Ray tracing

[TypeRDC5]

I am the only one who is just not impressed by Ray tracing?

It seems that is all everyone talks about when a game is about to be released but I can't tell the difference half the time unless I really go looking for it and even then I don't find it that impressive.

The only exception would be miles morales, the Ray tracing actually makes a noticeable difference when swinging through new york city.

Also this is purely based on PS5 games which granted tend to run Ray tracing modes at 30 fps instead of 60 fps so I guess it would be a different story of a monster pc.

 

[Terronium-12]

Without getting overtly nerdy about it, the problem with ray tracing (and has been the problem since around 2007 or so) is that it requires a lot of computational horsepower. The optical effects (think shadows, depth of field, light scattering, motion blur, etc, etc) is being rendered in real-time using real light sources, not those baked into the game engine. What you end up with is either something that doesn't run well at all because the CPU (now GPU) is being heavily, heavily overburdened, or something where it's within the power budget, but the effects aren't immediately apparent unless you compare things side-by-side or you go out of your way to look for them.

This is why GPUs are beginning to have dedicated cores to ray tracing calculations, and even that isn't enough because it's essentially dividing a portion of the GPU die to a specific task all the while performing other tasks. The sooner we can get to a dedicated die whose only purpose is to handle ray tracing, performance will always be an issue, as will compromises.

Luckily, we've come quite a long way since 2007 where a Quake 4 demo was displayed with ray tracing at a stunning resolution of 128x128.

Basically, in my nerdy didn't-really-say-much-of-anything rant, more often than not you'll find ray tracing unimpressive on consoles because the hardware isn't there yet. It's not really there on PCs either. Yes, the platform is more powerful but you'll still hit a wall.

 

[G.T.Ace]

This is a great video to show what RT is capable of on current hardware:


This too:


EDIT:
A more recent example:

 

[TypeRDC5]

Without getting overtly nerdy about it, the problem with ray tracing (and has been the problem since around 2007 or so) is that it requires a lot of computational horsepower. The optical effects (think shadows, depth of field, light scattering, motion blur, etc, etc) is being rendered in real-time using real light sources, not those baked into the game engine. What you end up with is either something that doesn't run well at all because the CPU (now GPU) is being heavily, heavily overburdened, or something where it's within the power budget, but the effects aren't immediately apparent unless you compare things side-by-side or you go out of your way to look for them.

This is why GPUs are beginning to have dedicated cores to ray tracing calculations, and even that isn't enough because it's essentially dividing a portion of the GPU die to a specific task all the while performing other tasks. The sooner we can get to a dedicated core whose only purpose is to handle ray tracing, performance will always be an issue, as will compromises.

Luckily, we've come quite a long way since 2007 where a Quake 4 demo was displayed with ray tracing at a stunning resolution of 128x128.

Basically, in my nerdy didn't-really-say-much-of-anything rant, more often than not you'll find ray tracing unimpressive on consoles because the hardware isn't there yet. It's not really there on PCs either. Yes, the platform is more powerful but you'll still hit a wall.

Interesting, it seems they are rushing Ray tracing into machines which can only just about handle it a low value.

This confuses me even more why it such a big deal when a game has Ray tracing and developers love adding these modes, I guess it's like the ps5 having 8K as a feature on the box 🤣 sure it can do it but it will probably run it at 10 fps.

This is a great video to show what RT is capable of on current hardware:


This too:


EDIT:
A more recent example:

I've actually watched that DF video before and many other DF videos on ray tracing. When you stand still and look for it it's definately there but none of it seems ground breaking and for me personally at least.. frames > ray tracing.

I suppose when done right and in the correct hardware we will see a big improvement.

 

[Terronium-12]

Interesting, it seems they are rushing Ray tracing into machines which can only just about handle it a low value.

This confuses me even more why it such a big deal when a game has Ray tracing and developers love adding these modes, I guess it's like the ps5 having 8K as a feature on the box 🤣 sure it can do it but it will probably run it at 10 fps.


I've actually watched that DF video before and many other DF videos on ray tracing. When you stand still and look for it it's definately there but none of it seems ground breaking and for me personally at least.. frames > ray tracing.

I suppose when done right and in the correct hardware we will see a big improvement.

It's difficult to say that it's been rushed. This is part of the reason why DLSS and FSR exist, to allow the GPU to render a scene at a higher visual fidelity at a lower resolution that's then essentially sewn back together at the native resolution, whether it be 1080, 1440, or 4K. With consoles now having adopted it, ray tracing will progress more than it already has.