problems to videogames and nobody wanna deal with that, especially in big-ass open-world games. That's why, for example, Horizon Forbidden West doesn't use RT and very few games even on PC (outside of sims) rely on RTGI for a complete lighting model.
So yeah, RT will be used, but sparingly. It's not always on even in pre-rendered animated films because there is an artistic intention that can be ruined by the light being 'too real'.
Realistic doesn't mean good or even pretty. Half of my job consists of faking/alterating light sources or colors. Cutscene lighting is always fake through and through and even in-game lights are usually heavily modified for mood, artisric or navigational purposes.
Ray-tracing is solving the lightmap baking problem, yes. It can speed up the process if you lack artists or resources to re-bake the lights oftenly. But full RT/PT is too problematic for both art and level design departments, becase the 100% accurate lighting is usually dull, flat and just boring. That's why games, just like movies or photoshoots, will never drop fake light. And it's easier to fake the whole model with occasional inclusion of RT for contact shadows or reflections, not full-on RT. Even CP2077, a champion of the tech, while being good for most of the time with RT/PT is suffering in that mode. In some scenes and locations quite heavily, because art is not adjusted properly and cannot be realistically fully adjusted to full PT regardless. For example dark locations with PT/RT are just... Well, too dark. You need to either add a lot of subtle fake lights, mess with the contrast or just turn off the roof for cutscenes in darker locations. Plus static scenes tend to 'pop' more, because they are adjusted by hand and not by the laws of nature.
There is also a huge problem with faking lights with always-on RT, because of the great strain on hardware. You basically need to add fake reflectors, fake lighting rigs and even fake color panels. All to negate effects of realistic shadows and realistic color bleeding. PT/RT is basically bringing real life on-set problems to videogames and nobody wanna deal with that, especially in big-ass open-world games. That's why, for example, Horizon Forbidden West doesn't use RT and very few games even on PC (outside of sims) rely on RTGI for a complete lighting model.
So yeah, RT will be used, but sparingly. It's not always on even in pre-rendered animated films because there is an artistic intention that can be ruined by the light being 'too real'.
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Bernardougf
Member
What matters with todays quality of graphics for me is stable 60+ fps.. everything else in the effects side is secondary when really playing the game and not pausing to take pretty pictures.
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HeWhoWalks
Gold Member
It’s transformative on the games which use it best. On console, that’s Spider-Man 2 (before the Pro)!
PC?
For example, turn it off on the scene below and it looks nowhere close to as good. Just playing it at a higher framerate doesn’t do it for me because I literally miss out on the intended look of the game…
PC?
For example, turn it off on the scene below and it looks nowhere close to as good. Just playing it at a higher framerate doesn’t do it for me because I literally miss out on the intended look of the game…
hinch7
Member
Yep. If you have the hardware and it runs well, why wouldn't you use it.
AMD hardware just isn't up to snuff when it comes to RT. The performance and feature sets are still well behind whats on the market currently.
They really need to up their game, come next generation of consoles.
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FeastYoEyes
Member
I think anything in the right half of the table he made it makes a difference. But other than those games, there's hardly ever been an impact by turning it on. It looks nice!
He does have me curious as I've always played Village with RT. Does it actually look better without it?
I will add that Silent Hill 2 is up there with the best implementations (or at least the most transformative).
He does have me curious as I've always played Village with RT. Does it actually look better without it?
I will add that Silent Hill 2 is up there with the best implementations (or at least the most transformative).
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HeWhoWalks
Gold Member
The most transformative games are Wake 2 and Cyberpunk. Silent Hill comes in 3rd.
nemiroff
Gold Member
This is like asking "is the use of texture on polygons worth it?" when developers suck - Or vice versa. The question needs nuance and context. Also, worth it for who?
If you have the power to run it efficiently, and the developers are good, of course it is worth it. F.ex. because CDPR and Nvidia did it justice, I don't see any reason for me play Cyberpunk without it.
If you have the power to run it efficiently, and the developers are good, of course it is worth it. F.ex. because CDPR and Nvidia did it justice, I don't see any reason for me play Cyberpunk without it.
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nemiroff
Gold Member
I see what you mean. But to be more nuanced, I thought Asteroids was fantastic in wirefram at 60fps back in the day..
Point is, this is a concern with an expiration date. Graphics is always moving along; we don't need to worry about the performance impact of wireframe vs polygon as much anymore. And some day raytracing will be in the same spot.
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blastprocessor
The Amiga Brotherhood
Wow did they miss Star Wars Outlaws, that's a pretty stunning looking game.
ShaiKhulud1989
Gold Member
Or it's just static assets being bad because Blooder is a small team and Remedy are literally studio behind 3d Mark.
Indoor art went all over the place with RTGI (the game simply became too dark, sometimes dungeons are borderline unplayable without mods) but I don't have my own shots on me to back my argument up.
As for CP2077. While overdrive is very nice and can be powerful tool for indirect lighting, pre-baked GI is very competent and it's hard to notice a $1000 GPU difference if you're not peeping at contact shadows and dynamic reflections.
Static:
RT:
Let's look at PL DLC locations where RT art is more adjusted to overdrive PT
PT:
Static:
As you can see PT is more realistic, but baked scene pops way-way more and just more moody overall.
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Schmendrick
Member
One issue with this take is that current problems with RT/PT and dark spots or even whole dark areas are for the most part hardware related since we currently cut off bounces (CP does it at 2 I think) or heavily limit the amount of rays. This means we lose any and all light after that which leads to spaces that would usually be dimly lit by bounce 3-x or some stray rays being black holes instead.
That`s not an RT issue, it`s a hardware power issue. Also RT doesn`t take away the control of light sources in engines. You can have RT as the base and then edit the lighting to fit the picture in your head afterwards.
And most of all: Games so far have never been developed with RT as standard in mind, it`s always been raster first, and everything else a distant second.
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Bernardougf
Member
Yep and when it can be implemented with rock solid 60 fps in the hardware I use it will have all my support.. right now I wont trade fps for better reflections on puddles and some pretty lights.
If I can play something like the last os us 2 quality at 60 fps is more than enough to satisfy my current graphics needs.
In the past sacrificing fps for something trully meaningful was acceptable.. now we are having really diminishing returns for the sacrifices to perfomance.
Imo of course
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The Cockatrice
Banned
The video in the OP already shows this issue, though it's far worse than they make it out to be. This is almost 90% of the time when RT is an afterthought. Most games with RT shadows are a waste of hardware resources because they never look realistic at all, especially RTAO. Reflections are also unrealistic as hell from water, puddles, I never saw absolute perfect clean reflection in almost 40 years of my life anywhere, so no idea why everyone is gushing over them. Mirrors were nerfed only to make RT look good, but we had great mirror reflections since 2000, even if fake/double scene/or other tricks.
xVodevil
Member
Well as I keep realizing that even if it is turned on I would barely notice anyway if not for the halved framerate.
Just played Alan Wake2 new dlc this morning with RT OFF 4k now, last year it was 1440p with full RT ON - DLSS both, and the only thing I realized better to keep it off, unless it's not a major hit just a very small fps cost.
But I really didn't feel like missing out on much for having proper smooth 100+ framerates instead of barely 60 with framegen where you get the latency too.
Just played Alan Wake2 new dlc this morning with RT OFF 4k now, last year it was 1440p with full RT ON - DLSS both, and the only thing I realized better to keep it off, unless it's not a major hit just a very small fps cost.
But I really didn't feel like missing out on much for having proper smooth 100+ framerates instead of barely 60 with framegen where you get the latency too.
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ShaiKhulud1989
Gold Member
My point still stands. With always-on RT devs need to basically re-create the entire real-world pipeline for computer games and that's just not productive with current insane dev cycles. You'll instantly get parasitic reflections, color bleeding, you'll need to negate parasitic shadows, etc. because everything will be 'real'. Just imagine that the in-game navigation will be plastered with fake AF lights. People are moaning about the yellow paint and with fully honest lighting we are falling in even deeper hole of breaking the immersion.
Plus a lot of times it's just easier and faster to fake the scene altogether to fit the artistic vision that to painfully tweak the entire set design to fit in PT/RT shenanigans.
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CuteFaceJay
Member
with god knows how many years the industry has been without it they've been smart with making stuff look good without needing it so at the moment it's not really work the power consumption if you ask me. I've not really given much interest to it because it's a power hog.