Ray Tracing - Game Changer or Overhyped?

Ray Tracing - Game Changer or Overhyped?

  • Yes - Game Changer for sure

    Votes: 118 46.6%
  • No - Overhyped, not what was intended

    Votes: 135 53.4%

  • Total voters
    253
Probably hype but may eventually will be a game changer, I am glad someone is trying to push it but they will experience growing pains along the way.
 
After watching the battlefield 5 video, I really do believe it will be a game changer. But hey, I have been known to be wrong from time to time. :)
 
Moving to raytracing in video games is a natural evolution, and, in the absence of a third alternative, inevitable. There has been talk of it for a long time now but no hardware for it. Aside from performance (for the time being) raytracing is superior to rasterization in every way - just look at CG in movies compared to video games. And I'm not talking about fully animated movies, I'm talking about the stuff you don't even realize is there because it's so realistic. Eventually the tech will be doing that in real-time.

It doesn't look all that impressive right now, but a lot of first gen hardware technologies don't.
 
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You haven't put a time limit on your poll. At the moment it's overhyped, but, I guess it has to start somewhere. Eventually it will be everywhere in games.
 
I think ray tracing would be really beneficial in horror games. Could you imagine ray tracing in ALIEN: Isolation?

That being said I hope ray tracing can be added to current gen games.
 
When was the last time industry-changing tech was introduced and actually panned out the way it was marketed? I can't really think of anything, must've been a while. Most recently, things like tessellation and async spring to mind. Both of which were supposed to revolutionize gaming and... didn't.

The raytracing demos they showed off at Gamescom weren't particularly impressive to me. I'm more interested in DLSS frankly.
 
I think we've done pretty well faking effects with current games.
 
Overhyped? Most definitely not. Developers for nearly 2 decades have said over and over again that ray tracing is the Holy Grail when it comes to creating the most life-like graphics. The RTX series and the initial ray tracing implementations will be limited, but it's a start. It's the start that we need to finally get the ball rolling.
 
I think it's definitely the future of gaming graphics but I'm not entirely sure if it's going to be this generation of cards that delivers it. Won't know for sure til reviews come out but it kinda looks like while the new RTX cards can do RT, it's a massive frame rate hit and it remains to be seen how many developers will include it.

PhysX and TresFX come to mind. Both were great technologies and features but when it comes to actual gameplay would you even miss it?
 
Overhyped? Most definitely not. Developers for nearly 2 decades have said over and over again that ray tracing is the Holy Grail when it comes to creating the most life-like graphics. The RTX series and the initial ray tracing implementations will be limited, but it's a start. It's the start that we need to finally get the ball rolling.
I agree. And it's not like it isn't used currently. Ray tracing is the reason you have render farms for animated movies. I think we are a ways off at having good hardware performance and software adoption but it will be big.
 
When was the last time industry-changing tech was introduced and actually panned out the way it was marketed? I can't really think of anything, must've been a while. Most recently, things like tessellation and async spring to mind. Both of which were supposed to revolutionize gaming and... didn't.

The raytracing demos they showed off at Gamescom weren't particularly impressive to me. I'm more interested in DLSS frankly.

The only demo that really interested me Battlefield V and there will be a lot of growing pains for both Nvidia and developers, but glad someone is pushing it. I do agree, DLSS seems like the more interesting technology.
 
It's a game changer. But just like programmable shaders we're going to have to wait about a half decade for the hardware to mature and show us something interesting. All the demos so-far are selective ray tracing a portion of a scene, pointing to the hardware being too underpowered.

Until that point, it will usually be indistinguishable from raster, or the effect is so small it gets buried in the rest of the scene.

The fact that it's easy to build ray tracing into existing games does not mean the hardware will magically speed up tomorrow. It took us 3-5 years after the GeForce 3 to get impressive games like Doom 3, Half-Life 2, Battlefield 2, FEAR, Oblivion. And it took a few more years to get peak DX9 rendering with Crysis. It was hardware holding up the show, not software.
 
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Ray tracing doesn't excite me yet as it looks like something that is going to consume a lot of resources to do right. When it becomes a toggle switch with the impact of FXAA, then I will get excited. DLSS seems like a far more useful feature than ray tracing at this point.

I also want to add that I despise those newer Disney animated movies that everyone likes. I've made it a life goal to never watch one as I detest the graphics style. I love the way that the old techniques look like in Cuphead and even the Japanese anime.

Just wanted to get that out there before someone tries to convince me that Toy Story looks awesome so I should embrace ray tracing. /yawn Not going to happen.

:)
 
MMX here we come! (not really, but I feel the hype is greater than the results for the next few years)
 
It'll be a game-changer, but not for a few years most likely.

You are talking about a rendering method that basically emulates light physics, so it's essentially "perfect".
 
Your asking gamers?
Try asking developers.

It will free up time for developers time from not have to do rasterisation, shadow-maps, prebaked lighting ect. that can be used on in-game content, eliminated weird graphical glitches and save memory (all those "fake" techniques eat RAM) and allow reflections from objects not in the screen-space.
Raytracing is the way it works in the real world, everything you have seen on screen in games so far is an attempt so simulate raytracing.
Now you don't have to simulate anymore, you just do it.
 
It’ll be a game changer as soon as my 2080ti is in my system BAHAHHAHAHAHHA.

It’s going to be so fun being a shitter and killing people using reflections.
 
I'd say, game changer for sure, however, it remains to be seen just how viable this first round of hardware is. I'm hoping it's excellent, however, we've seen new tech take a generation or two to mature in the past. I'm very much hoping that the 2070-2080Ti are adequate to get more people excited, get more devs on board, and get more and better hardware out in the future.

Not only is this cool for realism (like in some of the demos we've been seeing), but also for more abstract things. Imagine a new Tron game using this tech. I would imagine it would be lighter on resource use, while looking absolutely amazing due to the art style. There are more applications to this than just making the most realistic dilapidated house with shadows and glass imaginable. There is SO MUCH more to it when you start thinking in more abstract art styles.

How about a ray traced Marble Madness game?
 
It'll be a game changer when the software side has a chance to catch up in a couple of years.
 
I'm going to say "Game Changer" but with the caveat of "down the road"

Ray Tracing is definitely a game changer, it's the goal we've been striving to get to forever, developers want this. But, the implementation, optimization, and performance is yet to come and will evolve over time. When mainstream GPUs can do RT in real-time, then we will be on to something, but that's a ways off. However, someone has to get the ball rolling, you have to start somewhere. Five years from now we'll look back at now as the beginning, and in five years maybe then it'll be very mainstream.
 
ray-tracing is definitely a really big jump but in its current form it's more of a hybrid, with rasterization still doing most of the work...give it a few years and if performance doesn't totally sink these cards then we should be seeing some amazing looking games...Elder Scrolls 6?...maybe Gabe been waiting for ray-tracing in order to release HL3?
 
Voted no. I just don't see people adopting because of the performance hit. Maybe later on? I'd rather hit my higher refresh rates than eye candy.
 
Voted no. I just don't see people adopting because of the performance hit. Maybe later on? I'd rather hit my higher refresh rates than eye candy.

Thankfully the options will be able to be turned on or off in games, so you have the option to disable RTX features like DLSS or Ray Tracing so as to not have the performance hit.

I'd rather have the option, then not have the option. Think of it like this, replayability. 5 years down the road you can pull out your old Metro Exodus or Shadow of hte Tomb Raider and run it on 2023 GPUs at 60FPS at 4K with Ray Tracing and DLSS and enjoy a whole new experience.
 
High FPS > Graphics.. So this is an easy no.

Precisely synced 60, 120, or 144 with highest quality in-game graphics > High FPS.

Give me all available eye candy, keep a solid rate that doesn't dip or peak at any of the above rates, and I'm happy as can be.

That's actually why I still play at 1080. I can do precisely that. I'd be more than happy to keep playing at 1080 with Ray Tracing enabled running at 60 or 120. More-so than making the jump to 4K.
 
Remember when DX11 Tessellation was going to change the industry? Now it's just for smoothing out hard edges on the highest "Model detail" settings.
 
my personal prediction ..it'll PCSS soft shadows again like in FC 4 ..something that needs to be written to a game via the engine .. will it be used? .. yea in very few games ..here we go on the nvidia game works BS road again ..works in some game but not all ..and by the time its used AMD will have a better option that's written for some games ..but not all .. call it Z tracing or what ever

bottom line not buying it ..till i see real world in game benchmarks
 
Remember when DX11 Tessellation was going to change the industry? Now it's just for smoothing out hard edges on the highest "Model detail" settings.

True. I think there's a bit more of a tangible benefit to RT though. Assuming it can be done reasonably well, or selected for specific, beneficial contexts. I guess we just have to wait a month to find out. :D
 
my personal prediction ..it'll PCSS soft shadows again like in FC 4 ..something that needs to be written to a game via the engine .. will it be used? .. yea in very few games ..here we go on the nvidia game works BS road again ..works in some game but not all ..and by the time its used AMD will have a better option that's written for some games ..but not all .. call it Z tracing or what ever

bottom line not buying it ..till i see real world in game benchmarks

I would almost think that could be the case, if it wasn't a pretty widely advertised feature of one of the largest licensed game engines around. (Unreal) With the mention of EA, that gives us another potential big engine. I forgot if Crytek was mentioned or not, but since they're at the "Litigation Stage" of their useful life, I don't know if we'll see that or not. :p

If Vulkan gets it (I was just enlightened that support wasn't in it yet for RT) we can see it in id Software engines, and that should be pretty insane. They're pretty much the masters of all things "dramatic lighting" IMO, so I'd love to see what they do with this.
 
Precisely synced 60, 120, or 144 with highest quality in-game graphics > High FPS.

Give me all available eye candy, keep a solid rate that doesn't dip or peak at any of the above rates, and I'm happy as can be.

That's actually why I still play at 1080. I can do precisely that. I'd be more than happy to keep playing at 1080 with Ray Tracing enabled running at 60 or 120. More-so than making the jump to 4K.

oh my... You missed the point... High FPS > Low FPS but pretty gfx.. There does that sync? Yes High FPS with good settings is the best.. But we are talking about Ray Tracing.
 
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