I died a few times on my play through, and even on the final boss. The game has been patched and is more balanced and fair with the check-pointing.
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Is Ray Tracing actually even worth it right now?
- Thread starter MazeHaze
- Start date
Lol,
Love this post, but no.
Your fancy RTX GPU will start paying off more over the next 1-3 years, but there's been pretty terrible selection of games up until now.
For me, the Minecraft RTX beta has been incredible. I'm super happy to have a 2080 right now, but it would be hard to reccomend it when we all know significantly cheaper cards for the same performance will likely hit in 4-6 months.
If you don't like minecraft, don't bother. Maybe when the 3080ti hits, we'll finally be able to get AAA games at decent resolutions that actually use Ray tracing to a good extent. Right now, it feels like you are paying through the teeth for a nice to have graphical feature that will become standard in 3-5 years, but has a sorely under-represented game selection at the moment, and most games that do use it, can barely pull it off or have small, specific aspects of the game that use it.
Because Control is the best example when it comes to realistic graphics and reflections.
Nothing huge, nothing mind blowing, but that's the thing, when you enable RTX on Control you get something that's even more believable and realistic than Remedy's environmental desing, and that's saying something if you have played at least one of their prior works - Saying that Alan Wake is almost an interactive movie wouldn't be a stretch.
That room is far from the best example though. The game has some crazily realistic rooms and reflections with rtx enabled
Now, when it comes as showing purely the tech, Quake 2 and Minecraft will be always better.
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I mean I think you have answered you own question. To you it doesn't seem like it is worth it. To someone else the trade off will be ok. I too have a 2070 super and I tend to try raytracing but end up turning it off for more performance. Also the 2070 super although a great great card is a mid range card unfortunately. I think the 3080 is gonna be what's needed for that true uncompromised rtx goodnesss. Yes if you want the goodies PC gaming is expensive.
I would personally see it more worth it for games with nice colorful artstyles like Warcraft / Minecraft. I think Control, even with raytracing, is ugly and hard to appreciate. And just some better shadows in puddles I wouldn't focus on anyway doesn't seem worth the fps trade-off in lots of games.
I'm more interested in DLSS for the most part
I'm more interested in DLSS for the most part
I know my opinion is unpopular on the topic, but I feel RT is weird, because it is supposed to bring some huge changes to visuals, but I feel like what we have been seeing in practice for the most part is developers adding random puddles for "woah reflections" and added visual noise everywhere which is more distracting than exciting in my experience. Even examples like control that I often see being brought up doesn't seem Ike as massive of a difference as a no try to sell it as.
Basically I'd rather see additions that are less subtle and will cause me to say woah more at scenes not being possible before. Give me huge war sequences, give me fully explorable sprawling mega cities, give me the spectacle and detail of huge monsters. I don't want to miss out on those sequences in next gen games because devs chase RT and have to decrease the scope of their games for it. I am very interested in the usage of RT for audio though.
Basically I'd rather see additions that are less subtle and will cause me to say woah more at scenes not being possible before. Give me huge war sequences, give me fully explorable sprawling mega cities, give me the spectacle and detail of huge monsters. I don't want to miss out on those sequences in next gen games because devs chase RT and have to decrease the scope of their games for it. I am very interested in the usage of RT for audio though.
That is not how it works and I get the feeling you know that too. MS worded that in a way so people could conceptualise what RT hw does in their heads, but I guess people just would want to misinterpret it. That means it would take 13TF of GPU Power on Standard CUs to extract the performance requires to accellerate aabb traversals and triangle intersections that the intersection engine in RDNA2 can do. It does not mean it is free or something as that still has a performance cost in miliseconds and is but one step in a many step Part of ray tracing.
So far no game has changed their Art for ray tracing at all - they just took the rasterised assets and added RT effects over them. So no added puddles, just the puddles that were already there. You only probably did not notice the puddles since their Real reflectivity cannot be represented from all angles or even properly with rasterisaton
Depends if you're more about graphical enhancements over IQ and frame-rate.
I think in about 3 years they'll be some really well optimised Ray Tracing solutions for consoles that can even run on mobile hardware. There's already some very promising technology being demo'd already that works on mobile and is said to be used on PS5.
But until then you'll have to wait for that kind of technology to be fully optimised, and even then more accurate path tracing will still be out of reach IMO.
I think in about 3 years they'll be some really well optimised Ray Tracing solutions for consoles that can even run on mobile hardware. There's already some very promising technology being demo'd already that works on mobile and is said to be used on PS5.
But until then you'll have to wait for that kind of technology to be fully optimised, and even then more accurate path tracing will still be out of reach IMO.
I later clarified the XsX's RT caperbilities (i quoted eurogamer article).
No deception was intended, I genuinely made a mistake, im sorry.
I am going to edit that post because its incorrect.
Yeah, it shows that raytracing can make a difference to a game even as weak looking as Minecraft
You confuse graphics tech and assets and game design.
We won't see giant detailed cities because they are insanely difficult to make. They take time and money. Ubisoft is capable of it with a dozen studios all around the world but even that's nothing like what you described and it clearly limits their creativity when you need to coordinate that many people.
This is the reason we won't see stuff like the tech demos early in this generation. These look that good not because of the tech but because they spend hundreds of hours on one small scene, placing every piece of glass to make it insanely detailed. We won't see that in open world games. The news of RDR2 crunch? There was a reason for that.
Ray tracing is tech. It can be relatively easily implemented and comes with basically no cost by scaling up.
This is why we aren't seeing most of the stuff people keep pointing towards every single new gen. Tech demos. In very linear games, maybe, but anything bigger, nope.
Maybe when we can generate assets better, but even this gen when we just started doing that it was met with insane backlash. Hand-made environments of the scale what you are describing has nothing to do with tech. At least not yet.
(Btw I completely agree with you, I want to see those too a lot more than raytracing. That and good destruction and physics, but that has its own problem nothing to do with tech.)
Those were just examples, of course not all devs can make large worlds like rockstar, Ubisoft etc. but the point was that I don't want to see devs decide to scale down the scope of their scenes due to RT being too demanding.
How close do you sit?
I sit about 3 meters from a 65 inch TV and the biggest difference I see is the 3840x2160 label in the corner of the TV whenever it receives a 4K signal. :p
I only know it's native, checkerboarding or dynamic res because DF says so, otherwise I would have no clue.
HDR is great though. But focusing on native 4K is possibly the worst waste of system resources I can think of.
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I have a 2080ti in my PC and even with that, ray tracing can be a huge performance drain, and maintaining a consistent 60fps is pretty much impossible. You really do have to settle for 30-40fps which for me is a big trade off for what you're getting in return. The tech is just not there yet.
I think it will be choice next gen. 30 fps with RT or 60 fps without. 60fps makes way more of a difference imo.
That's why the thread title says right now.
Personally I was surprised when both Sony and Microsoft announced their next consoles were going to support ray tracing. Without something like DLSS, and even with an equivalent, I'm not really sure what kind of implementation, performance and visual quality we're going to get out of ray tracing in these machines. I'd rather higher framerates across the board than some half-assed ray tracing tanking performance.
A lot of people will be wowed by RT in next-gen console games without even knowing what it is or that it's there.
Call it the holy grail of rendering or a performance hog all day but the fact is that it doesn't matter anymore because it's a ball that is set to roll come the launch of the upcoming consoles.
Just like any other breakthrough tech before it, once it gets past the growing pains, it will just become another commonplace term we'll hear in future DF videos like AA, AO or PBR.
Call it the holy grail of rendering or a performance hog all day but the fact is that it doesn't matter anymore because it's a ball that is set to roll come the launch of the upcoming consoles.
Just like any other breakthrough tech before it, once it gets past the growing pains, it will just become another commonplace term we'll hear in future DF videos like AA, AO or PBR.
Ah, I see. I genuinely believe that raytracing will be the best for large-scale dynamic worlds.
I don't know about the performance penalties compared to static games but I think it has been very apparent this gen that we are reaching the limit of our ability to fake GI. Uncharted 4 might look better with RT but honestly, the Dogs faked GI so fucking well that it would not be that big of a deal. Sure, everything is static though.
On the other hand Horizon clearly struggles with GI. You can very often see the changes in GI areas as you go around and it's very limited due to the games dynamic nature.
We will be seeing a games with lighting comparable to UC4 next gen IMO.
So while worlds won't get much larger than they are now or more detailed, raytraced GI could improve those worlds substantially.
I wasn't. It's a clear graphical advancement that can make a big difference against this Gen and it was clear from the start that it wasn't Nvidia pushing some gimmick for their new cards, but something that could be done now after decades of it being just a dream (it existed, but couldn't be implemented in video games due to how process hungry it was)
Also, it is NOW a resource hog, but the new consoles' rt tech is already more advanced than Nvidia's implementation, and the 3000 series will be already more than that (with the 3060 being at least at console level)
Antialising has been a performance hungry tech forever and 1st console implementation wasn't ideal. Imagine if it were abandoned due to that!
Where are you getting this from? Sounds like a pipe dream.
Well it was. Almost no games use traditional multisampling AA anymore.
Nobody is saying to abandon ray tracing, just that it might not yet be ready for prime time.
Doesn't RT mean devs claw back significant portion of effort as lighting is now procedural? Meaning that reclaimed time can be spent on other areas of Dev? If so, along with array of other benefits, I'd rather teams continue to invest and improve their RT tech, it's a game changer.
There is no evidence for the technological foundation for hw RT acceleration In consoles being more advanced than that found in Turing.
I did and to be honest I don't see why you even want to apply as realistic lighting to a heavily stylized, pixel art game. In comparisons I actually prefer the regular lighting of the game. Looks more cohesive and fitting to me.
Honestly, why are they focusing out of all games so much on ray tracing and Minecraft?
For some games... f*ck yea. For others... not that much.
That being said, it is and has always been, the future of gaming. No escape.
That being said, it is and has always been, the future of gaming. No escape.
It's a good starting point, a finger in the air of how RT can significantly enhance a very simple looking game to look like a cutting edge one. It's the perfect demo.
I'm serious.
I don't think the realistic lighting fits to an otherwise as stylized game. Another example is the Wind Waker HD remaster. They imo ruined the flat, purist cartoon look of the Gamecube original with the soft, overexposed bloom lighting they applied to the remaster.
I fully understand the OP's point of view. As of right now, ray tracing takes a heavy toll on AAA game performance without a corresponding increase in visual quality. When spending so many resources you expect to say "wow, that looks amazing" instead of "yeah that looks a bit nicer". To give a personal example, I was absolutely floored by the water shaders in Morrowind and I kept those on at all times even though they were heavy on performance. The visual improvement was astonishing. I don't feel that ray tracing in AAA games is there yet.
That said, many graphical effects started out as major performance hogs that most people turned off but became the standard over time. The first that comes to mind is screen-space ambient occlusion. As soon as faster hardware becomes available and developers start designing their games with ray tracing as a standard feature I think we'll see much better results at a much more acceptable performance cost.
That said, many graphical effects started out as major performance hogs that most people turned off but became the standard over time. The first that comes to mind is screen-space ambient occlusion. As soon as faster hardware becomes available and developers start designing their games with ray tracing as a standard feature I think we'll see much better results at a much more acceptable performance cost.
Nvidia are the ones promoting it, which is why it's called Minecraft with RTX.
Xbox showed it once, I would guess because it's far easier to understand WHAT Raytracing is doing on such a simple game and they wanted to save game reveals for a separate thing.
Remember when COD MW was shown with RTX, lots of Pc gamers said they preferred how it looked with super gamey shadows , rather than accurate realistic ones.
That is certainly not a response that you want to a technology that is so expensive.
I guess the problem is that in many already great looking games, RT can appear as a really interactive improvement that has a significant impact on performance.
I was watching a Linus tech tips video and they stated that Minecraft was unplayable as it ran below 80fps 😂
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I mean when are we getting info the on the 30 series cards? I bought a pc a few months ago and deliberately settled on a 1660 but im starting to get annoyed with performance but want to wait fir 30 cards.
Also are we getting intel gpu's? I have a ryzen cpu but potentially could get an intel gpu??
Also are we getting intel gpu's? I have a ryzen cpu but potentially could get an intel gpu??
Yes. Absolutely.
But reading your posts this is less a question and just something you seem dead set against.
RT is absolutely worth it, especially with DLSS 2.0. Generational difference in many games.
But reading your posts this is less a question and just something you seem dead set against.
RT is absolutely worth it, especially with DLSS 2.0. Generational difference in many games.
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This one.
Its outclassed by 2080, 2080super and 2080ti.
and in few months, ampere will make it outdated.
A. It's up to the devs to use RT in any way at all. Performance hit is up to the amount and ways of usage as well. There is no fixed "performance hit" so there is no way of talking about it as if it's a constant. You can simply not use any RT in your game if you think that it doesn't worth the performance hit.
B. What is the alternative? Using the same 5-10% of transistors for regular FP h/w would net you 0-5% of general performance. Would that be somehow more noticeable? I don't think so. So the choice here is really between having a choice and not having one. And it's very easy to see why everyone prefer to have a choice instead of just going with last gen feature set.