Is Ray Tracing actually even worth it right now?

[Border]

It's not worth it now, but eventually it will be. Just think of it like any other feature that you switch ON or OFF depending on the performance you want. Don't buy a card specifically for ray tracing, just understand that it will be a cool feature you will use sometime later.

My main concern is that the PS5 and XSX have such a primitive hardware implementation of RTX that they will never be capable of enabling raytracing without a huge performance hit.

 

[Unkindled]

Will be in about 2 years not right now.

 

[Border]

I disagree. I think the difference is huge.

No RT

With RT

Of course not every scene in Control has this big of difference, but still, its fairly drastic.

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I had to keep scrolling up and down over and over to look for differences, and even there I am coming up kinda short. Even the reflections in the non-RT screenshot look pretty good, and I thought that's where the clear difference would be. After careful inspection I notice that the light reflection behind the pipes is more prominent in the RT-enabled screenshot, but even that took forever for me to see.

The problem with raytracing is that if it only looks mildly better in head-to-head screenshot comparisons, then most people aren't really going to notice it when they're actually playing a game.

 

[Spoit]

We have very nice faked light-shaft effects, but you see how that falls apart next to totally dynamic casting/parrallel refraction through transmissives.

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Sidenote, was actually doing the calcuations for those, instead of the faked methods that were developed later (one of) the reason why Crysis 1 didn't scale so well?

 

[ken_matthews]

I had to keep scrolling up and down over and over to look for differences, and even there I am coming up kinda short. Even the reflections in the non-RT screenshot look pretty good, and I thought that's where the clear difference would be. After careful inspection I notice that the light reflection behind the pipes is more prominent in the RT-enabled screenshot, but even that took forever for me to see.

The problem with raytracing is that if it only looks mildly better in head-to-head screenshot comparisons, then most people aren't really going to notice it when they're actually playing a game.

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I don't know, I disagree. The differences are fairly huge in those screen shots. They stand out to me. Here is a GIF to better highlight them for you.

 

[DanteMenethil]

I don't know, I disagree. The differences are fairly huge in those screen shots. They stand out to me. Here is a GIF to better highlight them for you.

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If that's your definition of huge, I wonder what you think of Quake 2 rtx

 

[muteant]

ray tracing is exciting not because side by side it is a huge leap but rather bc it allows developers to reallocate enormous resources normally devoted "faking it."

 

[Net_Wrecker]

I had to keep scrolling up and down over and over to look for differences, and even there I am coming up kinda short. Even the reflections in the non-RT screenshot look pretty good, and I thought that's where the clear difference would be. After careful inspection I notice that the light reflection behind the pipes is more prominent in the RT-enabled screenshot, but even that took forever for me to see.

The problem with raytracing is that if it only looks mildly better in head-to-head screenshot comparisons, then most people aren't really going to notice it when they're actually playing a game.

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Control's a tough one because Remedy have incredible environmental and lighting artists and Control has a very visually precise aesthetic in its base form. Something like Metro Exodus' RT with the global lighting system and dynamic sun movement casting more natural light and shadows is where RT will probably make the most strides on a wide scale in the next few years, and the difference will be huge.

It's also saying something how much life RT can breathe into Minecraft and Quake environments. People only think about photoreal applications, but light dynamically doing what light should do grounds ANY scene with even minimally suggested light bounce and shadows.

 

[ken_matthews]

If that's your definition of huge, I wonder what you think of Quake 2 rtx

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Ok, well "huge" is a bit much. Control looks great even without raytracing, so while the differences are substantial, they are not going to be "huge" in the same way it would be if I compared the lowest graphic settings to the maximum ones. I guess the thing you really see is how much is faked in games when you switch on raytracing. The game looks a lot better with proper lighting, shadows, and reflections.

EDIT: I've played Quake RTX, it's actually kind of mind blowing.

 

[MrChillaxx]

I don't think the tech is mature yet, nor there are many games supporting it. Series 3000 will probably cause a big jump in adoption, but i doubt we'll see it as a "standard" feature until series 4000.

Plus having to choose between 4K, max details, 60+fps, Raytracing... yeah that's not gonna be doable anytime soon, if ever. Frankly DLSS is FAR more interesting to me at the moment.

 

[Ænima]

Im gonna say probably not that worth it. Some games already display very photorealistic lighting. And so far i could only identify if a game has raytracing or not by looking at screens that show how the game looks with RT on and off. It does look better with RT on for sure, but i have seen identical lighting in games that dont use RT so on those games seems like a waste of performance power for minimal gains.

When it comes to next gen tech im much interested to see what developers can pull when they make games designed to use the SSD drives.

 

[Pottuvoi]

Yes, an additional sampling method is worth it.

 

[Jeremy]

I have only a 2060 in my laptop, and I feel like the early implementations are underwhelming.

For something like Control, it doesn't seem worth it at this juncture...

For a game that relies on lighting (e.g. a horror game like Silent Hill) it would almost certainly be worth it.

In 5 years, it will probably just be standard though.

 

[KORNdog]

I think it looks nice. But I cannot stand the weird artifacts it creates. Minecraft for instance creates these weird shadow smears along walls as the light slowly adapts to changes. It's just very distracting to me. More-so than even some of the weirdness that can happen with screen space reflections. And all of that for the low cost of half of your performance budget! It's just a bum deal right now imo. And I dread to think what it'll be like on next gen consoles.

 

[Perfect Chaos]

I think this next gen of Nvidia cards and the further refinement of DLSS tech will make Ray tracing dramatically more viable. 2.0 DLSS implementation is already extremely impressive, and once we get stronger hardware to throw at RT, we'll see great RT at good frame rates.

Mainstream viability for ray tracing is probably coming faster than we think.

 

[nitewulf]

I had to keep scrolling up and down over and over to look for differences, and even there I am coming up kinda short. Even the reflections in the non-RT screenshot look pretty good, and I thought that's where the clear difference would be. After careful inspection I notice that the light reflection behind the pipes is more prominent in the RT-enabled screenshot, but even that took forever for me to see.

The problem with raytracing is that if it only looks mildly better in head-to-head screenshot comparisons, then most people aren't really going to notice it when they're actually playing a game.

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Its her jacket, the metallic parts of the chairs, trashcans along with the floors. But yeah, its subtle. But w/o it, the first shot is pretty flat. This is a dull scene to begin with, possibly not a good showcase. But RT isn't a very blingy effect yet, which is OK by me. I am sure it can be made to look very blingy as well.

 

[Yogi]

It's probably worth it in games that are slow paced, just don't expect minecraft levels of raytracing in something like cyberpunk.

I'm excited to see raytracing in like 2 or 3 gens when we can do minecraft raytracing in cyberpunk. I'd rather games feel improved in more traditional ways for the upcoming next-gen.

 

[DoradoWinston]

I disagree. I think the difference is huge.

No RT

With RT

Of course not every scene in Control has this big of difference, but still, its fairly drastic.

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personally i feel like Control is one of the weaker showings of it too imo (havent really bothered seeing MW RTX so i wont speak for that).

Minecraft is the most obvious and just in your face experience, like fucking hell...if i had an RTX card i would never be able to go back to normal minecraft after seeing that tbh

 

[Painguy]

One year from now it will be pretty commonplace. IMO you bought the hardware too early. Technically you will have feature parity with next gen consoles but you would have been better off waiting for ampere or a more mature implementation of raytracing hardware. console sets the standard on what to expect.

 

[BarringGaffner]

Devs have spent a long time finding creative ways to 'fake' what raytracing gives you, and for a lot cheaper. I personally don't want processing invested in ray tracing for the 'oh yeah, I think I can see the difference in those screenshots' in next gen games. That's not what excites me personally.

but it doesn't really matter what I think. If devs are excited and passionate about what ray tracing can bring to future games then... bring it on!

 

[Dan L]

I actually made this quick for my response to this thread:

Minecraft RTX is so cool!

I bought my 2080ti on launch and haven't regretted it for a bit. Metro, Control, Deliver us the moon, Wolfenstein Youngbloods, all are so great and look amazing.

As time goes on there are more and more games that will utilize it and with the next gen consoles having ray tracing I expect more and more.

 

[Milennia]

Thanks to DLSS it's totally manageable and looks great even on today's cards
3k series cards wont even need DLSS potentially but you might go for it in many titles anyway since it's great, don't expect 4k 60 fps with RT enabled to be a standard for a LONG ass time, maybe the 3080ti will have such a performance gap it can pull it off in some titles with some decent optimization on max settings
It looks fantastic truly, sure it's a luxury, but it looks damn fantastic
Will probably have a massive impact on CP2077 and many other games beyond this year, maybe even halo

Edit: I have the same card as you OP and get 70 fps avg with full RTX enabled and 1440p w/ DLSS 2.0 with nearly entirely max settings besides some trash settings that don't even do much at all like volumetric lighting

 

[Fredrik]

1080p to 4K is a barely noticeable upgrade unless you have a huge TV and sit really close, yet
people got obsessed by games being native 4K and complained every time checker-boarding or dynamic res was used.

Ray-tracing is an upgrade anyone can notice even with a small TV sitting far away, so I'd say it's definitely worth it.

But RT needs to be used carefully, I don't want sub-60fps but I have no issues with lower resolutions. Ray-tracing > resolution

 

[Fredrik]

I actually made this quick for my response to this thread:

Minecraft RTX is so cool!

I bought my 2080ti on launch and haven't regretted it for a bit. Metro, Control, Deliver us the moon, Wolfenstein Youngbloods, all are so great and look amazing.

As time goes on there are more and more games that will utilize it and with the next gen consoles having ray tracing I expect more and more.

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Haha that's awesome! Well done, sir!

 

[____]

I don't know, I disagree. The differences are fairly huge in those screen shots. They stand out to me. Here is a GIF to better highlight them for you.

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In an example like this I'm not sure which one has RTX on and off without using your reference.

 

[FoolsMilky]

Just wanted to add for people who have only seen most of the Minecraft RTX videos that use the pre-made maps:

Digital Foundry made their own map which displays many of the different effects that RTX creates as well as explanations.Even though the large maps are impressive (Especially the Cyber City one), they don't really show off what RTX really is and how it changes this so drastically.

(Skip to 20:05 to see my favorite part, where they display light going through water, the reflections of different materials, the refraction, and the light diminishing through the depth of the water.)


You can also watch their follow-up video where they speak with Nvidia devs and show off even more effects.

To answer the thread, I don't yet have a ray tracing card, but Minecraft with RTX shows the beauty of real-time ray traced lighting and I definitely plan to get a card when I can. As we progress, more games will use ray tracing for more of their effects rather than using older techniques. Ray tracing will get more efficient, and with DLSS improving as it has, it will be a lot more bearable for games to indulge while being able to keep a relatively solid performance.

 

[Milennia]

In an example like this I'm not sure which one has RTX on and off without using your reference.

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The one where the ceiling lights are illuminating half the hallway when they aren't even in the hallway is RTX

 

[astro]

Did not know it was coming out for Eternal... stalled my play through a third of the way through to play other games and now I'm stuck into P5R, will wait for this then.

2080, tried Control and Metro Exodus which both looked amazing.

It's worth it for Control, Metro Exodus and DLSS 2.0 We'll see how the Doom Eternal update looks like.

Personally I'd like to see it patchedEd in for older games with huge performance overhead to spare. Imagine stuff like Chaos Theory, Dead Space 2 and Alien Isolation with proper RT.

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Oh, fuck yes.

Mass Effect trilogy remaster with RT, please!

 

[Tatsu91]

Don't get me wrong, ray tracing looks really good but, even with DLSS the performance hit doesn't seem worth the trade off on reasonable hardware. I'm on a 2070 Super (not top of the line, but it's still $500+ for the gpu alone, my entire build is about $1500) and from messing around with it over the past few weeks, I'm not impressed really.

Now I should mention I'm playing from about 6-7 ft from a 55 inch LG OLED as my display, and games do look great with RTX on. Take Control for instance, the DLSS is pretty good but, I have to forego some of the higher end settings to get it run at 60 FPS, I can squeeze them all out if I render at 720p and it still looks good but like, if you did some pepsi challenge shit on me on scenes without reflections and mirrors, I couldn't tell tbh. The reflection stuff is super cool, but I also find prebaked stuff to be convincing enough, with like 3X the performance. In side by side screenshots you can pick it out absolutely, but while actually playing the game it doesn't seem like a crucial difference in the slightest.

The other ones I've tried are Metro Exodus, which again looks good but I would rather turn it off and run at higher res and framerate, COD MW which I couldn't tell the difference at all, and Quake II RTX. Quake was probably the most impressive imo, but also it cut my frame rate from hundreds of frames per second to under 60 WITH dynamic res enabled. IDK I mean it's cool, but it doesn't seem like it's there yet at all imo. Is it better if your closer to the screen like a PC monitor or something? So far it just does not at all seem worth the performance hit to me, even though DLSS is super cool, that still has it's own set of issues.

What is everyone else's experience with this so far? Are we just waiting for GPUs to be able to rip through it without a thought so we can just have it be a given, or are there games I'm missing with better implementation?

Again, it does look good, but the tradeoff RN unless you have a $1200 GPU (and even then) seems totally ridiculous.

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Games with simple art styles like minecraft etc. Its totally worth it in more demanding games likely not quite yet

 

[wafflebrain]

Current examples on PC with the current hw and performance absolutely not. Minecraft RTX is gorgeous but is still too demanding even with DLSS. As good as it looks the quality differences aren't that big between it and the non RTX path traced shader (SEUS PTGI). The latter performs much better too. It may not be "the real deal" with the same level of coverage but to my eyes its almost on par. I'd still like to compare with a more realistic style resource pack like Umsoea though. The look of some of those textures with path tracing is a sight to behold, and I assume is a glimpse into what to expect next gen once we start seeing more games utilizing global illumination RT like Metro.

 

[Corine]

10000x YES :) Such a game changing feature.

 

[leng jai]

It's infinitely more worth it than the performance cost of going from 1080p to 4K that's for sure which is what most people seem to be happy moving to on console.

 

[Reinhardt Schneider]

Does any PC player want to run sub-60 fps at sub 1080p on a $1500 machine in 2020?

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Yes?

Honestly, to me it seems you don't understand how Raytracing works

Raytracing is more expensive as you scale in resolution. You want to play at 4K60,and that's next to impossible as of now, and it's like that with every single new technique (remember when SSAO was introduced? Oh, I sure do) , you'll have to wait at least one GPU gen to have your precious 4k60.

Also, you seem to expect some kind of spectacular difference. It isn't going to be like that. Control is the best implementation for how natural it is, and it's better than prebaked because it allows for some crazy shit.

And the person who's telling you this is a base 2060 owner who runs Control and minecraft at 1080p60. We 20XX owners are Raytracing beta testers and honestly, I'm okay with that, I'm loving this peek to the next gen and I'm not expecting wonders performance wise from a brand new tech

 

[Windu]

It will probably just be used sparingly for awhile. It still seems like a decade out when it will be standard across games.

 

[Nikokuno]

Yes because :
1. Nvidia finally delivers DLSS 2.0.
2. Next-gen consoles have RT hardware.

No because :
1. We have yet to see a massive adoption of RT from developers.
2. We don't know if AMD have a DLSS equivalent, or if the hardware is powerful enough to deliver good performance.

Minecraft uses Path Tracing though, you got everything on. And it looks glorious.

 

[Dark1x]

I can hardly believe what I'm reading. We're finally approaching the holy grail of real-time rendering and people are like "nahhhh".

 

[GymWolf86]

No, not for me.
I always disable rtx in games to gain better performance on pc.

I hope console devs can forget this thing at least for the nextgen, maybe on ps6/sex2.

 

[Reinhardt Schneider]

I can hardly believe what I'm reading. We're finally approaching the holy grail of real-time rendering and people are like "nahhhh".

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Well the trending is starting to revert thanks to it being implemented in new consoles, but people have been pushing against it HARD. Like, stupidly hard

I get the performance angle, but it's disingenuous to think it isn't going to improve as time goes on.

DLSS already does wonders with that. I'm honestly in awe with what my 2060 can do thanks to it.

 

[tuxfool]

Ray tracing for sound (do I hear this sound directly? Is it also echoing off other surfaces?) and AI (can this thing see me? Can it see my reflection? My shadow?) however, can get good results with dozens to hundreds of rays, and I think we'll be seeing those a lot in the near future.

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Games already do raycasts as part of normal game logic. And there are already games that simulate sound propagation.

Typically all of this is done on the CPU. Primarily, because they only need to cast a few days at the most, also because shuttling data to and from the GPU is way too expensive and complicated to make it worthwhile.

 

[Spoit]

I can hardly believe what I'm reading. We're finally approaching the holy grail of real-time rendering and people are like "nahhhh".

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I'm so glad that the consoles are going for it. If we'd have had to wait another generation for widescale adoption, that would have really sucked

 

[Hopewell]

I can hardly believe what I'm reading. We're finally approaching the holy grail of real-time rendering and people are like "nahhhh".

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Yes we're approaching it but it's still the future.
For now we can only get games like Minecraft to run with full ray tracing. And even that it can't run on the most powerful GPU at 4K.
It will not be before the next generation of console (PS6), that we'll have full ray tracing on most games, if we are optimistic.

However ray tracing is the future and it will be amazing!

 

[Raiden]

My wallet says no, but my heart says yes.

The 3000 series plus a new TV will kill me.

 

[Reinhardt Schneider]

Yes we're approaching it but it's still the future.
For now we can only get games like Minecraft to run with full ray tracing. And even that it can't run on the most powerful GPU at 4K.
It will not be before the next generation of console (PS6), that we'll have full ray tracing on most games, if we are optimistic.

However ray tracing is the future and it will be amazing!

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An incomplete implementation is needed before having the fully perfected thing. Remember techs like antialiasing or texture filtering.

Next Gen adopting raytracing is a wonderful thing, even if it's incomplete

 

[GamerDude]

1080p to 4K is a barely noticeable upgrade unless you have a huge TV and sit really close, yet
people got obsessed by games being native 4K and complained every time checker-boarding or dynamic res was used.

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What? 1080p to 4K & HDR is a MASSIVE upgrade that is immediately noticeable. It felt like jumping forward at least half a gen when I made that upgrade. My TV is only 55 inches and I don't sit particularly close, so...

 

[gabdeg]

Yes, no question. There have been many games proving just that. I actually think at this stage it is a waste of time to post examples just so people could get their "It just looked really bad without raytracing" take or whatever in.

If people are genuinely interested, watch the DF videos on the respective games that utilize raytracing, they all do a great job of showing off the tech.

 

[Anthony Hopkins]

The difference RT brings is real, but it is subtle.

This is not rdr1 vs rdr2. That is a huge difference, RT implementations are not huge. Minecraft is but if you added a load of raster effects to minecraft the difference would also be huge.

Huge jumps are never just an increase alone.

Uncharted 5 with tripple the poly count, advanced hair,water, sand, snow and other physics simulations,a higher number of more advanced particle effects, a higher number of more advanced raster lighting effects and 4k textures is going to look better then UC5 with the same visuals as UC4 but fully path traced.

Peoples obcession with just one new graphics technology is rather odd.
Its a great technology, but personally im more excited over advanced physics simulations and even more excited about technologies being used together.

 

[Dr. Doom]

1080p to 4K is a barely noticeable upgrade unless you have a huge TV and sit really close, yet
people got obsessed by games being native 4K and complained every time checker-boarding or dynamic res was used.

Ray-tracing is an upgrade anyone can notice even with a small TV sitting far away, so I'd say it's definitely worth it.

But RT needs to be used carefully, I don't want sub-60fps but I have no issues with lower resolutions. Ray-tracing > resolution

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I personally think the single biggest upgrade is 1080p to 4K HDR. I recently purchased a new 4K TV and Doom Eternal looks absolutely insane at that Res. Conversely, I wasn't impressed by the visuals on my standard 1080p set.

The Control screenshots with RT enabled look good, but they aren't a significant leap over the base game. RT is too expensive of a tech right now and most would be hard pressed to appreciate the details whilst playing a game. Games already look fantastic without RT. I'm curious to see the application of RT over the course of next gen though, particularly as both consoles will feature it. But I feel 60FPS and/or 4K is a pipedream, unless you wait 2 years for a significantly beefier GPU.

 

[Bold One]

I disagree. I think the difference is huge.

No RT

With RT

Of course not every scene in Control has this big of difference, but still, its fairly drastic.

Click to shrink...

Every graphics thread someone posts multiple Control pics comparing them - I never understand what the difference I'm supposed to be noticing.

As for RT? EH - Take it or leave it, I am not sure the trade-off is worth the performance hit - especially on the cusp of new machines promising 4k60.

 

[Aztechnology]

In my opinion it you have to choose between increased performance and RTX. No. I have a 2080 and RTSS is the tech I cared more about. Faked/baked in techniques to approximate many of these things are so good that generally I don't care much. There are games where it makes incredible differences, like Minecraft. But that's because it's a very significant improvement versus base Minecraft.

 

[GymWolf86]

The difference RT brings is real, but it is subtle.

This is not rdr1 vs rdr2. That is a huge difference, RT implementations are not huge. Minecraft is but if you added a load of raster effects to minecraft the difference would also be huge.

Huge jumps are never just an increase alone.

Uncharted 5 with tripple the poly count, advanced hair,water, sand, snow and other physics simulations,a higher number of more advanced particle effects, a higher number of more advanced raster lighting effects and 4k textures is going to look better then UC5 with the same visuals as UC4 but fully path traced.

Peoples obcession with just one new graphics technology is rather odd.
Its a great technology, but personally im more excited over advanced physics simulations and even more excited about technologies being used together.

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This.