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[T4keD0wN]

Not every RT effect is equal. I stick to never using shadows/ambient occlusion even if i have the performance to sacrifice because i could only tell a difference with those on in metro exodus, but i always use reflections and global illumination/lightning no matter what game.

RT is not always a noticeable upgrade, but its a step to something that is, pathtracing.

Not going to bother watching the whole video, but did he explain why he used medium RT in shadow of the tomb raider, even very high RT is a major downgrade in visual quality, only ultra isnt a downgrade in that game.

 

[nemiroff]

I never saw absolute perfect clean reflection in almost 40 years of my life anywhere

You don't know what you're missing. I live in an area where I can gaze at virtually perfect water reflections every time the wind calms down.

 

[Mister Wolf]

Anyone that can afford to play Cyberpunk with RTGI turned on knows raytracing is worth it. Even playing Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition should be enough to convince you.

 

[LordOcidax]

No, a waste of resources, old techniques can do the job when implemented correctly.

 

[Schmendrick]

My point still stands. With always-on RT need to basically re-create the entire real-world pipeline for computer games and that's just not productive with current insane dev cycles.

that makes absolutely no sense at all and with the rest of your argument I figure you`ve never seen how 3d leveling works, especially how fine grained your material and ligth source control is. "No light for that marking? So let`s just make the material glow a bit" f.e.
You are constructing issues that are none.

 

[ShaiKhulud1989]

You don't know what you're missing. I live in an area where I can gaze at virtually perfect water reflections every time the wind calms down.

Even on your photo I can see a very slight ripple.

Unlike the puddles from AW2 that are basically portals with doubled geometry

 

[RagnarokIV]

Might I chime in as a professional photographer and photo teacher?

 

[The Cockatrice]

You don't know what you're missing. I live in an area where I can gaze at virtually perfect water reflections every time the wind calms down.

Nice, but these are very rare, especially in cities lol.

 

[OverHeat]

I didn’t buy a 2080ti a 3090 and a 4090 to not use it… RT FTW

 

[HeWhoWalks]

No, a waste of resources, old techniques can do the job when implemented correctly.

Old techniques would never get Alan Wake and Cyberpunk to the level of visuals they can output.

 

[MAX PAYMENT]

Yes absolutely. I dont just turn it on in every game that has it. I put it in old games with reshade.

 

[nemiroff]

Even on your photo I can see a very slight ripple.

Unlike the puddles from AW2 that are basically portals with doubled geometry

 

[Paasei]

It looks really good in some games, but I never use it during gameplay. Too much of a performance drop.

If you like messing around with photo mode(s), it's great.

 

[DEAD ORIGINAL]

Ray tracing should've been a PS6 feature this current PS5 gen should've been 4k 60fps.

 

[RagnarokIV]

I didn’t buy a 2080ti a 3090 and a 4090 to not use it… RT FTW

Preach it brother! And I didn't get a 7900 XTX to not-. . . Ahh for fuck sake.

 

[Doctor Hades]

I think ray-tracing is worth it and can make a huge difference to the game's lighting and reflections, especially, adding to the realism. It can also improve shadows but this is less of an issue in most games in my opinion since rasterised one don't suffer from the same issues that rasterised lighting and reflections do.

With RT, gone are those weird white lines around people's eyes and faces as well as screen space occlusion artefacts in reflections. Alan Wake 2 is an example on how transformative the RT can be, especially with path-tracing, and on PC the game looks a generation ahead of the console versions (and likely will continue to even with the PS5 Pro upgrade).

It is great to see technology like this and Nanite, which masks level of detail issues and pop in, making their way into more and more games. And on PC, I can still run the games at 60+ fps with good image quality, thanks to powerful hardware and the best upscaling DLSS technology from NVIDIA.

 

[PaintTinJr]

Would say we are missing an option for:

One for the PS6/XsY future, ML AI from 720p/1080p on PS5/Pro will start it.

 

[Spyxos]

I have played almost all the games in the list with raytracing and the 2 games where I left it on were Cyberpunk and Control. In 90% of cases it is simply not worth it.

 

[efyu_lemonardo]

I'm just sick of ugly shadow maps, man...

 

[delishcaek]

I want all my games to have at least RT shadows and RT reflections. I hate SSR artifacts and shadow cascades (and super low shadow draw distances). Besides object pop-in they're imo the worst and most immersion breaking things in video games. Like visible shadow cascades have always greatly annoyed me, even more so on console where shadow quality is usually something running at low to medium settings to begin with.

 

[Radical_3d]

Worth it if you enjoy “correct” lightning. But I don’t. I don’t like Barry Lyndon which was filmed with natural light. Put some spotlights here and there. With colours if possible. Make shit pop. Uncharted 4 is still a visual feast and it has 0 rays shot. Then you have Ciberpunk with Barbie and Ken as NPCs but ey! correct lightning if you have a 4080. Eff off! I can see the case for things like AW2 where the look is transformative and the action is minimal. Or RE4, where there is enough headroom so the performance almost never tanks. But usually it’s just a waste of frames.

 

[Shakka43]

If I can still get 60fps with good enough graphics settings, yes.

 

[artsi]

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.

That's not a ray tracing issue, puddle of still water should be a near perfect reflection so RT works correctly there.
I'm sure you can find examples in real life when you observe it.

Raindrops and wind creates ripples, which makes the puddle reflection not perfect and that's something that should be achieved using water simulation or materials when you have realisting RT lighting system in place.

 

[ShaiKhulud1989]

I don’t like Barry Lyndon which was filmed with natural light.

And even BL was heavily stylized and controled via reflectors and paper filters on windows to look like a period painting. Art matters.

 

[balls of snow]

I would rather have full fat 4k/60 without ray tracing than with ray tracing + low internal res + upscalling method. The tech is just not there in the console space.

 

[FeastYoEyes]

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

Hard disagree but that is okay.

 

[Portugeezer]

Ray tracing on current consoles is like "1080p" on the PS3. It's a nice feature to have, you can do it, but it's mostly too big of a performance hit for what is not a huge visual improvement (considering never full RT and there are decent ways of faking effects).

 

[The Cockatrice]

That's not a ray tracing issue, puddle of still water should be a near perfect reflection so RT works correctly there.
I'm sure you can find examples in real life when you observe it.

Raindrops and wind creates ripples, which makes the puddle reflection not perfect and that's something that should be achieved using water simulation or materials when you have realisting RT lighting system in place.

Except these are very rare cases while in games its used for every reflective surface, busy streets, lamps, whatever you want, no matter what. It was even more hillarious in Hogwarts Legacy where a fucking chalkboard was showing actual reflections on it. This in turn has a heavy impact on performance. I dont mind a few reflective puddles in the ground here and there, but developers should stop overusing the effect.

 

[DanielG165]

When it’s implemented properly, yes. I bought an RTX card, and I’m gonna use those cores lol.

 

[adamsapple]

When implemented well, it is definitely worth it.

The one example where it really benefited in a game that I absolutely love is RE2 remake. Non RT has really bad SSR with big blotches everywhere. RT fixes that.

Not every game benefits the same way, this is just one example where I thought it made a big difference.

 

[Pasta la Vista]

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.

Games wouldnt be getting made if it wasn't for consoles. Maybe ask Nvidia to fund the development of games to work to the strengths of their hardware if you think consoles are "holding games back". Dumbass opinion.

 

[Denton]

I used RT since I got 2080Ti in 2018. Best showcases for the tech:

Cyberpunk 2077
Metro Exodus EE
Control
Alan Wake 2
Avatar

Its biggest advantage is allowing prebaked-like lighting quality (AC Unity/Uncharted 4) but with realtime changes in time of day and weather.

 

[SF Kosmo]

If you have a 40-series with performance to spare, then yeah, RT is worth it. If you're hanging in to that 2080, maybe not so much.

RT and path tracing especially is definitely the future of game graphics. For games like Alan Wake II and Cyberpunk it's not even a question, even though these games have ostensibly the highest performance cost (albeit offset by DLSS magic).

Games with limited RT see less benefit obviously but if it's the difference between 90 and 110 fps then I'm still gonna take that trade.

 

[Rivdoric]

Yes but Power Consumption skyrockets when using it.

It's +150/200W on Cyberpunk with the 4090. I also don't use PT right now because it hurts other parameters too much. Using DLSS performance on 4K to use PT is a definite NO.

Overall, Impossible to enable RT in summer lol.

 

[Bojji]

This and HDR get turned off when I get play games.

I was in: Fuck HDR! camp before but since LG OLED, HDR looks better in almost every game. Not simply better but MUCH better.

I can't play games that have native HDR support in SDR, they lack depth in the image.

AMD Unboxed saying RT isn't worth it, I'm shocked.

It's better in 99% of scenarios, so why wouldn't I use it?

I think their list is quite fair, RT looks better in some games and completely not worth in others. Depend on implementation.

Yes but Power Consumption skyrockets when using it.

It's +150/200W on Cyberpunk with the 4090. I also don't use PT right now because it hurts other parameters too much. Using DLSS performance on 4K to use PT is a definite NO.

Overall, Impossible to enable RT in summer lol.

Fun thing is that I always saw power reduction with PT, on Ampere and something like 4070ti super it's xx Watts less compared to raster only.

 

[Mister Wolf]

VS




Raytraced lighting matters.

 

[Kvally]

I was in: Fuck HDR! camp before but since LG OLED, HDR looks better in almost every game. Not simply better but MUCH better.

Yeah, I have tried it in numerous games, even checking the newest games, and I can't do it. Just looks bad. And I have the latest LG as well. Sometimes I would find that the game had it on by default, and I didn't check. Then I realize something isn't looking right. I go into settings, disable HDR, and I am like AW YEAH.

 

[artsi]

Except these are very rare cases while in games its used for every reflective surface, busy streets, lamps, whatever you want, no matter what. It was even more hillarious in Hogwarts Legacy where a fucking chalkboard was showing actual reflections on it. This in turn has a heavy impact on performance. I dont mind a few reflective puddles in the ground here and there, but developers should stop overusing the effect.

Yeah sure, but that's a materials issue, it's not the lighting system's fault if the map designer decides to use mirror surfaces on everything.

I'm sure that's something that will get better when developers are more used to working with realistic lighting models.

 

[James0007]

Performance always wins out for me

As some have mentioned above, graphics have been ‘good enough’ for probably a decade if not more to my eyes. Heck I still think Warcraft 3 looks amazing. Art direction will always win out.

RT flicking it on or off in games to me it’s merely a case of it looking different & not necessarily better. With Path Tracing on in Cyberpunk - it wasn’t even worth it for the added noise on my GPU fans and I turned it off.

With less and less things to promote hardware leaps with outside of ‘bigger numbers’ - it’s definitely been this generations marketing buzzword zeitgeist.

I could be off base here as I’m not fully informed - but isn’t raytracing also time consuming from a dev PoV because the denoiser ends up needing to be hand tuned manually??

 

[willothedog]

Good PC yes, consoles no as they are just too underpowered.

 

[Gubaldo]

Can't go back to raster after using RT,. for me its similar to " can't go back to 16:9 after using 21:9"

 

[Saber]

Even though performance is trash, I believe RT is a useless feature regardless of wheter it gets better or not. Its an incredibly dumb feature explicifit for retards. Theres no benefit of people looking at reflections, not is gained and neither does affect the gameplay. Most of time people gonna spent looking elsewhere or barelly looking at it.

 

[The Cockatrice]

but that's a materials issue,

And thats why RT is an afterthought. If the games arent designed with RT in mind(like Metro Exodus was) and just tacked on later, then I dont care about it. Lots of examples in the OP video of this being 90% the case.

 

[Kvally]

I am a graphics person over performance, personally.

 

[Schmendrick]

I believe RT is a useless feature regardless of wheter it gets better or not.

 

[Duchess]

I think it's the future. Once the tech is truly there, it will make games look amazing, due to correctly tracing the light rays. But it will take time.

We're just at the start. I'm sure there were plenty who claimed that early 3D games weren't very good, and so none would be:

 

[Zathalus]

Good RT implementation is simply always better then none. Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077, Ratchet & Clank, Control, and Alan Wake 2 all just look better with RT.

Handcrafted scenes where the artists laboriously place reflections, bake AO, and setup all the lighting can look close in some regards, but that illusion swiftly falls apart when going to areas where the artists simply didn’t have that much time to spend. Cyberpunk 2077 is proof of this, areas like Lizzie's Bar can look good without PT (but will still loose out obviously), but as soon as you start walking around the city where it didn’t get as much attention from artists the change PT brings is transformative.

 

[Gaiff]

editing

 

[Z O N E]

I would always trade visual clarity (no upscaling method at all) and 60 fps minumum for RT. That being said, CP really look beautifuil with RT on

If you're going to use that abbreviation for Cyberpunk 2077 please, for your safety add 2077 at the end of it.

 

[BadBreathOfTheWild]

It can often be a waste of resources compared to older techniques done well.

Once gaming consoles reach a point where it’s routine to have 4K 60Hz path-tracing, that’ll be a real generational step change.

Might be a few generations or decades away from that without some breakthroughs or new ideas, though.