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[yogaflame]

Ray tracing has been always the issue this days when it comes to gaming analysis, previews and reviews. For me it is not important. Yes raytracing looks good, but it is still not a necessity, whether its a powerful console or pc its running or not. I'm thankful if a games has RT, but if there is no RT features I'm still contented. I rather have good IQ like good textures,excellent physics and good frame rate than Raytracing. In the past I always look for Rt features in games. I always checked previews and reviews, and videos if RT is implemented. I always make a comment about the game if it has Rt feature or plan to add RT or request to add RT.

But my opinion has change after seeing so many games suffered from adding RT feature , were image quality and clarity is not that good, and fewer physics and destructable and interactive environment. Then I saw so many games that looks so beautiful, physics and environmental interactivity are excellent and mosy of all enjoyable to play even without RT features.. Death of Stranding 1, Stellar blade, Astrobot, Space Marines 2, FF7 rebirth, and KCD2 are proof that you don't need ray tracing to make the game look next gen and beatiful, playable, and excellent performance as long as the game have very good physics, decent frame rate and good image quality.

 

[winjer]

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.

 

[PurePlatinum]

No it’s a marketing gimmick used to sell graphics cards. It provides next to no benefit and tanks performance by half.

 

[PeteBull]

By next next gen consoles( so not ps6 but ps7) rt will be baseline, by then(roughly 2036-2044) even midrange gpu on pc market will be at least as strong as 4090 and by then impact on performance will be relatively small.
Rememeber guys back in the days anti-aliasing and anizotropic filtering x16(vs for example trilinear) were both crazy expensive too

 

[bitbydeath]

By next next gen consoles( so not ps6 but ps7) rt will be baseline, by then(roughly 2036-2044) even midrange gpu on pc market will be at least as strong as 4090 and by then impact on performance will be relatively small.
Rememeber guys back in the days anti-aliasing and anizotropic filtering x16(vs for example trilinear) were both crazy expensive too

Better tech should replace it well before then.

 

[RagnarokIV]

It’s the future and the future is now.

 

[bitbydeath]

inFamous Second Son has the best lighting and 0 RT.

 

[Makoto-Yuki]

yeah. games look shit without it. it is demanding but we're getting there. the current gen consoles are too weak for it but next gen will be better of course.

i'm playing on a 5090 so no issue for me. give me all the traced rays

 

[rofif]

no. of course not.
The cheat workarounds raster techniques are cheaper and quite good

 

[yogaflame]

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.

There are allot of games that took a hit on performance and image quality just to have those few RT reflections. For me, even on next gen, its still not a necessity to have RT. I still want great image quality and realistic physics and evironmental effects.

 

[John Bilbo]

No.

 

[yogaflame]

no. of course not.
The cheat workarounds raster techniques are cheaper and quite good

Kcd2 had a good technique on lighting and its decent. Even old games like Uncharted and Last of us, this games use very good technique in lighting which is decent and does not take a hit on performance and image quality. And more resources are focus on physics too.

 

[Schmendrick]

This gen on consoles, no, the compromises are too great on current gen hardware.
Next gen things like RTGI will simply become standard with full PT probably taking another gen unless some AI solution makes it possible earlier.

 

[Hudo]

Ray tracing is mainly interesting from a developer point of view, imho. It makes your renderer far easier to understand, develop, and to reason about. It's also conceptually closer to the rendering equation, of which it is an approximation. Just like rasterization is. But rasterization was born out of the necessity to render stuff at lower cost of performance. The problem is that your rasterization pipeline nowadays is so complex that it's hard to keep a mental model of it. At least, it is for me. Basically each step in the rasterization pipeline is complex enough to keep your head occupied. Or maybe I am just a retard.
Ray tracing becomes fascinating as soon as you realize that you can actually change the model, i.e., instead of working with an approximative model of light, you could use ray tracing with an approximation of, e.g., models of hadrons or other types of particles. Since ray tracing (and ray casting, and ray marching and path tracing) is just an algorithm to apply some model on a space and get a lower-dimensional, discrete representation of it. E.g. RT is also used to do tracing of sounds, making it pretty simple to know if a sound needs to be dampened because it's behind some geometry with a certain material type or so. I also remember Nintendo giving a talk at GDC about how they used ray casting on a voxel representation of their world to dynamically compose sounds in Tears of the Kingdom.

From a user point of view, RT isn't that interesting, imho. RT was mainly used as a marketing gimmick by Nvidia to justify their RTX series of cards.

 

[PeteBull]

Better tech should replace it well before then.

We can argue pathtracing is "truer" version of raytracing and we already got it in cp2077, just its even more demanding on ur hardware, and by a lot.
W/e name devs/hardware makers gonna chose, it will have to do what rt does, and even to a better degree.
Same way nowadays we got many techniques/ways to improve image quality, some arent called anti-aliasing even, but thats their main function/purpose ofc- to get rid of the jaggies/smooth out jagged edges

 

[Goalus]

Absolutely.

 

[AutumnLeaves]

Probably the most useless tech that is paraded around like godly in the past few years.

 

[owandeseis]

Lightning is probably the aspect with the biggest improvement margin graphics wise, but it is still too expensive.

Most studios still use RT as a way to save resources since it's less time demanding than "good" raster technics, which ends up making the game run worse and not look better.

But some others can transform their game with some great RTGI / pathtracing usage, Cyberpunk is still the most impressive game with all the shit maxed, but it's very expensive.

Nowadays i'd say i prefer games to be like KCD2 with good lightning but not as demanding as RTGI/PT, but i think the best looking game from now on will always be a game that uses these techniques, even if it can't run in most machines.

 

[DirtInUrEye]

Yes, ray tracing is what gives graphics their power. It's an energy field created by all Nvidia things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the graphics together.

 

[dreamstation]

Maybe in 10 years when it's not such a huge performance hit. Right now it's just a gimmick that NVIDIA try using as justification for their ridiculous pricing

 

[coolmast3r]

This is a very poorly worded question. You should have asked whether raytracing-induced framerate penalty is worth the improved visuals considering current GPU prices, if you're talking PC games here. And in case of current gen consoles - whether you'd prefer 30fps raytraced visuals or 60fps traditional non-raytraced if choosing different graphics modes wasn't a thing.

 

[DirtInUrEye]

This is a very poorly worded question. You should have asked whether raytracing-induced framerate penalty is worth the improved visuals considering current GPU prices, if you're talking PC games here. And in case of current gen consoles - whether you'd prefer 30fps raytraced visuals or 60fps traditional non-raytraced if choosing different graphics modes wasn't a thing.

Nah you're just being anal.

 

[coolmast3r]

Nah you're just being anal.

Which is still better than asking meaningless questions

 

[MALpractice311]

No. Not until it stops with the performance drops. I'm glad to finally see other people coming to this realization.

 

[Guardian Monkey]

After playing Minecraft with path tracing a few years ago it was easy to see it was the future. It was also easy to see that bringing this forward to mainstream was also in the future which is still the case today.

 

[Zathalus]

Is it a necessity? No. Is it a visual upgrade if implemented well? Yes. Will it be the standard for the PS6 generation onwards? Likely yes as well.

 

[Kamina]

Not really, but it looks awesome and can greatly improve a game if done right

 

[T4keD0wN]

The focus on pushing RT is only because 1080ti was so good itd last for a decade+ and nvidia needed a way to force people to keep on endlessly upgrading in order to sell more gpus. There, i said it. Once we can do pathtraced 4k60 on low end cards theyll come up with another unnecessary bs that makes existing GPUs obsolete to sell new generations of GPUs, cycle has to continue.

Its completely unnecessary, and serves only as a way to make development faster (cut costs) at the expense of end users, thats the main benefit, but it is a stepping stone on the road to pathtracing, which actually looks good and is actually worth the performance hit

RT reflections as a replacement for SSR are the only thing that truly justifies the performance hit in most cases, RTGI can be good too, but RT shadows and AO for example are just a complete performance wasters without any visual benefit (very often even lower res) compared to regular solutions the games otherwise ship with.

 

[spons]

Hell no. Never needed or wanted it when it didn't exist yet, and what I see in games now makes me wonder why anyone bothers.
And it's graphics whoring anyway. Remember a time when people hated graphics whores? Then ray tracing comes around and suddenly people want it for better graphics or some shit. Marketing is one hell of a drug.

Also Half Life 2 RTX looks like dogshit.

 

[SnapShot]

It depends entirely on how it used in games

Like, imagine having destructible environments in a game, with pre-baked lighting those destructible elements might look out of place because they don't have baked lighting

Raytracing fixes this by making their lighting look as good as if it were baked

Even without considering this Raytracing overall just looks much better, but again entirely depends on how it used

 

[consoul]

Yes.

It's clearly necessary, which is remarkable given that video games have managed for 50 years without it. Thanks for asking this important question.

 

[Hyet]

Its more useful for devs than players thats for sure. It'll take a while to reach the point they dont have to bake anything because RTX are in every game playing device and everything is properly optimized

 

[genesisblock]

Eventually software will catch up to the demands ray-tracing will have and it's just a matter of lighting developers utilizing it in interesting ways, preferably for stealth.

Imagine, finally getting proper and real-time shadows to track enemies in arbitrally designed levels.

 

[HRK69]

 

[Little Mac]

Is it a nice bonus when implemented well? Sure. Does it justify the performance loss, or the rising costs of hardware? Fuck no. Also developers are spending more time and money trying to make games look pretty than they are trying to make games good.

 

[ManaByte]

by then(roughly 2036-2044)

2036 for the PS6? HAHAHAHAHAHAH

It's not going to be 11 years between consoles.

 

[Denton]

It is inevitability at this point.

Btw, KCD2 uses software voxel based raytracing. Imho it is fantastic solution for now (when HW power is not there yet for full pathtracing at high framerate).

 

[JimmyRustler]

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

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.

 

[DirtyBast8rd]

For new games with a realistic graphic style yes. Need to have new tech to push this forward. Is it necessary to enjoy a game. Not really, but things can look weird once used to raytraced graphics.

 

[Donald mac Ronald]

It's a con sold by Jenson's jacket.

 

[Nex240]

Well at least path tracing sure is nice as hell on Cyberpunk. The lighting in motion just looks right.
I expect next gen is going to have a lot of path tracing remasters, right now there is just a lot of sour grapes trying to downplay how good RT can be because you need an expensive GPU to access it.

 

[RJMacready73]

I dunno man the DF video on the Ray Tracing within Indiana Jones makes the game graphically day and night looking, whilst still perfectly playable and gorgeous on non RTX 4090's when Max'd it looks absolutely incredible, I sure as shit wished I was playing games with max RT but I won't pay the premium for it

 

[San Dan Glokta]

Bought my RTX 4070 excited for raytracing, coming from 1060.

Have yet to use it for any game because I'd rather have framerate, and the visual different is negligible.

 

[pqueue]

no. not worth the performance hit for something you really do not spend much time noticing

would prefer game devs spend time/effort on game play, not rt.

for now, RT is still a gimmick.. we are still at least a generation, maybe two, from it being beneficial and not resource (and economically) costly.

 

[STARSBarry]

I voted "other" i notice this is a hard no from NeoGAF so far which is weird. This is like the difference when bumpmapping was introduced to textures.

Ray tracing especially on materials can really make a huge difference graphically to a game. Is that required? No, you can style a game so no ray tracing is needed, but it can certainly elevate a games looks if it's going for a semi realistic style just by turning it on.

I am confused by people who say they don't notice it in this thread, and I suspect it's more likely that this is a "I don't have the hardware that can run 60 FPS + raytracing so therefore it's not important" doing all the work here for this opinion.

Like anyone who's played cyberpunk with path tracing or even smaller games that use alot of shadows like Darktide the difference is night and day. I have noticed that it's hard to tell in videos vs actually playing a game with Ray tracing, so I wonder how many people here are getting their opinions from videos rather than running it themselves, I suspect a lot.

 

[moogman]

Proper GI and path tracing looks incredible, but we're not at the point where it's viable on anything apart from over $1,000 GPU's. The RT on consoles is just a marketing feature and doesn't really show what it can do.

It is a necessity in the future though, if just for reduced development times, never mind what it can look like given the hardware.

 

[winjer]

I voted "other" i notice this is a hard no from NeoGAF so far which is weird. This is like the difference when bumpmapping was introduced to textures.

Ray tracing especially on materials can really make a huge difference graphically to a game. Is that required? No, you can style a game so no ray tracing is needed, but it can certainly elevate a games looks if it's going for a semi realistic style just by turning it on.

I am confused by people who say they don't notice it in this thread, and I suspect it's more likely that this is a "I don't have the hardware that can run 60 FPS + raytracing so therefore it's not important" doing all the work here for this opinion.

Like anyone who's played cyberpunk with path tracing or even smaller games that use alot of shadows like Darktide the difference is night and day. I have noticed that it's hard to tell in videos vs actually playing a game with Ray tracing, so I wonder how many people here are getting their opinions from videos rather than running it themselves, I suspect a lot.

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

 

[yamaci17]

yes
it makes graphics incredibly immersive for me

 

[LazyParrot]

Almost no graphical feature is. I'm certainly not having any more fun playing games nowadays than 5, 10 or even 20 years ago.

 

[Boss Mog]

This wouldn't even be a question if hardware could keep up. Hardware is not evolving fast enough anymore and manufacturers are focusing on AI trickery to compensate but the results are very mixed so far. The difference RTGI brings to lighting is very significant in my opinion, RT shadows and reflections are very nice too. At the end of the day though, they only matter if realistic cutting edge graphics are an essential part of your game. Ultimately games are about having fun and great realistic graphics have never been a necessity to create a fun game.