More and more games support ray tracing

So it’s been announced DOOM Eternal will support ray tracing and Id software is aiming to outdo everyone.

- DOOM Eternal

- Watch_Dogs: Legion

- Vampire the Masquerade 2

- Wolfenstein: Young Blood

- Cyberpunk 2077

- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

- Control

In addition to

- Metro Exodus

- Battlefield V

- Shadow of the Tomb Raider

- Quake

The number of AAA games supporting the feature is quickly growing. Scarlett announced it’ll support it via hardware acceleration and it’s widely speculated the PS5 will do the same. Next gen legitimately seems like a leap forward rather than being simply an extension of the previous one like the PS4/Xbox One were. PC is leading the charge as it already has started adopting newer technologies but consoles will soon follow by the end of 2020.

How excited is everyone?

I wish they wouldn't support it tbh......

Neat, i guess.

@scatteh316: Why not? We need to start somewhere.

Is that you asking a genuine question?

@scatteh316: Yes.

Ray tracing benefits developers more than gamers. The visual difference will be nonexistent for 99% of gamers.

Because I believe there’s other areas of graphics that are far more desperate for a generational leap then lighting, shadows and reflections.

While there’s always room for improvement for those effects they’re also the effects that have seen the most improvement over the last 10 years and other aspects have not improved as rapidly.

Geometry for example, will still have a lot of hard polygon edges in AAA games as geometric detail hasn’t progressed as much as other area’s, and for me it’s one area I would personally love to see a general leap in.

Textures, shaders, GPU accelerated physics.....etc...etc.....

I would sooner them spend the transistor budget on improving other aspects that are in more of a need for a big leap then lighting, shadows and reflections.

That's like saying 1080p has no visual benefit over SD resolutions.

It really isn't....

I'm excited RT is being supported more so.

@scatteh316: Fair point. At the same time though I’m unsure how much control AMD and NVIDIA have over those aspects. Those seem to be entirely reliant on dev’s capabilities.

How is raytracing not a graphical evolution?

Ray tracing is great but what I really want to see next gen graphically is character models to stop looking like plastic and the faces to actually look like skin. Some games have gotten closer to this like Uncharted 4 but then you see something like Watch Dogs Legion and the faces look awful.

Yea I guess..... I remember when AMD showed off DX11 tessellation for the first time all those years ago and everyone got excited about the huge increase in geometry we would be getting...........and well.........it's never really happened.

I imagine it was AMD's fault as they were so far behind Nvidia in terms off tessellation performance it might of hindered developers from really pushing it as it performed so bad on AMD it might as well of been an Nvidia exclusive feature for the first couple of years.

The Halo: Infinte trailer has very, very impressive levels of round edges and micro-polygons and looks like it has a generational jump in geometry.

I never said it wasn't..... I said you comparison was wrong.

@R4gn4r0k: Your comparison is stupid.

They haven't even got reasonable priced HDR monitors yet. What would you rather experience, HDR or RT?

Dedicated ray-tracing hardware is a waste and the latest in GPU and video game buzz words. Realistically, dedicated hardware ray tracing is probably one of the worst ways to solve lighting advancements and will likely be out of date within 3 years anyway. Hardware Raytracing, is only exciting for those just finding out its a thing.

The latest Cyberpunk 2077 demo showed huge leaps forward toward that end. True next gen stuff right there, check my man beard out. Beard king confirmed!

Also kojima with Death Stranding shows realistic faces

and this work will progress even further for ground up PS5 games next gen.

HDR any day of the week!

I agree.

You've never even seen ray tracing, so how do you know?

Except I have....... In fact it was mid 2000's when I first saw real time RT on my own PC with Nature Sucks.....

Now you may continue to make stupid assumptions and make yourself look like an idiot.

Then you'd know that RT is way better than HDR. But, you can have both, so why wouldn't you just have both?

How is Ray tracing better than HDR? Note, that these are just visual technologies, one is light processing the other is color and value imaging.

That's the feel I get. I mean I like the why it's described, but I don't see much of a difference TBH.

Because lighting can actually change how the game plays. There's a game out called "Stay in the Light" that actually requires ray tracing to be played correctly. With correct lighting and reflections, you can do a whole lot more, if needed.

I'm not saying color isn't important, but lighting has much more influence on ambiance.

GTX 2080 (at least) - Expensive

HDR Monitor - Expensive

That was the point I was making, the enthusiast market is niche as it is, but believe HDR can work better for lower end cards. Surely it is better for developers at the moment to focus on that implementation.

The gameplay mechanic you just described can be achieved on current hardware with raycasting which that already exists in games.

Ray-tracing can be real-time or pre-calculated. Because it can be pre-calculated, most gamers have already experienced and enjoyed the benefits of ray-tracing in existing games. The core difference between pre-calculated and real-time is the fact that one is fully compatible with dynamic objects at the cost of quality and performance.

HDR is the displaying of color and value simply at a higher spectrum range. Comparing the two doesn't make much sense to me because they have very different and important functions for visuals. HDR tech is used for lighting and greatly aids in good to great lighting.

All I am saying that they are not comparable, so stating one is better than the other without an actual context is a strange comparison to make.

RT is not better then HDR...........HDR is extremely noticeable to people, more so then RT.

Nothing like having super realistic lighting and 'ambiance' and then showing the results on an SDR display.....lmao

Ray tracing has more features, let's put it that way. Real time reflections and light bouncing is more useful, imo. But again, we can have both, so it doesn't matter in the greater scheme of things.

We already have real time reflections with SSR....and we already have games with light bounce.

Given you have a proper display which sadly most dont and then go wondering why their new premium delux 500bucks tv doesnt look amazing with hdr+pretty much all the monitors meh unless its a few grand one

I don't want to come across as someone against Ray-tracing but you are stating things a bit inaccurate. Bounce light has been part of the Cry Engine for around a decade and real time reflections already exist using approximations via cube maps and other techniques that are resolution dependent. Because all of the features you mentioned are and has already been implemented in games, the difference is negligible. The main benefit of ray tracing would be for developers. This is because it can potentially remove a time consuming element in the production pipeline. For gamers, well, it will all look the same.

Exactly, it would make the implementation process easier, thus having a more globally applied technique, leaving devs a more robust way of fashioning gameplay elements out of it.

I'm gonna wait a couple gen/hardware iterations on Nvidia's end, before I start dipping into RT... Unless a game can do it competently on a 2080, i'll wait it out.

It's going to be a while yet before RT actually makes it easier for developers. Performance is still an issue and you also have to support legacy hardware. Developers will continue to use traditional techniques with RT as an option. So, games that fully rely on RT are a ways off.

That's true. It's still in its infancy. Although, I do see quite the difference in Metro with it on vs off, so I'm a big advocate of it. Just personal preference, really.

You tried the Atomic Heart rtx demo yet? It's pretty insane. That versus HDR, it's no contest the RTX wins.

@Pedro: In reflections the difference is actually quite pronounced. In SOTRR the difference is also notable when using High/Ultra but not perceptible on Medium.

*twirls finger*

New buzzword for system wars?

I wonder what sacrifices will have to be made on next gen consoles to accommodate ray tracing. Hopefully they won't compromise frame rates again seriously 60fps needs to be a thing before they look at ray tracing.

The RT v HDR argument - I spent a lot of money on a top of the range Samsung TV to get really good HDR. At the time I felt a bit guilty, it was a lot more than I wanted to spend but I can tell you now it was worth every penny. The difference with games and movies on this TV in 'proper' HDR 2000 is absolutely night and day sometimes I still can't believe how good it is.

I don't think RT is going to have anything like the same effect on the gaming community. As new visual tech goes, it will be nice to have but far from game changing.

Reflections would be the most noticeable but most games don't have mirror surfaces so its advantage is further depreciated. With that said, it was my understanding Shadow of Tomb Raider only used it for shadows.

@Pedro: It does use it only for shadows. There is barely any difference between Very High standard and Medium RTX but Very High RTX looks significantly better. Problem is the performance hit as per usual.

Ray tracing is the most unoptimised lazy way of doing things. If you can male something look almost the same by another method you are better off doing that.

@DragonfireXZ95: Yeah, Atomic Heart looked good, but did not run well. Need more RT cores and better optimization.

HIghly excited.