I enjoy it in Quake 2 RTX where that's entirely the gimmick, but otherwise keep it off. I care more about the fluidity of the action than the details I'm losing. The tech just isn't there to make it an enjoyable experience to play in yet.
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I think ray tracing in games looks pretty good, but it never justifies the performance hit. Ever. Not one game so far justifies it. Agree/disagree?
- Thread starter nogoodnamesleft
- Start date
Minecraft RTX and CP2077 on a 3080 definitely justify it. Hell, even Ratchet and Clank on the PS5 does a good job justifying it. I'm a bit RTX fan.
You need to check out the state of raytracing/DLSS on PC. It's nothing like it is on consoles.
Not going to dogpile on PlanetSmasher but I wonder how many have actually played games with RT turned on at all to be able to come to a conclusion about this. There's a lot of confusion around ray tracing, still.
This is why we have DLSS and whatever AMD's solution is
Nah. PC games have settings so you can choose whatever you want.
60fps is still fine.
Ray tracing so far on consoles has been one more frustrating step in the "performance vs graphics" choices I now have to make (and play on console to avoid).
Both. I want both. If you can't give me both, then you have to pick and optimize fully around it.
Both. I want both. If you can't give me both, then you have to pick and optimize fully around it.
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OP
OP
Then this:
Is extremely strange to me.
*Buys PC for more options
*chooses whether I want high FPS or high quality RTX
There are some games it makes a big difference. Namely ones with a lot of shiny surfaces like metal, glass, etc + complicated lighting arrangements
Definitely disagree with you, OP. Games like Cyberpunk 2077, Control, and Metro Exodus are utterly transformed with their ray-tracing suite enabled. I'd say in the vast majority of ray-tracing supported games it's a "nice to have" and doesn't affect the overall image in any profound ways, but games like the ones I mentioned buck that trend. Minecraft is another good example, it's utterly transformative.
For reflections definitely is worth it, the SSR every company is slapping to every game looks like absolute dogshit.
Same for SSAO, RT AO grounds everything so much better. Shadows and GI can still be rasterized, they are good enough I guess. That said, all this will start being accelerated by RT as a standard, so I'd say get used to the perf hit because it's here to stay :/ (and I'm glad it is)
Same for SSAO, RT AO grounds everything so much better. Shadows and GI can still be rasterized, they are good enough I guess. That said, all this will start being accelerated by RT as a standard, so I'd say get used to the perf hit because it's here to stay :/ (and I'm glad it is)
Worth it for fully rt games like minecraft and quake 2. Not worth it to trade half the framerate for pretty mirrors
I love the look of it. But it's hard to make a conscious decision to play at 30 FPS when 60 is but a toggle option away...
There ARE some games that manage to be exceptions and I honestly feel like Devs should be aiming for that kind of approach across the board...those games being Spider-Man, Miles Morales, Ratchet and Clank, and Ghostwire: Tokyo. They give you cut back RT but it's still good enough without hurting performance.
Insomniacs 40fps full IQ/full RT approach is also very welcome as an option.
There ARE some games that manage to be exceptions and I honestly feel like Devs should be aiming for that kind of approach across the board...those games being Spider-Man, Miles Morales, Ratchet and Clank, and Ghostwire: Tokyo. They give you cut back RT but it's still good enough without hurting performance.
Insomniacs 40fps full IQ/full RT approach is also very welcome as an option.
Disagree, but it also depends on the game. For titles like Control, Cyberpunk, Spider-Man, and Metro Exodus, the compromise is absolutely worth it. In other games where the effect is more subtle, then sure, one could make an argument of RT not being worth the performance hit when the difference may not be inherently noticeable.
For me though, I bought a graphics card with RT cores for a reason, so I'm personally going to put them to work as often as I can, especially when techniques like DLSS do a lot to help get lost performance back.
For me though, I bought a graphics card with RT cores for a reason, so I'm personally going to put them to work as often as I can, especially when techniques like DLSS do a lot to help get lost performance back.
Reminded of a Hardware Unboxed video I saw where one of the hosts claimed 80fps was the minimum playable framerate. I still chuckle about that.
I bought my PC to push graphical fidelity as high as possible while also maintaining a pleb-like 60fps.
Ray tracing in the current gen is where 3D was in the PS1/N64 era. It will improve somewhat over the generation, but it won't mature until at least next gen. PC will catch up before then, but the games are still made with consoles in mind.
I have a lot of hope for hybrid approaches like UE5's Lumen till we get there.
I have a lot of hope for hybrid approaches like UE5's Lumen till we get there.
As a professional painter, raytracing lighting is night and day. Period. Proper light diffusion versus smoke an mirrors is just the only way to go for realtime computer graphics. But we're not really seeing that in most games, with a couples of exception like Metro and Minecraft.
Raytracing reflections on their own, on the other hand, are a complete waste of a crucial resource (framerate) to obtain exactly the same visual quality.
Yes, you can see the jump if you put the two images next to each other, and you can convince yourself you perceive it in game for 10 seconds after you set RT on, and PBR + correct reflections will give you better materials, but that's it: it's still bad CGI with unrealistic lighting telling your brain that everything is fake, just with a slightly better coat of fake.
Meanwhile the loss of framerate will ruin your gaming experience down to the gameplay, and there's no going around that.
Raytracing reflections on their own, on the other hand, are a complete waste of a crucial resource (framerate) to obtain exactly the same visual quality.
Yes, you can see the jump if you put the two images next to each other, and you can convince yourself you perceive it in game for 10 seconds after you set RT on, and PBR + correct reflections will give you better materials, but that's it: it's still bad CGI with unrealistic lighting telling your brain that everything is fake, just with a slightly better coat of fake.
Meanwhile the loss of framerate will ruin your gaming experience down to the gameplay, and there's no going around that.
I find RT talks in this vein to be a little pointless because by the time RT/PT is largely the dominant method of lighting/reflections/sound/etc in games, there will be no perceivable framerate hit the way we see today, and all the tricks learned during today's experimentation period will have justified the compromises. Until then you can simply opt to not use RT modes.
Speaking of, we're actually in a much better situation with RT where devs are leaving us with choices on the console side, vs. the transition to 3D and HD which left framerates hugely compromised at chuggy 30 and below without solutions. And even with all of that said there are still some devs like Insomniac who are putting out black magic games with performance RT and 40fps modes. Then on PC we're getting a taste of truly transformative RT and where games will be going in time. It's the best of all worlds.
Speaking of, we're actually in a much better situation with RT where devs are leaving us with choices on the console side, vs. the transition to 3D and HD which left framerates hugely compromised at chuggy 30 and below without solutions. And even with all of that said there are still some devs like Insomniac who are putting out black magic games with performance RT and 40fps modes. Then on PC we're getting a taste of truly transformative RT and where games will be going in time. It's the best of all worlds.
I think the bolded needs to be addressed.
There are 4 separate issues at play in any RT thread and it's hard to address them all without sounding like you're ranting or selling NFT's or some shit.
The benefits of RTX are twofold.
1. The visual benefits
2. The development benefits
These threads always over-rely on the visual "benefits". for obvious reasons. But we cannot discount the fundamental shift standard RTX will make. It changes a whole branch of the development industry. It isn't small beans just because "developers who can fake it well are really good at it". That entire line of reasoning will disappear. There will no longer be entire jobs who's job it is to be good at faking lighting and reflections
When it comes to the visual benefits it always comes down to
1. performance
2. can i see the diff?
As time goes on, performance will become better, it isn't a good reason to not develop the tech and give the option. which sometimes it feels like people are aruging for, like RTX is being shoved down their throats.
Can you see the diff? this one is more complicated, and comes down to the game and honestly, people's willingness to spend any amount of time actually looking at a solid comparison. The games they play will also matter here. Some folks just don't look at certain details and seem glued to a little grey steam fps counter in the corner. That's their prerogative, but IMO, RTX is always worth turning on if you care about visuals and can meet some minimum desired performance.
I get that you have a longer post than this one point, but this statement is just... not correct. Can you give me a game where the full RT gives the exact same visual quality
Yeah, it is neat, but as cool as it is, it doesn't seem to justify its own existence (given how resource-intensive it is). I think it is the tech of the future. Some people will happily take the performance hit, but generally, I wouldn't say the visual upgrade is worth it.
I would go RT > 4K >>>>> 60 FPS
RT is amazing and I hope to see it more and more, because it makes me happy
RT is amazing and I hope to see it more and more, because it makes me happy
For a lot of types of game world ray traced reflections adds relatively little that other reflection techniques don't. I do think Miles Morales and particularly R&C do a decent job as console ray tracing goes. But the real value of ray tracing is when it starts to be used for all elements of lighting at which point it's transformative. I think the other element is how incredibly talented top end studios are at hiding the limitations of current lighting techniques.
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I agree. I barely notice ray tracing during actual play, but I do notice if my game isn't running at 60 fps. I do like it when there's a best of both worlds option, like Miles Morales did.
Agreed also not sure why games are obsessed with realistic lighting. Sometimes things are just better and more moody when the lights and shadows and such are static or whatever
I get not thinking the trade off right now is worth it, but to say it's the exact same visual quality is just flat out untrue. There is a lot lost by using methods like cube map reflections or screen space reflections compared to ray traced reflections. It's fine if you don't care, but it's just flat out wrong to say there isn't a significant gain there.
Yeah I think this is a really fascinating stage in real time rendering and video game graphics. This is the first time in the history of consoles where we've had aspects of ray tracing and sometimes fully ray tracing running in real time at playable frame rates. This would've been unheard of last gen or even a few years ago.
It is correct, you simply cut away the part that explains why it is correct: you can't see the visual jump once you're out of the option menu or Digital Foundry videos. The instant lighting is fake, everything is fake, that's what your brain perceive.
I do agree this painful intermediate step toward raytraced lighting isn't worthless, and the option should be there for future computers that can brute force the loss of performance. But ingame, if that means going lower than 60, you're robbing yourself of good gameplay in exchange of almost nothing.
Choosing between 60fps and ray-tracing does suck tbh, because I usually go with perf. Miles Morales was amazing though, and I really appreciated what Metro Exodus accomplished. Tbh reflections and shadows aren't really enough to choose 30fps, I need lighting etc
As someone said to me: Raytraycing is just like 4k 60FPS, we aren't ready yet but they try to sell it anyway
I tried Hitman 3 and got extremely disappointed.
I tried Hitman 3 and got extremely disappointed.
I mean what does this mean?
All visual quality is in comparison to something else. I can absolutely see the reflection and lighting artifacting in RE2R with RT off and I can see they don't exist with RT on. That's not a "unnoticable" difference. I can absolutely see every time a screenspace reflection or AO effect leaves halos and artifacts.
how is this any different than saying "you can't see how high rez 4k is unless you compare it to 1080p"? There is objective evidence and markers of the technology being used
It's not though. Cube mapped reflections don't show a reflection of objects in the environment and the closest thing that looks reasonable is screen space reflections, but that limits to only being able to reflect what is drawn on the screen. You can't reflect things that aren't on the screen, and you get a pretty harsh cut off with things on the edge as they move off the screen.
I still only have a 1080 so RT isn't really on the table for me, but performance cost is relative even with something as big as "half the framerate".
For most games I would be okay going from 120 to 60 but not from 60 to 30, and even that is relative, I would probably rather play Minecraft at 30 fps RTX than 120 fps without it.
For most games I would be okay going from 120 to 60 but not from 60 to 30, and even that is relative, I would probably rather play Minecraft at 30 fps RTX than 120 fps without it.
I get the point that's trying to be made here, but I think it's off by a generation. On the N64/PS1, basically every game was running 3D. And very successfully, especially on the N64. It was revolutionising game design. We were knocking out things like Mario 64, Metal Gear Solid and Banjo Kazooie.
Raytracing isn't at all there, especially on consoles, this gen. I'd compare it more to 3D on the SNES. A handful of showcase games (Starfox or Doom etc) but it was such a mammoth performance hit that it was rarely used.
3D was the norm on the N64. Very very few games continued to push 2D.
I get the point though - that it might take another generation to mature on consoles and this is just the start.
It's because how the brain works, literally. You judge the realism of a scene by lighting, and once the lighting illusion doesn't work because light is leaking everywhere, you can only get marginal improvements to the fakery. This is why people think it's not worth it and are absolutely right in their opinion.
And yeah, i work with this stuff so i see a HUGE difference when even rt reflections are on, but that's because i have a trained eye and study lighting and materials for my day job: the general audience can't see any difference once their brain is distracted by the noise (the gameplay, things moving on screen etc) but loss of fluidity is something you don't stop noticing once things move.