Stray Baked Lighting is Superior to Raytracing

Amiga

Member
The raytraced setting just removes what makes the game attractive.


Returnal also simulated raytracing well.

Can't help but feel raytracing has become a technical obsession rather than an important benchmark for games. games don't need it and it only wastes most of the resource budget.
 
Baked lighting has been a thing since 16bit era.
The only MAJOR draw back is baked lighting is static and you can't do much with it.
Baked lighting is literally just stationary ray tracing
 
The raytraced setting just removes what makes the game attractive.


Returnal also simulated raytracing well.

Can't help but feel raytracing has become a technical obsession rather than an important benchmark for games. games don't need it and it only wastes most of the resource budget.


Sure, the game wasn't made to support raytracing at all. Forcing it on may end up doing little more that adding glitches.
 
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4:32

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im a happy man as long games have similar baked lighting on stray instead of RT, with 60fps im fine with it.
 
Its not really a game where ray tracing is very useful. RT is good for:
-Highly dynamic enviroments
-Very large worlds
Stray is the very opposite of these.
 
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The problemm with raytracing right now is that "fake" shadows and lighting have gotten so good. You need a really good eye to appreciate it and even then only if the game used it well in the first place. Only reflections show a real leap over the techniques we already have.

It'll be a minute before raytracing really comes into it's own. Just as well because the consoles can hardly do it. And that means most pc versions won't be able to lean all the way into it. The few (my guess) that do will make a great case for raytracting with the upcoming round of 50tf+ cards.
 
I don't hate the look of it ray-traced, it certainly doesn't look awful in most scenes, but it doesn't add enough to warrant the performance impact. Ray-tracing when done properly can look phenomenal though. I don't have any issue with the technology if it's utilized well.
 
Well it works well if the future is to continue static lifeless none interactive environments, otherwise the bandaid has to be ripped off eventually.
 
It probably has to do with devs having to work with both modes at the same time. If they were 100% focused on the ray-traced mode they would probably light it better and change stuff, I assume most devs just focus on the mode most people are going to be using anyway.
 
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I mean you can see better lighting on the tree and door. The red light and fire cast lights on more objects.

I'm going to have to disagree here.
 
The problemm with raytracing right now is that "fake" shadows and lighting have gotten so good. You need a really good eye to appreciate it and even then only if the game used it well in the first place. Only reflections show a real leap over the techniques we already have.
it makes you wonder if it's even worth considering. Raytracing would be useful for more dynamic environments where you can't just bake lighting everywhere, but games these days seem more focused on static environments than actually changing stuff
the best application of raytracing ive seen is in Minecraft RTX.... and that's literally a block game for children
those RT cores could go better used in physics calculations and AI
 
They can raytrace all they want as long as they prioritize max AA and stable 60+fps in the game. Anything else is just a sacrifice for a feature that doesn't add anything useful.
 
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Its not really a game where ray tracing is very useful. RT is good for:
-Highly dynamic enviroments
-Very large worlds
Stray is the very opposite of these.
This

RTGI in an open world game makes all the difference. See Dying Light 2 or Cyberpunk.

Games with dynamic time of day would greatly benefit from RTGI. Stray is static, so it could benefit from reflections, but eh, it comes at a huge cost and the game already has amazing SSR.

Something like the Assasins Creed should adopt RTGI asap. Hopefuly with FSR 2.0 and etc. they will be able to implement it.
 
I'm not sure what you're talking about. The ray tracing in the video looks better.

It's not a huge difference, but Stray is also small, pretty static areas.
 
RTGI is important for dynamic objects and/in dynamic environments. It's especially noticeable in games that feature a dynamic time of day and cannot rely on baked lighting. Here are examples of raytraced lighting vs the standard light probe method paired with SSAO we've seen in many games with day/night cycles:





 
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Somtimes fake looks better then real, because fake can be whatever you want, real has rules and RT lighting is trying to simulate real light and its rules.
 
One could assume that raytracing is just flipping a switch and since it follows rules it has to be good. But I guess finding the best values and practices is still in its infancy, sometimes more real might clash with a more artsy style. (Morrowind's water was great but did not really match to the rest). Currently I doubt the payoff especially on concoles is worth the improvement, even the impressive looking moments in above Cyberpunk video, cost too much for my liking. But like Doom3 pushed shadows for immense costs at its day, the tech will be widely adopted once it inflicts not that significant addition on the computational load.
Maybe I am just unaware but PhysX or Havoc or whatever is the best tech in that area seems to be neglected and since HL2 or Red Faction no one really bothered to advance the possibilities there. Even something like improved TressFX and cloth simulation might be more important than fancy reflections if it is more efficient nowadays than previously.
 
It's like reading in PS1 times: "Pre-rendered backgrounds are looking better than real-time rendered".

Breaking news, really.
 
Baked lighting has been a thing since 16bit era.
The only MAJOR draw back is baked lighting is static and you can't do much with it.
Baked lighting is literally just stationary ray tracing

That's my very basic understanding too. But what I don't understand is why something like the RTGI in Metro Exodus looks so much better than the lighting in static games from last gen?

Or is there more to it? Or am I just imagining a difference? Cos it really doesn't feel like that... Metro's lighting looks way better than something like Doom Eternal, for example.
 
Yes, fake lighting works well in small, static environments. But people want dynamic, huge games. RTGI is absolutely needed for that.
Too bad these hardware are not nearly as powerful to guarantee both things, so why wasting time when you have a way lighter solution that looks almost as good and use the hardware for something that doesn't have any alternatives like i don't know, some fucking physics or that nanite shit to improve lod and details?!
 
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Couldn't watch but from my experience with other games: rasterised graphics have gotten so good in the last couple of years it is often difficult to say, without analysis a still image, what's the physical correct one. Also, physical correct doesn't always mean better. Physical correct and/or realistic things can be pretty boring in some circumstances.

What's a great leap however, are reflections, because with typical screen space reflections the image literally breaks apart at that surface, especially visible if it's big surfaces reflecting light. A simple camera movement is enough to break it.

With shadows however it's much more subtle and sometimes it's hard to tell if a shadow should be sharper, softer or fall in a completely different angle. Again, only missing shadows from an object that should evidently have one, are noticeable better with ray tracing.

RT global illumination and the rest still look good, but you often get diminishing returns for the performance needed.

Even in Cyberpunk I've noticed spots where the non-RT image looked, at least artistically, better or different at least, with no clear 'winner'.

Technically in terms of correctness, RT is evidently superior. But in video games it is ever so often not about correctness, but artistic design and also performance and therefore responsiveness.
 
Too bad these hardware are not nearly as powerful to guarantee both things, so why wasting time when you have a way lighter solution that looks almost as good and use the hardware for something that doesn't have any alternatives like i don't know, some fucking physics or that nanite shit to improve lod and details?!
It looks almost as good in small, static environments, yes. In big, dynamic open world games? It's a generational difference.
 
It looks almost as good in small, static environments, yes. In big, dynamic open world games? It's a generational difference.
holy shit at the exageration...

Many open world looks incredible even if they only have rtx reflection or not at all, unless you think that cyberpunk or dl2 look a generation better than something like horizon fw or spidey morales (spoiler, they don't)

Rift apart space city or pirate cantina look as good as any part of cyberpunk without rtx lights\shadows, and the city is a bog ass area to explore.

I tried rtx in these 2 games (cp and dl2) and losing framerate or details over that was not worthy at all, not everybody care for more detailed shadows and lights, especially when they are so taxing.
 
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holy shit at the exageration...

Many open world looks incredible even if they only have rtx reflection or not at all, unless you think that cyberpunk or dl2 look a generation better than something like horizon fw or spidey morales (spoiler, they don't)

I tried rtx in these 2 games and losing framerate or details over that was not worthy at all, not everybody care for more detailed shadows and lights, especially when they are so taxing.
I really don't think I'm exaggerating. Many open worlds fall apart in certain scenarios. The lighting looks flat as fuck, NPCs look like they're floating, etc etc.

And yes, I'd argue that Cyberpunk on PC maxxed out looks a generation ahead of Cyberpunk on PS5/XSX.
 
I really don't think I'm exaggerating. Many open worlds fall apart in certain scenarios. The lighting looks flat as fuck, NPCs look like they're floating, etc etc.

And yes, I'd argue that Cyberpunk on PC maxxed out looks a generation ahead of Cyberpunk on PS5/XSX.
But it doesn't look globally any better than horizon fw or ratchet or even spidey morales on ps5...

All these games are around the same level of graphic prowess, with or without rtx, and are all big games.
 
Baked means some artistic choices are made.

Ray tracing is just realism. Not every area looks good in real life.
And it is not even 100% realistic because the power is just not there yet.

It is just less fake but still fake.
 
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But it doesn't look globally any better than horizon fw or ratchet or even spidey morales on ps5...
That's not only subjective but the games also have rather different art styles. Why not compare the same game with RT on and off? Would make more sense.
All these games are around the same level of graphic prowess, with or without rtx, and are all big games.
I haven't played the games you mentioned, but I watched quite a bit of Ratchet and it definitely has areas where it would immensly profit from RT lighting because it looked really flat at times.
 
That's not only subjective but the games also have rather different art styles. Why not compare the same game with RT on and off? Would make more sense.

I haven't played the games you mentioned, but I watched quite a bit of Ratchet and it definitely has areas where it would immensly profit from RT lighting because it looked really flat at times.
Well sure, if you had rtx to an already incredible game is gonna look even better.

My point is that you don't really need rtx to make an open world to look great, does rtx help? Sure, same for the framerate, details and maybe physics that the devs\players have to cut to use rtx, they are a part of the graphic, but not the most important for everyone.

And we have a lighter solution to rtx, but we don't have an alternative for the other things, at least for now that ue5 nanite is still not widely used in games (or used at all as of right now)
 
What are they raytracing exactly here? Just shadows, reflections? Is it realtime GI? Need more info…

And yes if you realtime raytrace all your lightsources you probably would end up very close to the baked lighting solution. That's why it is silly to do that when you don't have dynamic time of day or something.

It's also weird to not adjust some lighting when going for raytracing. There's often so much you can adjust, like extra bounces to light up a room more or calculate ambient occlusion.
Not to mention how the characters are lit: by lighting probes, which is not accurate at all snd when you replace that with accurate raytracing it often renders the subjects way darker.

TLDR: you can flip a switch to raytraced lighting, but it probably won't look great.
 
The problemm with raytracing right now is that "fake" shadows and lighting have gotten so good. You need a really good eye to appreciate it and even then only if the game used it well in the first place. Only reflections show a real leap over the techniques we already have.

It'll be a minute before raytracing really comes into it's own. Just as well because the consoles can hardly do it. And that means most pc versions won't be able to lean all the way into it. The few (my guess) that do will make a great case for raytracting with the upcoming round of 50tf+ cards.
Exactly it seems like current (affordable) cannot drive "true raytracing" so we end up getting bare minimum stuff. Reflections are great but if we can improve the overall image quality if we go with screen space reflections instead with minimal visual degradation for lighting, shadows etc, I'll go with that instead.

I don't know nearly enough on the subject but why does raytracing have to be done on the GPU? Can we not do it on CPU? We do physics stuff on CPU, right? Looking at various gaming benchmarks, it looks CPUs are always never maxed out before GPUs are unless you're playing one of those super detailed strategy games (in which case you probably wouldn't be thinking about RT anyway).
 
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I must be the only one who saw incredibly detailed non-rtx reflections in a lot fo games from any yakuza with dragon engine to tlou2 to forbidden west to many other games.


Morales on ps5 without rtx is NOT the standard for non-rtx reflections, they probably purposedly made it worse to make look rtx better.
 
I must be the only one who saw incredibly detailed non-rtx reflections in a lot fo games from any yakuza with dragon engine to tlou2 to forbidden west to many other games.


Morales on ps5 without rtx is NOT the standard for non-rtx reflections, they probably purposedly made it worse to make look rtx better.
Screen space reflections can look really good. But the inherent problem is that they are screen space. The reflections draw in and out weirdly as you move the camera, and objects that should be reflected, aren't.
 
I have yet to play a single game where I felt ray racing in any way contributed positively to the experience. It seems a largely pointless goal to me. Time spent far better on graphical asset fidelity and frame rate.
 
That's my very basic understanding too. But what I don't understand is why something like the RTGI in Metro Exodus looks so much better than the lighting in static games from last gen?
Quality on baked lightining varies greatly, its really reliant on the skills and time invested on to it.

RAGE for example, a ps360 game, generally had very good baked lightining that could almost have passed as ray traced quality, staticity aside.


 
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