I know ray-tracing blew up this subreddit when it was first introduced ~5 years ago; has it gotten any better since?

44 Comments

  1. S0ulkillerr

    Water is wet kind of subject. RT will be worth it the moment everybody will stop talking about it and using it as a selling point. The moment it will be normal to run it on mid-range cards in at least 1080p without any sort of upscaling crutches. Until then it’s a pointless gimmick.

  2. Edgaras1103

    I absolutely love how a portion of people kick and scream about no RT, because they know its inevitable. They know they cant do anything but kick and scream

  3. To be honest I cannot really tell when it is on.

  4. Its usually optional now. You can disable it in most games.

  5. Aschriel

    To be honest, I use the lightest RT setting possible, basically it’s “Raster+”…

    It’s nice, and it’s fun in certain games like cyberpunk. I would not make a GPU purchase in the future based on RT… I would focus on VRAM, that’s where you get a good return on investment (years of service).

    Edit 1:

    Case in point 3060Ti, or how about the legendary 1080Ti, both aged better than expected, due to VRAM.

  6. Sterrenbeeld

    Cyberpunk Overdrive mode is actually game changing, but that’s the only game where, in my opinion, RTX is a must if you want to enjoy the game more.

  7. I love good implementations of RTX, if you don’t want to use it just turn it off. No need to complain about it.

  8. Final-Link-3999

    I didn’t know elden ring even had ray tracing. It’s much more noticeable in cyberpunk and probably other games like it

  9. UraniumDisulfide

    Raster is still mostly a gimmick that’s not worth the fps hit but lmao what is this post, er is a relatively half asses rt implementation and control(?) in the middle definitely has an improvement in the rt version, even with the 4 times this image has been compressed.

  10. SameRandomUsername

    If it was up to people like you we would still be using CRT monitors and cleaning mice balls.

  11. WrongSubFools

    Has ray tracing improved in the past *five years*? Yes, of course it has, and people’s ability to run it has also improved. Five years ago, the 2080 was brand-new.

    Also, a still screenshot 135 pixels wide is not a very good way to demonstrate ray tracing in action.

  12. Mister_Shrimp_The2nd

    What are you asking? Has raytracing (the technology) gotten better? Has the graphics card compute capability of bounce light calculation gotten better?

    I mean both are yes. But idk what you’re asking for.

    I use Raytracing whenever possible and it’s an amazing difference. Someone who doesn’t really care for it/look for it, may think differently. Is a Ferrari a more exciting experience than a Toyota even though both have to abide by the laws of traffic?

  13. redstern

    Great argument. You should go to an NVIDIA board meeting and tell them to remove ray tracing capability from all future cards because it sucks. I’m sure they’ll listen.

    Those 100 pixel wide screenshots are undeniably damning evidence after all.

  14. Rt is very cool and I think PT will more or less be the be all end all of rendering lighting.

    That said, the performance hit right now is absurd, even with the highest end GPU’s.

    [https://wccftech.com/cyberpunk-2077-nvidia-ray-tracing-overdrive-mode-pc-performance-benchmarks-path-tracing-on-a-geforce-rtx-4090/](https://wccftech.com/cyberpunk-2077-nvidia-ray-tracing-overdrive-mode-pc-performance-benchmarks-path-tracing-on-a-geforce-rtx-4090/)

    As others have said, CP2077 is probably the best current example of RT/PT dramatically improving the visuals of a game. But… without upscaling tech AND frame gen, the 4090 pulls 20 fucking FPS.

    I suspect that in the next 5 years or so, both NV and AMD will get significantly better at hardware RT/PT, and we’ll eventually hit a point where rasterized lighting is no longer developed in newer games, and you’ll have no choice. But at that point, I’m guessing the performance will also be dramatically better. I don’t know anyone who wants to spend $1600 on a GPU to get 20 fps, unless you use upscaling and frame gen tech.

    For me, performance has always trumped visuals. I *love* amazing visuals, but you have to actually play the fucking game to enjoy it.

    I do also suspect that upscaling will continue to improve, and in 5 years it’ll probably be a lot easier to upscale to 4k with even lower end GPU’s.

    It’s definitely a bright future… but for the time being, I’ll stick with raster lighting and good performance.

  15. RETIXXITER

    Its Half a decade later and we still need £2000 gpu just for ray tracing I would say noo it’s not getting any better and it doesn’t look £2000 better either.

  16. Hanfis42

    you can argue wether it’s worth for games or not but there is just no argument against ray tracing if you just want to render something…. raytracing is not even new for rendering it’s new for real time rendering so yeah maybe they brought it too early to gamers but it is inevitable the future

  17. animosityhavoc

    Path tracing looks incredible, take all my fps.

  18. GnomeSighting

    Funny how many people you managed to trigger with this meme

  19. Fireball694200

    Don’t care what anyone says, il never go back from raytraced global illumination

  20. millanstar

    And your argument is…a shitpost meme?…

    ![gif](giphy|3orifg31w2MOgZBTgs)

    DLSS 3.5 Alone is night and day compares to what they introduced with the 2000 series cards…

  21. EconomicConstipator

    imagine trying to stop progress lol

  22. DA-ZACHYZACHY

    RT will be revolutionary. In a decade or two when the average card can run it.

  23. TrueDraconis

    The current solutions are amazing…for static scenes.

    Once you add Movement, Weather or god forbid Time Cycles all those solutions “fall apart”

    Raytracing or even Volumetric Clouds were created to “fix” those issues and will become the standard one day.

  24. Effective-External50

    When you have a good graphics card and you can play on high end with Ray tracing, it definitely gives it more realism. But….. It has a major flaw I noticed in EVERY game. Shadows get spotty and disappear way too slowly.

  25. vedomedo

    I truly don’t get if this picture is satire or not.

  26. AndrewH73333

    Good luck doing baked lighting for moving lights.

  27. Curi0s1tyCompl3xity

    The best thing to do would be to simulate path tracing, and then bake the lighting.

    Id rather be gaming in 16k native at 240fps with “simulated” path traced lighting. Instead we’re at 1080p (with DLSS), 60fps (if lucky), and we’re not even getting *true* Ray Tracing.

    The RT they’ve been selling us won’t be for another 7-8 years, and that’s best case scenario. Nvidia needs a reason to continue to increase prices by 40% year over year.

  28. Untouchable64

    I always thought screen space reflections looked great. And doesn’t cost as much to run. It does the job well enough.

  29. JuniperFrost

    Ya’ll got any more of them pixels?

    ![gif](giphy|ALtzQ6CHfC7vO5nRz7|downsized)

  30. Stargov1

    I’ll use it when it stops taking 75% of my framerate.

  31. lunchboxdeluxe

    Ray Tracing has gotten a lot faster – that said, it’s still kind of a gimmick in its current use in games.

    For those of us old enough to remember, the same exact thing happened around the year 2000 with Antialiasing. The first implementations of AA made games damn near unplayably slow on all but the highest of high end GPUs. After time though, graphics tech kept advancing, and Antialiasing is seen as a given these days. The same is happening with RT.

  32. Biggu5Dicku5

    Ray tracing is fine, but I feel like modern games (especially AAA games) are focusing too much on visuals and not enough on features; we’ve lost features like servers browsers, pre and post game lobbies, unlocks achieved through gameplay, etc… it’s a damn shame…

  33. DingoKis

    I have a RT capable GPU and can confirm RT is absolute bullshit, you won’t notice RT after getting used to it, the “wow factor” wears out after half an hour… you will never get used to halving the FPS though

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