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Ray Tracing is a Waste

Amiga

Member
Looking at Fortnite RT off looks better most of time here..



Using 20-30% of the resources on RT is a waste for some games that should just go for more res or FPS. Handcrafted baked lighting is better in situations. even in film the lighting is touched up and unnatural before filming and even more during editing. IMOO the best utilization is in photo realistic games. Another issue is that RT is at times over-implemented, in some games every surface is like a polished mirror, real life is not like that.

I think RT is overhyped and utilization will be softened after the fad phase.
 
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oagboghi2

Member
You're a waste.

jk, obviously ,but the difference in lighting quality seems obvious to me. Now is it worth that many resources? I don't know, but let's be honest if you are even thinking about ray tracing you don't expect the highest performance.
 
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The Cockatrice

Gold Member
Looking ate Fortnite RT off looks better most of time here..



Using 20-30% of the resources on RT is a waste for some games that should just go for more res or FPS. Handcrafted baked lighting is better in situations. even in film the lighting is touched up and unnatural before filming and even more during editing. IMOO the best utilization is in photo realistic games. Another issue is that RT is at times over-implemented, in some games every surface is like a polished mirror, real life is not like that.

I think RT is overhyped and utilization will be softened after the fad phase.


Are you new to games? Is Fortnite the only game you play? Have you even seen what Raytracing can do? Clearly not.
 

Entroyp

Member
I kind of agree. If a system barely has the power for a mediocre implementation, just don’t bother. If a system has enough power to implement properly to the point where it’s noticeable, yea go wild.
 

Dampf

Member
Lol, praise the sun that it's only 20-30% loss in performance in that game, it's even worse with serious titles with actually good graphic.
It's not just 20-30%

All RT effects on reduce the FPS by 3 factors. Especially GI starting at low settings hammers your FPS from above 70 to 25 FPS or so while it is not doing much.
 
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It kinda is. In most games it's the kind of feature you only notice if you pay attention to it rather than the game itself. But then again, that's true of most graphical features.
 

GymWolf

Member
It's not just 20-30%

All RT effects on reduce the FPS by 3 factors. Especially GI starting at low settings hammers your FPS from above 70 to 25 FPS or so while it is not doing much.
My god...imagine wasting 45 frame for rtx in the fucking fortnite...
 
RT isn't a waste. It's just that the videogame software and videogame hardware that does ray tracing are nowhere close to maturity nor powerful enough to pull it off without issue. If people thought that both the PS5 and XSX -- $400 and $500 machines -- would be doing raytracing at 4K60 without bigass tradeoffs then frankly, they just weren't living in reality.

Keep in mind that even if you have the software tools and hardware juice to pull it off, you still need time, money, and people who know what the fuck they're doing to pull it off. It's why even in animated movies you have movies that look stunningly beautiful and then you have others that don't quiiiiiiiiiiiite nail it.
 

Nikana

Go Go Neo Rangers!
All the cast in ff13 is a waste tbh.

XS5LK.gif
 

Sybrix

Member
No one in Fortnite is going to use that, that game requires the max FPS you can get, RTX will bring the FPS down.
 

Amiga

Member
Are you new to games? Is Fortnite the only game you play? Have you even seen what Raytracing can do? Clearly not.

I did say RT is not a fit-all solution. It's not the best for colorful games like Fortnite/Overwatch/Apex Legends/Borderlands.. and even games like Uncharted are better off with handcrafted scene setting.
 
Control with raytracing has turned me into a believer, especially when paired with DLSS so the performance is still great. It really is a thing of beauty in that game, jaw-dropping. But in many cases, no it's not worth it.. yet. It will develop constantly and turn into something really special, I think.
 

Trogdor1123

Gold Member
I'm not hugely on team rt either. However, It seems like one of those items that will make small steps and eventually be something we take for granted, until we don't have it anymore.

Maybe I'm cautiously optimistic for it.
 

iHaunter

Member
For that one game? Yes. Depends on how it's used. You can't say it's a waste and only use one example as to why especially that being Fortnite...
 

harmny

Banned
this is like someone in the 90s said 3D is a waste. look how much better 2D games look

I did say RT is not a fit-all solution. It's not the best for colorful games like Fortnite/Overwatch/Apex Legends/Borderlands.. and even games like Uncharted are better off with handcrafted scene setting.

colorful like all the animated films released in the last 20 years that use rt and look amazing? or all the cg trailers people hate because they know the game won't look as good
 
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Moogle11

Banned
I think it depends a lot on art style. Accurate reflections etc matter more to me with more realistic looking games as it can add to the immersion. It going to cafe as much for cartoony looking games personally.

Definitely will be a trade off of ray tracing vs other graphical effects vs frame rates and only time will tell which ratio I prefer.

I’m not that fussy about frame rates as long as they’re stable though. I mostly enjoy cinematic narrative drive games and play very few online shooters, fighting games, racers etc where FPS is more central to the experience. So I tend to favor graphics over performance, unless doing so makes the frame rate unstable.
 

The Cockatrice

Gold Member
I did say RT is not a fit-all solution. It's not the best for colorful games like Fortnite/Overwatch/Apex Legends/Borderlands.. and even games like Uncharted are better off with handcrafted scene setting.

Theres a HUGE difference between adding some simple ray tracing effects onto an already artistically crafted game vs creating the game from the ground up with ray tracing in mind both artistically and visually vs a game that is straight up full ray traced. The latter will be something amazing to see but we're still too early in that aspect. The middle one is what we're going to be getting in newer games and some like Control and Metro Exodus already look incredible with it and the former is something MEH like your Fortnite example or Watch Dogs. When I say meh, it obviously feels like a gimmick that looks great visually but feels kinda pointless when the game straight up looks great as it is. Raytracing is far more than just reflections. Have a look at Minecraft implementation and tell me you're not impressed.
 
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Birdo

Banned
Baked lighting can sometimes look better, in my opinion.

The Shadow of The Colossus remake is a perfect example of this. Although the downside is that it's locked to a single time of day.
 

bbeach123

Member
Reflection RT : yes its a waste .
Shadow RT :yes waste too .
RTGI : hard one but if non-RT GI have 60-70% RTGI quality but have better performance I take it .
RT Lighting vs Baked lighting : No idea, yet .
 
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Elog

Member
I really think this akin to when Quake_test was released. A lot of people did not see the point of true 3d graphics back then. And here we are.

Just give it time - I think even with the current hardware it will become so much better once developers are used to it and the software tools have been refined.
 

magaman

Banned
Theres a HUGE difference between adding some simple ray tracing effects onto an already artistically crafted game vs creating the game from the ground up with ray tracing in mind both artistically and visually vs a game that is straight up full ray traced.

This x 1,000. People don't understand what "raytracing" actually does. "Fully raytraced" is what games like TLOU2 try to emulate with prebaked lighting / reflections. There's nothing dynamic to be had, but the effect is beautiful. I think most of us can agree here.

But that heavy lifting, if it's dynamic, can tank performance. That's why RT has to be done mindfully instead of liberally. We don't have consumer computing power to be able to do true RT simulations in real-time just yet. So unless it is done in a way that is integral to the core of the game itself, it'll either bog down the system or be a waste.

I was actually about to post about this when I saw this topic. RT is the new hot topic - just like bloom lighting and tesselation was in years past. Except that RT is actually a big deal, but few games will utilize it properly (and efficiently) so it'll be a passing fad until years down the road.

I'm still of the mindset that animation / physics should be our next leap forward, not lighting. These GPUs are strong, but true RT requires more horsepower than we've currently got.
 

Klik

Member
I think 4k is a waste(for now) not ray tracing. When we get into average of 30TF GPU range then 4k is a must.

As of now i think they sacrifice graphical fidelity over 4k too much
 
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GymWolf

Member
This x 1,000. People don't understand what "raytracing" actually does. "Fully raytraced" is what games like TLOU2 try to emulate with prebaked lighting / reflections. There's nothing dynamic to be had, but the effect is beautiful. I think most of us can agree here.

But that heavy lifting, if it's dynamic, can tank performance. That's why RT has to be done mindfully instead of liberally. We don't have consumer computing power to be able to do true RT simulations in real-time just yet. So unless it is done in a way that is integral to the core of the game itself, it'll either bog down the system or be a waste.

I was actually about to post about this when I saw this topic. RT is the new hot topic - just like bloom lighting and tesselation was in years past. Except that RT is actually a big deal, but few games will utilize it properly (and efficiently) so it'll be a passing fad until years down the road.

I'm still of the mindset that animation / physics should be our next leap forward, not lighting. These GPUs are strong, but true RT requires more horsepower than we've currently got.
Absolutely with you for the bolded part but isn't advanced physics even more heavy than rtx?? Like isn't this stuff still light years from being integrated in games with realistic graphics?!



Jesus how people can even think that having rtx is more impressive\important than this stuff, i have a semi every time i watch this video.
 
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Shifty1897

Member
That subject line is kind of misleading once you read the actual OP.

Yes, poorly implemented RT is bad. So is poorly implemented SSR, or DRS, or whatever, because it's poorly implemented.
 

magaman

Banned
Absolutely with you on this but isn't advanced physics even more heavy than rtx?? Like isn't this stuff still light years from being integrated in games with realistic graphics?!



Oh totally, advanced physics requires moon rockets to power. I'm not suggesting we go full simulation with it; rather, we take the extra processing power and push it forward. I think advancing physics and animation by 25% will be more beneficial than advancing lighting by 25%.
 

Amiga

Member
Theres a HUGE difference between adding some simple ray tracing effects onto an already artistically crafted game vs creating the game from the ground up with ray tracing in mind both artistically and visually vs a game that is straight up full ray traced. The latter will be something amazing to see but we're still too early in that aspect. The middle one is what we're going to be getting in newer games and some like Control and Metro Exodus already look incredible with it and the former is something MEH like your Fortnite example or Watch Dogs. When I say meh, it obviously feels like a gimmick that looks great visually but feels kinda pointless when the game straight up looks great as it is. Raytracing is far more than just reflections. Have a look at Minecraft implementation and tell me you're not impressed.

Minecraft is a good application of RT. the point is RT not a consistent asset in every game. NVidia made a mistake betting the farm on this. once AMD introduce their DLSS alternative NVidia's advantages will be niche and not dominate the mind-share like they used to.
 

Whitecrow

Banned
RT only works if you ever asked yourself if what you are seeing onscreen is beliavable or not, and if you cant believe the scene even if you cant say exactly what it's missing.
 

harmny

Banned
RT is not a gimmick. it's literally the way every high end offline renderer works. those you see in cg in a film or an animated movie.

the thing is we are literally at the beginning of real time rt because it's super expensive. just a frame of a film takes hours to render

if a game looks good that's because artists and engineers are super talented and they spend hours and hours and hours baking and FAKING lighting so it looks good not because rt is bad.

right now we have games that need to support regular rasterization because rt is not only expensive but no one has a rt card to play. so we have a game full of fake lighting (that look really good) and rt on top of that (that is super expensive and doesn't look as good). the real change is going to be when games leave rasterization behind and start using rt as a default method.

this is like seeing cloud's 3D model in ffvii and saying god this looks like shit fei fong wong of xenogears looks so much better. and someone is telling you yes it looks like shit because 3d models are super expensive and we are at the beginning but they'll get better and you'll see they are going to be amazing.

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pu2M9DM.png
 
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NullZ3r0

Banned
RTX may be a waste in this generation of consoles, but in general it isn't. Once hardware is powerful enough to really utilize it, it could save a lot of game development headaches and overhead around making sure a scene it properly lit. Right now, artists waste precious development time making sure a scene is lit properly. When RT is more mainstream in terms of hardware that supports it, it will make a significant difference.

Right now it's just a buzzword.
 

GymWolf

Member
Oh totally, advanced physics requires moon rockets to power. I'm not suggesting we go full simulation with it; rather, we take the extra processing power and push it forward. I think advancing physics and animation by 25% will be more beneficial than advancing lighting by 25%.
How far we are from that level of physics in every game? 20 years? More?
 

Yu Furealdo

Member
OP let me tell you about something great called dynamic lighting and dynamic time of Day. Baked solutions do not work for games with these ambitions.

This is a big part of why people think Halo Infinite looks outdated. It really needs global illumination.
 

magaman

Banned
RT is not a gimmick. it's literally the way every high end offline renderer works. those you see in cg in a film or an animated movie.

the thing is we are literally at the beginning of real time rt because it's super expensive. just a frame of a film takes hours to render

if a game looks good that's because artists and engineers are super talented and they spend hours and hours and hours baking and FAKING lighting so it looks good not because rt is bad.

The bolded part is 100% truth.
 
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