-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
Almost one year has passed since raytracing was introduced by Nvidia/Microsoft. Are we still expecting this to be the next big thing? (I hope so)
- Thread starter IamPeacock
- Start date
It's the next-next-big thing. The next generation of consoles will not be up to the task of ray tracing in the premiere AAA kinds of games. Even on PC, it won't be broadly accessible for several years. Maybe it starts becoming the standard bragging right of PC players in like 2023, and doesn't make it to consoles either until a mid-cycle hardware refresh, or more likely the next-next-generation of consoles.
One interesting disruptor in this could be cloud streaming. I wouldn't be surprised to see Stadia bragging about having raytracing in some high profile games where it is unavailable on console. And that will be accessible to many more people than those who can afford the RTX2-3080 Ti.
One interesting disruptor in this could be cloud streaming. I wouldn't be surprised to see Stadia bragging about having raytracing in some high profile games where it is unavailable on console. And that will be accessible to many more people than those who can afford the RTX2-3080 Ti.
In all high profile AAA games - sure.
In every game though? Nah. There will still be a lot of games which won't even use 3D rendering let alone raytracing.
Sure, you need eye-tracking. But every 2nd gen headset will have this including console headsets, so that won't be a limiter.
The concept has been around for decades, but it's just been too computationally expensive to consider for real time rendering. Conventional lighting techniques have been a better bang for the GPU buck, and still are for the moment. It's only beginning to change, and it's still relatively early (though the early results are promising).
OP
OP
The real huddle right now, imo, is the dedicated silicon on gpu. The RT module takes about half of the chip, and it does nothing for non-RT tasks. AMD is behind RT design, and GPU design in general. But if they can produce a unified GPU, it can still upset NVidia while push RT to the mass adoption.
it's not just RT, but the tensor cores as well, which are used for denoising.
a unified GPU would be an interesting prospect as it would mean devs can choose to use the hardware for RT or rasterization. but according to AMD's patent, there will still be dedicated hardware, but it might take up less die space compared to Nvidia's RT cores
Couple things I'm keeping an eye on:
The effect of NVME storage on load times as well as on graphics streaming.
Ray traced audio.
From a technical perspective, I think the next-generation is going to be iterating on current-gen trends, but these are the "next-big-things" imo:
- Games as a service features at a system level
- Instant loading
- Play anywhere / Game Streaming
- Much more standardized cross-play/cross-save
I'm more bullish on cloud streaming than most Era posters. That's the one thing with potential to revolutionize the whole industry at the moment. The first day Stadia goes live to "founders" will tell us a lot about the next 5 years.
PCs already have SDDs and they deal with more assets to load and load times still exist.
So long as graphics demand keeps escalating instant loading is a dream
The only alternative is to load up on insane ram and keep entire games suspended but that still requires an initial load and it also depends on how many suspend points you want.
So long as graphics demand keeps escalating instant loading is a dream
The only alternative is to load up on insane ram and keep entire games suspended but that still requires an initial load and it also depends on how many suspend points you want.
In terms of brute force tech, PCs are only just starting to get PCIe4 via AMD motherboards, which could be legitimately a lot faster than existing SSD loading.
In terms of system design, PS5 (and probably xbox too) might have API features and customized hardware for quick-loading important data necessary to load a game that PC devs haven't tried before. Similar to how the current consoles have low power operation modes that aren't available on PC.
Finally, this is another area where I think the cloud could be very disruptive. If Stadia is deploying ramstates as is widely speculated, it could put consoles and PCs to shame in terms of load times. They're talking sub-5 seconds to start any game, which is unheard of.
Someone here, in another thread I think, drew a good comparison with Half Life 2 that was on of the first games with a real physics simulation while most games before were extremely static in how you could interaction with the environment and its objects. Now real-time physics are pretty much standard in most games. Faking lighting will not become completely obsolete, but the bulk of it will be replaced by much more realistic lighting.
Still believe the MMX processors will be the next big thing before raytracing hit's the mainstream! ;)
Well the raytracing Star Wars demo shows just how incredible visuals can look with the technology. If this generation of consoles introduces it in limited fashion then it's only set to be here to stay from here on in.
Shadows and reflections alone will see a huge benefit even if RT is only used to help "fake" the other things in a more accurate fashion. By the time PS6 cones around RT should be a standard feature and will elevate graphics by a huge degree.
Shadows and reflections alone will see a huge benefit even if RT is only used to help "fake" the other things in a more accurate fashion. By the time PS6 cones around RT should be a standard feature and will elevate graphics by a huge degree.
I think it depends on how much improvement nVidia can make on their RTX hardware been now and the next iteration. Another important aspect is getting AMD to adopt ray-tracing hardware acceleration.
Correct. for consoles it's a long ways off
As has been said SSD is being touted as a huge thing for next gen but PC has had it for years. It is not going to be a.cure all and will actually make.those giant installs we are seeing this gen even more costly as it would quickly eat up available space.
Just gotta wait for that Thief and Splinter Cell in ray traced form and then there's no turning back.
I agree, PS5 and Xbox Scarlet will have very limited ray tracing support. You can't expect too much when a $1200 video card can't really handle full ray traced global illumination at higher resolutions. I imagine PS5 will be limited to reflections for ray tracing or something similar for most AAA games.
The speeds are only on paper and in benchmarks. Real life you wont have faster loading than existing nvme's. Theres basically no speed difference now between the highest end nvme's and a sata ssd for loading times.
It's going to be a buzzword up until next gen consoles launch and once they do launch I expect it to be used very very rarely. To see it's true potential at least on consoles we will have to wait until the Xbox 3, PS6.
Oh I very much doubt the PS5 and equivalent Xbox will have any ray tracing, I'm thinking more PS6.
Don't temporal denoising/anti-aliasing solutions tend to fall apart in VR?
Considering both Sony and Microsoft have touted this feature for their next machines, why would we be thinking anything different?
This. It's what will make next-gen look a lot better than current-gen.
Can't even imagine God of War 2 and GTAVI with ray-tracing.
The question should be when not if. Ray tracing will be the ultimate form of lighting in video games. Not only because it's so accurate to real.life, but because it will actually make artist jobs much easier. Games today look photo realistic due to artists spending so much time to make the lighting look good by faking it. Ray tracing will it automatically generated amazing results. Games like metro Exodus and the updated quake 2 show incredible results with indirect lighting.
The only way for realtime visuals to move forward is if we get the heavy rendering tech seen in offline renders running in realtime. Imitations can only work for so long.
Those work in conjunction. Raytracing itself works on a per pixel level afterall.
But remember this is early stuff. Just remember the early dx11 titles verses now. Also GPU performance will significantly improve.
It's not going to be the jump from 2D to 3D some think it will be, it's going to be like the widespread use of PBR or normal maps. An incredible useful tool that makes game development more versatile, but not something every 3D game will use.
In practice bit is more of an under the hood evolution of computer graphics. When it is here in widespread use, the goal is that most people won't even notice or know that it is there, like with other many advances in graphics over the years. A fundamental step forward, but not something for consumers to do a whole lot about.
In practice bit is more of an under the hood evolution of computer graphics. When it is here in widespread use, the goal is that most people won't even notice or know that it is there, like with other many advances in graphics over the years. A fundamental step forward, but not something for consumers to do a whole lot about.
Existing nvme I agree. I suspect the PS5 will have a small amount of fast nvme that can saturate PCI-e 4. And then a conventional HDD for actual storage.
The difference between this gen and last gen due to PBR getting widespread use is already an insane difference.
As others have said its essentially gonna be Raytracing Lite for next gen systems, the whole enchilada is entirely too expensive perf wise. Maybe the following gen.
On Metro Exodus I can get 60fps at 1080p/High settings with RT turned on with a 2070. It's really not as computationally expensive as some people make out.
RT will be in most 30fps AAA games on the next set of consoles imo because their GPU's will be even more powerful than my 2070.
I think the killer for people people who think RT is too expensive is that 1080p/30fps is too low for their tastes
I only have a 980 Ti, but is that RTX on/off thing something you can actually do in games to see the differences instantly? For me, that would go a long way in selling it, because a lot of times if I'm just watching raytraced gaming footage normally, I don't really notice the benefits.
Once the next Xbox and Playstation are out there should be an explosion of games with Ray Tracing. I'm especially existed for ports of old games with Ray Tracing added.
Quake 2 has it, but that's because Q2's rasterizer is old and runs at like 300fps on modern hardware. the on/off thing for modern games might be too expensive
That incoming gen is certainly facing never seen before challenges at least.
The big tech fad for the last years being already too much of a luxury for the next 5-6 years of console gaming, is pretty telling.
Back then, a new console gen offered so much more than the one before that the new possibilities were far above what gamers could imagine and there was that feeling of unlimited power. But now a gen starts and it's from the beginning "we're going to struggle and optimize/cheat like crazy to reach people's expectations.."
Now i'm still confident we'll see miracle, cause we always do. Remember, again, the talk about global illumination when Unreal demos were discussed at the start of that gen, and it seemed PS4 and XBO couldn't afford it. We had some pretty good exemple of it this gen in the end. We'll have clever use of mixed techs for lights that will impress i'm sure.
The big tech fad for the last years being already too much of a luxury for the next 5-6 years of console gaming, is pretty telling.
Back then, a new console gen offered so much more than the one before that the new possibilities were far above what gamers could imagine and there was that feeling of unlimited power. But now a gen starts and it's from the beginning "we're going to struggle and optimize/cheat like crazy to reach people's expectations.."
Now i'm still confident we'll see miracle, cause we always do. Remember, again, the talk about global illumination when Unreal demos were discussed at the start of that gen, and it seemed PS4 and XBO couldn't afford it. We had some pretty good exemple of it this gen in the end. We'll have clever use of mixed techs for lights that will impress i'm sure.