Support NeoGAF

[Relativ9]

The differences right now might not look that impressive mainly because what most developers are using is selective and localized ray tracing. In effect this means that they might be doing ray traced reflections or ray traced shadows on select items and surfaces in the world, but they still have baked lighting and shadow maps on the majority of the game world, and use cube maps for a lot of the reflections. Truly "everything on" ray tracing is going to revolutionize computer graphics once we're at a point where the majority of rigs can handle it, not only because it'll look much better and more realisitc, but also because (like a lot of the recent advancements in graphics technology) it drastically cuts down on the time and effort developers need to put into making stuff look good and/or real. Gone or the days where only 300+ development teams can make photorealistic games.

And yeah, as many have mentioned, if you want to see the promise of RT, Nvidia's demo is a good reference point. It's not just about reflections, it's about the "warmth" you feel from all the materials, the wood has convincing subsurface scattering, the shadows are diffused by multiple light sources and their respective bounced lights, creases and tight corners are darkened (and not artificially by ambient occlusion) as bounced light has a harder time reaching them, instead of entire objects or materials having bloom light now only shines/glows off exactly the part of the object that bounces the light into the game camera (your eyes). And finally yes the reflections are much better, update in real time both with changes in the enviroment and the motion of the camera, look at the aluminum tubes of paint, with all their indents and irregularities, the detail and fidelity of the reflections here is unmatched by traditional rendering techniques.

 

[anothertech]

Well mrxmedia said Xbone had raytracing so ya... Its kinda a big deal...

 

[lekain]

It's a gimmick to sell you expensive graphics cards. Thinking about the tomb raider hair a few years ago.
Real ray tracing is Extremely demanding for computing power, maybe those bitcoin miners can do it,
definitely not on the feeble desktop PC or consoles. Not in this generation.

 

[Phrixotrichus]

It's a gimmick to sell you expensive graphics cards. Thinking about the tomb raider hair a few years ago.
Real ray tracing is Extremely demanding for computing power, maybe those bitcoin miners can do it,
definitely not on the feeble desktop PC or consoles. Not in this generation.

The stupidity of this posting is off the charts considering RT is already up and running in games......
Do you tell your cab driver you don`t believe in wheels, too?

 

[nkarafo]

Reflections improvements are more noticeable but you can generally tell that the difference in lighting makes the overall image less flat in most cases.

 

[GymWolf]

Me neither dude, i watched the rtx trailers for cyberpunk, watchdogs, cod etc that they showed yesterday during nvidia presentation and i was like

I also tried rtx on my pc with 2 games, still highly unimpressed if we consider how heavy this fucking thing is.


Raytraced Quake 2, minecraft and fortnite still looks like absolute shit with better lights and reflextions, fight me.

 

[GymWolf]

It makes things like light, shadows, and reflections look more real. This is it vs the traditional lighting of Metro Exodus.

Yes you can bake lighting but that doesn't work with anything that's movable/dynamic from environment objects to game characters.

It just looks like darker shadows tbh...

 

[UnNamed]

I don't like the tendency to associate RT only with reflections. I mean, the reflections in the water in AAA games look pretty good. The physical behavior of water is what sucks. But the efforts are not aimed at making the water more realistic but nicer. And that's with everything, it's like if the final goal was a static screenshot and not interaction.

Use RT to improve lighting, not to make mirror-like puddles.

It was like lens flares or bloom back in the day, they were everywhere and most of the time the effect was just too much.

 

[Alan Wake]

It's like HDR. At first you will be like...yeah sure it looks different but idk if it's better.

But after time you'll get used to what a true HDR and ray Traced image offers and when looking at one without those enhancements you'll never be able to go back.

Pretty much this, I think. I never understood HDR until I got a 4K TV supporting it, and replaying older games on my Xbox One X now is pretty cool. Forza Horizon 4 with HDR is amazing. We'll see about rac-tracing, but I think it'll be great.

 

[GymWolf]

I think it’s because most people could give a shit about reflections. I keep thinking of that one DF video with Alex about him going on and on about how the one-inch reflection, five feet away, in a handrail, was completely accurate.

Literally nobody else cares.

Sure, in an area with tons of water, or reflective materials, or puddles, the potential is there to look stunning, and I hope we see a lot of that, but for most areas, fakery is enough.

I‘d like to see more of a focus on lighting. That’s where the real progress is, imo.

Most people don't care about having real life accurate shadows or reflections, while playing tlou2 you don't check if the water reflections is real life perfect, they are already accurate enough for majority of players, only ultra graphic whore do that maybe the first 2 times they see a reflection, then they get bored like normal people, gamers just don't give a fuck about those things, nobody is gonna sacrifice textures or framerate for these things, that's why nvidia created dlss, because without it, nobody would use rtx on pc.

 

[BlueXImpulse]

Like all things, it's down to developer implementation.

 

[The Hamburglar]

Waste of resources. I’d rather see huge graphical leaps like mgs1 to mgs2 and silent Hill 1 to 2 than reflections.

 

[Boss Mog]

Full Ray-tracing is the holy grail of computer graphics rendering OP. Right now it's still very much in its infancy, with very partial and limited ray-tracing being offered. But it's exciting because it's the start of something potentially huge if we manage to someday get to full ray-traced graphics.

 

[Altares13th]

Oh, so why is that not happening? Are we just not focusing on it? The hardware physics? Or is the tech not there?

The inline RT you mean? It's very recent, the preview driver from Nvidia was released April 30th 2020.
For the consoles, I don't know. We will probably see it used in physics at some point. We haven't seen much yet TBH.

 

[CuteFaceJay]

I legit had to strain to see the ray tracing in the new Cyberpunk 2077 RT trailer. Unless it's a huge surface like a big-ass puddle or a glass wall I'm barely even noticing it, and I'm someone who has spent years working with offline render engines that utilize ray tracing, so I definitely know what to look for.

from what I saw it's just a whole log of bounce lighting with that game. so the luminosity isn't gonna need to be blended with light entities anymore because it just works I guess.

Fuck knows.

 

[Roberts]

Is this.....Raytracing?

Spoiler

jk. continue.

 

[Blue Spring]

Reflections are the most noticeable for me. Shadows and Lightning on the other hand is a wash compared to traditional rendering options.

 

[Whitecrow]

It just looks like darker shadows tbh...

Definition of missing the forest for the tree.

 

[GymWolf]

Definition of missing the forest for the tree.

Or, hear me out, definition of a guy who doesn't give a fuck or even notice this stuff.

 

[hyperbertha]

The problem is Raytracing is more accurate but this doesn't mean it is more plausible to our brain, and rasterization techniques have reached an high level of plausibility today. That's why many people don't see much difference between in RT games as Control. It's not better, it's just different.

For example, even environment mapping is plausible sometimes, see reflection on cars. When you see reflection on cars, or even some reflection on puddles, our brain is tricked to think it is plausible enough. Reflections on mirrors are, on the contrary, too much strange, are immediately not plausibiles.

Control only has RT reflections and occlusion iirc. For raytracing to have any real effect you need full global illumination, and nothing so far has had that. Even metro's GI is just a partial implementation.

The differences right now might not look that impressive mainly because what most developers are using is selective and localized ray tracing. In effect this means that they might be doing ray traced reflections or ray traced shadows on select items and surfaces in the world, but they still have baked lighting and shadow maps on the majority of the game world, and use cube maps for a lot of the reflections. Truly "everything on" ray tracing is going to revolutionize computer graphics once we're at a point where the majority of rigs can handle it, not only because it'll look much better and more realisitc, but also because (like a lot of the recent advancements in graphics technology) it drastically cuts down on the time and effort developers need to put into making stuff look good and/or real. Gone or the days where only 300+ development teams can make photorealistic games.

And yeah, as many have mentioned, if you want to see the promise of RT, Nvidia's demo is a good reference point. It's not just about reflections, it's about the "warmth" you feel from all the materials, the wood has convincing subsurface scattering, the shadows are diffused by multiple light sources and their respective bounced lights, creases and tight corners are darkened (and not artificially by ambient occlusion) as bounced light has a harder time reaching them, instead of entire objects or materials having bloom light now only shines/glows off exactly the part of the object that bounces the light into the game camera (your eyes). And finally yes the reflections are much better, update in real time both with changes in the enviroment and the motion of the camera, look at the aluminum tubes of paint, with all their indents and irregularities, the detail and fidelity of the reflections here is unmatched by traditional rendering techniques.

Pretty much this. People here dissing on RT after seeing a few reflections or shadows but it was never about those. Full RT is going to look light years ahead of anything shown these days and we are a few 100 RT TFLOPs away from that.

 

[Knightime_X]

I literally couldn't pick them out in a police line up.

How can you NOT tell them apart?
The shadow detail in the bottom picture is WAY more defined.

 

[Whitecrow]

Or, hear me out, definition of a guy who doesn't give a fuck or even notice this stuff.

Nothing wrong with not caring or noticing stuff. But dude, you really think all the talk surrounding RT would be just for darker shadows?........

 

[namekuseijin]

I was raytracing back in the early 2k with pov-ray. Fun days of waiting a few minutes for a 480p image of a reflective sphere over checkered (infinite) planev to finish rendering... you can now trace rays in real time on GPUs (took awhile for them to get double precision)

the main advantage over the polygonal scanline render, that has improved much as well, are real reflections and more accurate shadows. But it isn't cheap and I think stencil shadows will still be a standard and RT will really only be used for real reflections - the benefit is obvious over limited, non-dynamic reflection maps or the old technique of doubling the scene just to show in the other side of a mirror.

 

[Karlinel]

It does look nice, and I surely like the effect. Imho still not worthy of the MASSIVE performance impact at high resolutions. We'll see 3090 benchmarks but probably not there yet.

 

[Altares13th]

Is this.....Raytracing?

Spoiler

jk. continue.

This is heavier to do than RT. You render the scene 2 times. Also, it only works with flat surfaces.

 

[Sophist]

rtx will show the most with water and glass effects.

take this example; it's not that easy to see the differences between ray tracing (left) and real time (right).

But when you start using transparency effects, differences are huge.

 

[Sophist]

This is heavier to do than RT. You render the scene 2 times. Also, it only works with flat surfaces.

Not two times. the mirror effect in d3d is actually nothing more than a mirrored room separated by a transparent wall. if you enable the no clip cheat, you can visit the room.

 

[GobbledeeGoo]

I legit had to strain to see the ray tracing in the new Cyberpunk 2077 RT trailer. Unless it's a huge surface like a big-ass puddle or a glass wall I'm barely even noticing it, and I'm someone who has spent years working with offline render engines that utilize ray tracing, so I definitely know what to look for.

Going to take some time until you see developers realize the best ways to utilize it. I imagine you'll see the occasional game that really nails it and makes you say, "wow". Just like any new thing, artists need to figure out how to best utilize it.

 

[Altares13th]

Not two times. the mirror effect in d3d is actually nothing more than a mirrored room separated by a transparent wall. if you enable the no clip cheat, you can visit the room.

Yes, you are right. I was explaining the effect in UE4 and modern engines which render to texture.

 

[GymWolf]

Nothing wrong with not caring or noticing stuff. But dude, you really think all the talk surrounding RT would be just for darker shadows?........

no of course not, i tried rtx on metro on my pc, i know there is more than that, but that particular screenshot made me chuckle a bit because a guy like me who really doens't pay attention to these things only see darker shadows

 

[Soodanim]

The one thing that made me realise we needed a better way of lighting things naturally is Skyrim. I spent so long trying different methods of lighting, trying to get dungeons to feel right. I installed mods to make dungeons darker and for light sources to mean more, and I installed a mod to make spells emit light. That's fine until you hit the engine limit for light sources and things start disabling when you equip spells. I look forward to the day when I can go into a dark dungeon and have Ray Tracing really shine when your torch or spell illuminates the room, changing with every step. That's going to make for some amazing atmospheric moments.

Ray Tracing isn't always mind-blowingly noticeable, and the Metro example was a horrible choice. No one should be faulted for not being impressed. That's partly a testament to how good developers have gotten at pre-RT methods.

 

[Spukc]

Another thread that could easily have been posted in an existing thread.

Why all the goddamn clutter in this forum ??!!

@Mod of War

 

[LazyParrot]

Is this.....Raytracing?

I spent hundreds of hours creating levels for Duke 3D and other BUILD engine titles, and the way mirrors worked in those games was pretty interesting. Mirrors were required to have an empty, non-accessible room on the other side that had to be at least as large as the area visible on the player side. The game would then create a mirrored version of all the sprites and geometry in the empty room to fake the mirror effect. If the room was too small, the mirror would glitch out.

 

[Jeeves]

It's a new shiny thing for graphics enthusiasts to chase after. That's all there is to get about the hype for it.

 

[sobaka770]

It looks great with proper implementation - it's all about correctness of image instead of fancy tech to hide defects. It makes artists' job easier and is always right.

The problem is that as a new technology which is only possible in real time on latest GPUs the implementations that we see currently are only scratchine the surface of what's possible. Expect weird mirror-surfaces everywhere with new consoles popularising the concept and perfect mirrors inserted for no reason. Eventually in 4-5 years in 2 more GPU generations the whole games can be done using raytracing and that will be revolutionary from immersion perspective imo.

 

[Soodanim]

It looks great with proper implementation - it's all about correctness of image instead of fancy tech to hide defects. It makes artists' job easier and is always right.

The problem is that as a new technology which is only possible in real time on latest GPUs the implementations that we see currently are only scratchine the surface of what's possible. Expect weird mirror-surfaces everywhere with new consoles popularising the concept and perfect mirrors inserted for no reason. Eventually in 4-5 years in 2 more GPU generations the whole games can be done using raytracing and that will be revolutionary from immersion perspective imo.

Agreed. This is early tech, so it's at minimum late console gen (for software optimisation) or new GPU gen (for hardware efficiency) that we will start to see things implemented in an effortless way and start to get performance back without buying a 3090 (come on AMD, do us proud and kick NVidia in the teeth).

 

[namekuseijin]

The stupidity of this posting is off the charts considering RT is already up and running in games......
Do you tell your cab driver you don`t believe in wheels, too?

most of what you see in RT-enabled games are same old scanline techniques as ever. Perhaps reflections in puddles of water on the floor contribute to 10% in a scene

and no, don't tell us about how Quake and Minecraft with their ancient quaint graphics are full RT...

 

[namekuseijin]

Agreed. This is early tech, so it's at minimum late console gen (for software optimisation) or new GPU gen (for hardware efficiency) that we will start to see things implemented in an effortless way and start to get performance back without buying a 3090 (come on AMD, do us proud and kick NVidia in the teeth).

New GPUs were just revealed and no doubt RT is where 3x nextgen console power will be wasted as well

 

[SF Kosmo]

When was the last mind blowing leap in lighting?

I feel like Doom 3 was the last time I was simply amazed by the technical leap forward by lighting in particular

Since then, its all been incremental. Slow advancements that make the overall image quality better. You dont really notice until you're in the game experiencing it

Or even going back and looking at older games that don't have modern lighting techniques just feels dated. I played Witcher 3 again recently which looked incredible at the time, but after RDR2 the lighting feels so fake and artificial. I can't name all the techniques they are using for RDR2, I just know it looks great.

Im sure there will be a point I go back to RDR2 and it feels dated

Crysis and UE4 were big landmarks for lighting too.

But Ray tracing has always been the dream. It's what they use in CGI rendering. It's the "spare no expense" ideal.

 

[Soodanim]

New GPUs were just revealed and no doubt RT is where 3x nextgen console power will be wasted as well

I haven't watched or read anything about the reveal yet, but with this being only the second GPU generation of RT I'd imagine this is still very early. How many games actually have RT so far?

 

[diffusionx]

I haven't watched or read anything about the reveal yet, but with this being only the second GPU generation of RT I'd imagine this is still very early. How many games actually have RT so far?

Not many, but we have gone from terrible gimmicky shit with 50% performance hits (Battlefield V) to pretty damn good implementations like Control and Metro Exodus as well as titles like Minecraft and Quake 2 that point the way forward.

These new GPUs are much better at RT than the 20xx series and relatively affordable (Nvidia clearly wants people to dump their 1060s and 1080TIs). They will keep evolving. I am optimistic - I think that RT is going to blow up and start advancing very quickly on the PC, to the point where consoles are not going to be able to keep up. The technology is just too powerful and flexible and the results are too good to be ignored.

 

[Chupanibre]

 

[PaNaMa]

I'm with you, OP. It's not that I don't think it's a nice effect, and sure yeah it adds to realism, but I guess I'm just fine with other lighting systems that look good enough to me, and that are way less taxing.

 

[Phrixotrichus]

most of what you see in RT-enabled games are same old scanline techniques as ever. Perhaps reflections in puddles of water on the floor contribute to 10% in a scene

and no, don't tell us about how Quake and Minecraft with their ancient quaint graphics are full RT...

What the heck do you expect? fully path traced games in 4k/60?
It is implemented and working for what the performance budget allows, period.

 

[ThaMonkeyClaw]

It makes things like light, shadows, and reflections look more real. This is it vs the traditional lighting of Metro Exodus.

Yes you can bake lighting but that doesn't work with anything that's movable/dynamic from environment objects to game characters.

Not only that, but from my understanding the baked lighting is a lot more work for the developer than it is with ray tracing, so once things start progressing more towards ray tracing and the game engines start building that functionality into them it makes it a lot easier for a developer to handle the lighting in the game.

 

[nkarafo]

It just looks like darker shadows tbh...

You can't appreciate the difference from a still screenshot. Ray Tracing lighting makes the whole game world look more realistic and i suppose you can feel that while exploring and looking around many places. In most games there are usually many bad looking areas with flat lighting and low detail but with Ray Tracing, even the worst looking areas should look natural at least.

 

[EverydayBeast]

Ray tracing has never been done on consoles gamers level of expectations for next generation are high because of ray tracing.

 

[SnapShot]

It's not about looking better, it's about making things easier to produce. same thing with UE5 getting rid of polygon budget restrictions.

 

[V4skunk]

Ray tracing is the holy grail of graphics. So many people here that simply know nothing.

 

[xPikYx]

I gotta be real. This whole talk about ray tracing and the push for it - I’m not seeing the major graphical leap everyone else seems to be seeing. Like fluid simulations and physics interactions - that all looks game-changing impressive to me. Ray tracing? Eh. I honestly didn’t mind whatever tricks they were using before to simulate reflections and lighting - am I missing something or have we just not gotten to a point where the technology is advanced enough to make a huge difference graphically in a normal game?

probably you haven't seen this