Thanks but no thanks.
It might still be the future but in the present ready tracing isn't ready to be mandatory in my opinion.
this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2025
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Hardware Unboxed video about ray tracing, and whether it's any good, and a follow up video about the performance cost, and whether it's worth it. Basically, often no, sometimes yes.
I'm a big fan of path tracing technological potential.
What is the matter with you RT haters? It's a graphical feature that greatly improves the realism of graphics but comes at a performance cost, often large. But if you have the hardware, then you can run it fine. And upscaling helps. What the actual fuck is the problem here? How is this different than any other fancy new graphic tech that has come out? It's like people lose their minds when devs try to push the boundaries with graphics that require high end hardware to max out. Like no shit. Would you rather devs just make every game with crappy graphics forever? You don't want them to try to make stuff look better? I just don't get the hate.
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
I dont think people have problems with the use of ray tracing per se, it's just with Nvidia's and Unreal's implementation of it that causes graphical glitches and bad performance for little gain in quality.
It heavily heavily HEAVILY depends on the game wherher RT looks better. Making a blanket statement saying it gives little visual gain is absolutely a false statement. Do some games have shit RT? Yea. Definitely. Do a lot of games have really good RT? Yes. Cyberpunk, Alan Wake 2, Control, Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, etc.
The RT in a lot of those games is broken if DLSS is not turned on. Many games' implementation of RT is fundamentally broken in terms of providing a glitch free experience.
I've never seen a game where RT doesn't work without DLSS. Do you have examples?
A good example I think would be ratchet and clank, rift apart.
When running with RT, there is so much noise and blurring that happens with the implementation and running with DLSS helps reduce that noise. In the end I turned it all off and enjoyed it much better with a smooth, high frame rate.
Not exactly making the case that ray tracing is the best solution.
Oh i misunderstood. Yea in that case i agree. Also that game did not have good RT.
What will be really great is when this gets to a point where game developers no longer have to do so much work to get realistic lightning.
Like, "just place your objects into your scene and done" seems like it would be a real productivity and quality boost.
I feel like the haters over exaggerate. Like they say that raytracing will never happen and shouldnt. Technology will eventually improve and methods get better. Saying never and getting upset that there is an option to toggle in a game that pushes graphics is wrong. Its silly to think otherwise.
That said I think a lot of the hesitancy and fear comes from the worry that we will be moving forwards too quickly. As it stands the hardware that isnt just adequate with upscaling but good at ray tracing is like $1000-$2000. AMD cards are at a handicap as well. I think the fear is that the industry dives in too fast and abandons the old lighting techniques leaving people with lower end hardware behind or with a low setting that looks way worse than the older methods of lighting.
I think the fear is unfounded though since consoles will always be the primary target and A) They use amd or nvidia's mobile chip and B) they have to have a competitive price. As a result it will be a long while before we go all in on ray tracing.