Is Ray-Tracing worth it?

[VFX_Veteran]

I grabbed this poll from GAF because I think it's an interesting question after 2 generations since RT has been integrated into today's games. I'd like to hear why or why not you think it's worth it and for future generations of hardware.

I always use RT because of it's transformative graphics features in a game that I've wanted for decades. Yes, it's extremely expensive but I'll be willing to sacrifice performance as long as the performance is deterministic. IOW, I can handle 4k, DLSS w/frame generation and full on RT for all lighting and shading @ 30FPS if there are no spikes.

Thoughts?

 

[The Bloody Nine]

Not for me. Never use it.

 

[VFX_Veteran]

Not for me. Never use it.

Is the hit that significant that it affects your gameplay?

 

[The Bloody Nine]

Is the hit that significant that it affects your gameplay?

Yep. And I barely notice the difference anyway. 4070ti Super.

 

[VFX_Veteran]

Yep. And I barely notice the difference anyway. 4070ti Super.

You should notice a difference with RTGI or RTAO. It is so obvious over the "baked GI light probes" due to objects being "grounded" as opposed to floating above a surface. That's the biggest difference that I can see. The reflections are also obvious since they look so crisp and sharp when using RT as opposed to the grainy look in the reflections as well as them disappearing when you move the camera away from the reflection.

 

[regawdless]

On a high-end PC with an Nvidia GPU, great option in many cases, especially for lighting it can be transformative, like Metro Exodus maxed. The dynamic time of day and conditions are a best case scenario for RT. Path traced Cyberpunk is just impressive.
Even reflections can be super cool like in RE3 Remake where I saw an enemy in a reflection, hiding around the corner. When applied to all surfaces include rough surfaces like on WD Legion, the result can be stunning.

But then there are some games that have the most stupid ass "RT" implementations, like Until Dawn Remake that just eats up performance while you don't even see any changes, they don't even use RT for reflections, only for some AO but in a very bad way. Multiple games just botch the implementation, it's thrown in there as a marketing tool instead of actually making sense. UE4 games that got some RT reflections thrown in totally destroying performance because the engine sucks at RT.

Then we go to consoles. I'd say, not worth it most of the time. Looks nice enough in Spider-Man 2 but in general, the console hardware simply isn't made for RT and features lower settings than the lowest possible on PCs. Go with SW Lumen as a compromise, works well enough and is still demanding for the hardware.

Now the PS5 Pro changes that a bit. What it's able to do in F1 24 is impressive, if you can't see that, you're blind. RT looks actually rather feasible on the Pro to a certain extent.

 

[VFX_Veteran]

That's a beautiful screenshot comparison of RT on/off. Thanks for this.

That example is what I'm talking about with regards to RTGI. The global illumination solution by GI light probes is the most horrible technique ever developed for trying to get secondary bounced lighting when objects are in shadow. It completely ruins the games looks IMO. Everything is washed out and blown out due to the lack of shadowing/occlusion.

 

[regawdless]

That's a beautiful screenshot comparison of RT on/off. Thanks for this.

That example is what I'm talking about with regards to RTGI. The global illumination solution by GI light probes is the most horrible technique ever developed for trying to get secondary bounced lighting when objects are in shadow. It completely ruins the games looks IMO. Everything is washed out and blown out due to the lack of shadowing/occlusion.

One factor to take into account is the fact that many gamers got totally used to the washed out bad lighting look with glowy objects. To me, it looks irritating, wrong and ugly. I immediately notice it every time I enter an indirectly lit scene. But many people got conditioned to like and accept that look.

Fortnite is an extreme example but many areas in open world games without RT look horrendous and flat. Good RT lighting makes a bigger difference than resolution, texture quality or effects.

Linear games where every scene is manually lit look way better of course and are viable. As long as you don't have much going on and it remains static. Results will be good, which already satisfied many people.

 

[Amorous Biscuit]

It's relative really, for someone like me who is being held back by his 3700X CPU I'm often seeing performance fluctuate all over the place. I love what the technology is capable of but until I upgrade my PC, it often makes more sense to leave it off. Alan Wake 2 is a recent example of a game which run fantastically when playing through indoor environments, but the second you stepped outside into glorious RT'd shadows of the forest, the performance fall off was just too drastic. Even with DLSS, it would struggle on my machine.

I would love to be able to play a fully path traced Cyberpunk for example, the lighting in that game is unbelievable and helps to lend a sense of place and is much more immersive next to the non-RT option.

 

[VFX_Veteran]

One factor to take into account is the fact that many gamers got totally used to the washed out bad lighting look with glowy objects. To me, it looks irritating, wrong and ugly. I immediately notice it every time I enter an indirectly lit scene. But many people got conditioned to like and accept that look.

Fortnite is an extreme example but many areas in open world games without RT look horrendous and flat. Good RT lighting makes a bigger difference than resolution, texture quality or effects.

Linear games where every scene is manually lit look way better of course and are viable. As long as you don't have much going on and it remains static. Results will be good, which already satisfied many people.

What's ironic on this is that even static scenes like TLOU still use GI baked light probes. I would have just baked in all the GI and called it a day.

 

[Stilton Disco]

Hardware unboxed just did an in depth video on exactly this.



Their conclusion was that it's good and getting better, and is the undeniable future of gaming.

I watched it and came to the conclusion it is barely better than normal lighting and not worth the insane price hike hardware Ray Tracing demands.

Honestly I look at it like this; if Ray Tracing technology had never been invented, I wouldn't feel that existing lighting technology was bad or not improving. In fact I'd still say it's improving at a more noticeable rate than most graphical effects.

I know some people love it, but I just don't care about it and never will. If anything it seems to make artistic environmental design worse, because it means devs rely on 'realism' rather than specifically sculpting the lighting to portray a unique, specific emotions and moods.

 

[regawdless]

Hardware unboxed just did an in depth video on exactly this.


Honestly I look at it like this; if Ray Tracing technology had never been invented, I wouldn't feel that existing lighting technology was bad or not improving. In fact I'd still say it's improving at a more noticeable rate than most graphical effects.

I know some people love it, but I just don't care about it and never will. If anything it seems to make artistic environmental design worse, because it means devs rely on 'realism' rather than specifically sculpting the lighting to portray a unique, specific emotions and moods.

Lighting in general is improving because the tech gets closer to RT, like software Lumen from UE5 and other ones that simulate aspects of RT. We have many individual isolated techniques that get more capable in estimating / simulating good lighting and shadows. Issue being, the more competent, individual workaround solutions you add, the more taxing it gets and at some point, just going with RT will be less taxing.

You don't need to be concerned about RT reducing the variety of artistic visions on display. RT just means the rays are being traced. It doesn't automatically equal realism. Devs can still use all the colors they want, make it unrealistic by shorten the length of the rays, manipulate the intensity, manipulate the behavior of the rays. It actually gives them way more freedoms and tools to realize their vision, makes experimentation easier.

 

[Hostile_18]

That's a good point about older lighting methods, they too were always improving. I use it because it's there but I'd be happier using the resources into other elements honestly. Now we have to cater to two different ways of lighting, which I'd imagine Is twice the work, and a division of focus. Also Nvidia uses it as an excuse to push you to higher skus IMO, after rasterisation started to peak.

 

[Pagusas]

Yes, it is, but I also invest in the best hardware to get the best no compromise experience. If I were on lesser hardware, the trade off would not be worth it.

 

[regawdless]

I think Cyberpunk is a good example to compare the impact.

It has very good rasterized lighting, they put in a lot of work and it looks convincing in many scenes. The initial RT implementation wasn't that good and had issues, missing contact shadows etc.
Then they added real path tracing with the Overdrive mode.

Impact varies depending on the scene, but it shows off the difference in an open world game. I'd say, vanilla vs the OD path tracing mode, it's a way, way larger difference than any other graphical option. Change texture quality or reduce resolution, reduce environmental details, it'll be less noticable than going from vanilla to path tracing.

 

[cryptoadam]

Not really. Unless your standing around and comparing screen shots it's something you barely notice in games. It's like asking is it worth it to have 12K high def textures on the text of a sign in a game that's supposed to be 50 miles away from the player.
If you have a super PC and can handle the cost go for it. On consoles it's overhyped. When actually playing a game I find it very hard to notice the features outside of lighting and lighting can be faked 80% good enough.
RT reflections are probably the dumbest thing. Oh look the reflection stays in that 4 pixel puddle when you move the camera oh your game runs at half the frames now. I always laugh with Spider Man with RT reflections in the windows as if anyone is noticing the windows when your swinging around the city. Of course if you stop and perch from a window and pan the camera and sit there for 30 minutes the reflection of the taxi cab at the end of the street is impressive. Meanwhile the rest of us are playing the game.

 

[Stilton Disco]

I think Cyberpunk is a good example to compare the impact.

It has very good rasterized lighting, they put in a lot of work and it looks convincing in many scenes. The initial RT implementation wasn't that good and had issues, missing contact shadows etc.
Then they added real path tracing with the Overdrive mode.

Impact varies depending on the scene, but it shows off the difference in an open world game. I'd say, vanilla vs the OD path tracing mode, it's a way, way larger difference than any other graphical option. Change texture quality or reduce resolution, reduce environmental details, it'll be less noticable than going from vanilla to path tracing.

Eh. I wouldn't notice any of that actually playing the game and there's a few instances where the max RT actually makes for a worse scene and hard for the eye to find the intended focal point within the environment.

I'm not saying it doesn't mostly look nice, even great at times, but it isn't a night and day difference when dealing with spaces that have had good prebaked lighting used on them, and it really does necessitate more care and attention to have proper effort placed in a scenes construction and how the lighting will behave dynamically to ensure it doesn't make everything a bit of a shadowy/reflective mess.

 

[DonDonDonPata]

If ray tracing was being used and marketed for physics and dynamic sound (e.g. how Sony marketed the PS5 initially) it would have a lot more utility. But for now it seems like it's just to make games prettier.

Kind of a waste, imo

 

[TaySan]

At the moment not really outside of older games but it is the future in lighting

 

[Hostile_18]

I suppose the other thing to consider for those using RT, is that you don't always appreciate the upgrade, but going back you notice the loss.

HDR would be a good example for me in that regard.

 

[Mista]

I never turn it on. I just do it to see how it's implemented in games and turn it off. I got 4090 so the performance hit isn't a lot but I still won't do RT. Sorry but it doesn't impress me a lot for some reason.

HDR on the other hand, is something I can't sacrifice.

 

[regawdless]

If ray tracing was being used and marketed for physics and dynamic sound (e.g. how Sony marketed the PS5 initially) it would have a lot more utility. But for now it seems like it's just to make games prettier.

Kind of a waste, imo

Returnal on PC has ray traced audio. It was better than I thought, like when it was raining outside and you went into a cave, the outdoor sounds would realistically fade away the deeper you went into the cave. There was great consistency and the sound alone made it feel more like a real place. Very neat feature, we should have that way more often.

 

[Ferdinand the Cowfish]

I have a 4090 so the performance hit is minimal. Also, I will always choose max detail and a lower framerate vs. higher frame rate and lower detail.

That said, I have yet to see a game where I was "wowed" by ray tracing. I find it to be "meh" at best.

It's a buzzword meant to sell GPUs and consoles but the majority of the people buying the tech probably couldn't tell the difference between ray tracing on vs. off. Kinda like Physx back in the day.

 

[DonDonDonPata]

Returnal on PC has ray traced audio. It was better than I thought, like when it was raining outside and you went into a cave, the outdoor sounds would realistically fade away the deeper you went into the cave. There was great consistency and the sound alone made it feel more like a real place. Very neat feature, we should have that way more often.

I forgot about that! If the purpose of RT is "better immersion", I don't see why that shouldn't apply to sound effects and physics. Sadly, it's main focus right now is lighting which seems like the most costly (power wise) and least important.

If Minecraft proves anything, it's that dynamic sound and realistic physics (in its own context) can make a bunch of 8-bit blocks appear to be a living world.

 

[Bernd Lauert]

For lighting, definitely. I can't stand baked lighting unless the main light source is truly static.

For everything else? Probably not.

 

[Zefah]

RTGI certainly is.

It makes a clear difference in stuff like Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher 3 next-gen update, Fortnite, and mods like Quake II RTX, Doom 2: Ray Traced, Portal with RTX, etc.

I care far less about it when it's just ray-traced shadows/ambient occlusion or ray-traced reflections, although those are nice to have.

 

[regawdless]

Eh. I wouldn't notice any of that actually playing the game and there's a few instances where the max RT actually makes for a worse scene and hard for the eye to find the intended focal point within the environment.

I'm not saying it doesn't mostly look nice, even great at times, but it isn't a night and day difference when dealing with spaces that have had good prebaked lighting used on them, and it really does necessitate more care and attention to have proper effort placed in a scenes construction and how the lighting will behave dynamically to ensure it doesn't make everything a bit of a shadowy/reflective mess.

If you wouldn't notice a difference, don't say this is a night and day difference, I'd say you don't care much about visuals and could also just play on the lowest settings because the difference would be smaller in most games than this (low res screens but enough to see the difference):

They just picked random scenes here, because it's a huge ass open world game. There are no "intended focal points" that are suddenly harder to see, it's just some NPCs being with their back to a light source, obviously making their faces dark. When you play through the game, the more cinematic scenes look great and not too dark.

Comparing scenes isn't the point, though. The point of this solution is that even with the dynamically changing time of day and weather conditions, the game looks beliavable and grounded. At all times, in all locations, it's all consistent. While vanilla, some scenes look great, nearly indistinguishable from the path traced scenes even. But then you go to a different area where devs couldn't hand craft every corner, and it looks a generation worse, bland, flat, ugly.
And you can't avoid that in games of that scale, non RT tech simply can't handle dynamic environments well on a broad scale.

The differences above might not be significant to you, but could you name a setting that is more impactful, one that adds more to a scene and the visual quality?

 

[Hostile_18]

If you wouldn't notice a difference, don't say this is a night and day difference, I'd say you don't care much about visuals and could also just play on the lowest settings because the difference would be smaller in most games than this (low res screens but enough to see the difference):

They just picked random scenes here, because it's a huge ass open world game. There are no "intended focal points" that are suddenly harder to see, it's just some NPCs being with their back to a light source, obviously making their faces dark. When you play through the game, the more cinematic scenes look great and not too dark.

Comparing scenes isn't the point, though. The point of this solution is that even with the dynamically changing time of day and weather conditions, the game looks beliavable and grounded. At all times, in all locations, it's all consistent. While vanilla, some scenes look great, nearly indistinguishable from the path traced scenes even. But then you go to a different area where devs couldn't hand craft every corner, and it looks a generation worse, bland, flat, ugly.
And you can't avoid that in games of that scale, non RT tech simply can't handle dynamic environments well on a broad scale.

The differences above might not be significant to you, but could you name a setting that is more impactful, one that adds more to a scene and the visual quality?

Does this mean Cyberpunks RT implementation is great or its traditional lighting is poor?

 

[regawdless]

Does this mean Cyberpunks RT implementation is great or its traditional lighting is poor?

It means that you're not actually reading my posts?

"While vanilla, some scenes look great, nearly indistinguishable from the path traced scenes even. But then you go to a different area where devs couldn't hand craft every corner, and it looks a generation worse, bland, flat, ugly. And you can't avoid that in games of that scale, non RT tech simply can't handle dynamic environments well on a broad scale."

They did a great job overall with the rasterized lighting, especially in the important locations (story, main areas), very strong and good looking. But it being a dynamic game and huge world, you'll have a lot of bad looking areas where the difference is significant, like in the screens above. Again, with path tracing, it's all consistently well lit and believable. Using rasterized lighting, it's full of ups and downs, one area looks great, you enter a side street, looks like shit.

Here are examples where vanilla looks great with only small differences:

 

[Hostile_18]

It means that you're not actually reading my posts?

"While vanilla, some scenes look great, nearly indistinguishable from the path traced scenes even. But then you go to a different area where devs couldn't hand craft every corner, and it looks a generation worse, bland, flat, ugly. And you can't avoid that in games of that scale, non RT tech simply can't handle dynamic environments well on a broad scale."

They did a great job overall with the rasterized lighting, especially in the important locations (story, main areas), very strong and good looking. But it being a dynamic game and huge world, you'll have a lot of bad looking areas where the difference is significant, like in the screens above. Again, with path tracing, it's all consistently well lit and believable. Using rasterized lighting, it's full of ups and downs, one area looks great, you enter a side street, looks like shit.

Here are examples where vanilla looks great with only small differences:

Interesting thank you for that. I'd like to think every area of a game world a developer does should have good baked in lighting, if that is the scope of the project. It is no doubt easier for the devs to implement ray tracing across the board, but its asking more from the player in terms of hardware.

You've made a convincing case for it here though and progress will hopefully make it less taxing in the future.

 

[regawdless]

Interesting thank you for that. I'd like to think every area of a game world a developer does should have good baked in lighting, if that is the scope of the project. It is no doubt easier for the devs to implement ray tracing across the board, but its asking more from the player in terms of hardware.

You've made a convincing case for it here though and progress will hopefully make it less taxing in the future.

The main issue here is that baked lighting won't help in a game world with so many lighting and weather conditions. You'd need to have baked lighting for every corner of this huge world for way too many lighting scenarios. For every weather type, for every minute or hour or whatever time intervall of the day per weather type because the conditions can randomly change to various degrees at any time. That's not feasible, can't be done and still wouldn't include all of the dynamic lights.

 

[Hostile_18]

The main issue here is that baked lighting won't help in a game world with so many lighting and weather conditions. You'd need to have baked lighting for every corner of this huge world for way too many lighting scenarios. For every weather type, for every minute or hour or whatever time intervall of the day per weather type because the conditions can randomly change to various degrees at any time. That's not feasible, can't be done and still wouldn't include all of the dynamic lights.

I suppose for set level games the devs could use RT and bake it in from those calculations? But for open world and the like with lots of variables it totally makes sense.

 

[Zefah]

There's a really cool in-depth write up of the Metro Exodus team's approach to transitioning the game to full path-traced global illumination.

IN-DEPTH TECHNICAL DIVE INTO METRO EXODUS PC ENHANCED EDITION — 4A Games

OUT NOW! We’re happy to let you know that the Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition is now released, bringing on board incredible improvements for Ray Tracing-capable GPUs, including Field of View options, DLSS 2.0, and much more. It is also a free entitlement to current owners – as it is so extensive

www.4a-games.com.mt

Also a great Digital Foundry analysis on it. Really shows the challenges of baked in lighting versus ray tracing.

 

[regawdless]

I suppose for set level games the devs could use RT and bake it in from those calculations? But for open world and the like with lots of variables it totally makes sense.

Yeah that's why we're seeing pretty convincing and nice lighting in many games. But they must be static and somewhat limited in scope. If you, for example, add destruction to the environments, are in a dark room and shoot a small hole in a wall - no lighting would come in from outside. And there would be issues with moving objects like we see in many games. Either they stick out in a weird glowy way, or they fit in for one lighting condition and that's it.

 

[regawdless]

Cyberpunk path traced shots that I took. That's ingame real time visuals..... just to show how freaking good that shit looks. All of it is dynamic, reacting to light sources and time of day changes. We'll be lucky to reach such lighting quality in open world games next gen.

 

[MetalAlien]

I want them to reissue all the older games with RT now. I want to play Playstation 1 games with RT.

 

[Zefah]

I want them to reissue all the older games with RT now. I want to play Playstation 1 games with RT.

Yeah, these RTX Remix projects need to hurry up.

 

[MetalAlien]

Yeah, these RTX Remix projects need to hurry up.

I want the Wipeout games with crazy RT or gen1 and 2 Gran Turismo.

 

[Bolivar]

It just doesn't do anything in any of the games I actually play that have it.

 

[Dacon]

It depends, it's nice but I don't think it's necessary at all. People go on about how you need it to achieve realistic good looking lighting, but I think that's bullshit. There's plenty of technology available to artists to make some truly beautiful games, and with time and experimentation I'm sure we can find more.

The current implementation and usage of RT seems more like people just want an automated one size fits all solution for lighting issues and that smacks of laziness/a desire to cut corners.

One factor to take into account is the fact that many gamers got totally used to the washed out bad lighting look with glowy objects. To me, it looks irritating, wrong and ugly. I immediately notice it every time I enter an indirectly lit scene. But many people got conditioned to like and accept that look.

Fortnite is an extreme example but many areas in open world games without RT look horrendous and flat. Good RT lighting makes a bigger difference than resolution, texture quality or effects.

Linear games where every scene is manually lit look way better of course and are viable. As long as you don't have much going on and it remains static. Results will be good, which already satisfied many people.

Why are all of the shadows and ambient occlusion disabled in the Fortnite image without RT? Fortnite doesn't look that bad without Lumen and Nanite enabled. This looks super cherry picked. Looks a lot like the Competitive setting preset. I mean, the game didn't look that bad when it didn't have the UE5 update applied.