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It’s important to studios, it saves them craploads of time during development which saves them money and lets them put out a more reliable product. So by extension it’s important to the rest of us.
This is true. RT’s impact on visuals also greatly depends on the extent of its implementation.

Some games, RT barely makes a difference while in others it definitely is a noticeable difference.
 
In general, blanket statements without any supporting evidence hold no importance.

Next up, anecdotal evidence.
Lol okay. We just have to look at the number of games that actually support RT. Will this improve? Sure. But as of now it is much less important than rasterized performance.

As far as "can my GPU run this game at this level of quality and performance?" is concerned.

*Edit* You yourself used anecdotal evidence to explain why ray tracing is important. It's important to you, and that's fine.
 
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Lol okay. We just have to look at the number of games that actually support RT. Will this improve? Sure. But as of now it is much less important than rasterized performance.

As far as "can my GPU run this game at this level of quality and performance?" is concerned.
Ah yes the classic, “look how many games support it!” argument. Maybe someone plays all of those games and another doesn’t play any. The importance of RT depends on what the user plays.

RT definitely takes a big performance hit to run. But again, user dependent. Some people are fine sacrificing performance for RT, others are not.

I’d rather have the ability to play RT games relatively well if I so choose to enable it. But I understand others do not care to have that ability. Doesn’t mean RT is any more or less important.
 
Ah yes the classic, “look how many games support it!” argument. Maybe someone plays all of those games and another doesn’t play any. The importance of RT depends on what the user plays.

RT definitely takes a big performance hit to run. But again, user dependent. Some people are fine sacrificing performance for RT, others are not.

I’d rather have the ability to play RT games relatively well if I so choose to enable it. But I understand others do not care to have that ability. Doesn’t mean RT is any more or less important.
If the majority of titles played don't have RT, or even do yet people still choose not to use it then yes, that does have an effect on how important RT currently is. It means if someone is shopping for a gpu today, they're more likely to care about if a gpu offers more raster performance. RT will be a lesser concern.
 
This is true. RT’s impact on visuals also greatly depends on the extent of its implementation.

Some games, RT barely makes a difference while in others it definitely is a noticeable difference.
Almost anything you do with raytracing can be done with “normal” methods. The difference is the manpower involved in implementing it and the impact on performance. So some studios have the ability to do both, but some time soon we are probably going to see the options Raytraced and “Legacy”.
 
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If the majority of titles played don't have RT, or even do yet people still choose not to use it then yes, that does have an effect on how important RT currently is. It means if someone is shopping for a gpu today, they're more likely to care about if a gpu offers more raster performance. RT will be a lesser concern.

Once again, it’s not about the quantity but what the user is going to play and how they’re going to play it. More games are going to support RT moving forward.

You’re trying to assign a baseline importance to something that is entirely subjective to individual users. If it’s not important to you, that’s fine.

Almost anything you do with raytracing can be done with “normal” methods. The difference is the manpower involved in implementing it and the impact on performance.

It can be closely replicated with conventional methods. But as you had mentioned, it’s a lot of work so many developers do not go into that level of detail. But with RT they do, and that’s where the visual difference lays.
 
It can be closely replicated with conventional methods. But as you had mentioned, it’s a lot of work so many developers do not go into that level of detail. But with RT they do, and that’s where the visual difference lays.
Yes, but they still spend lots of time on the ambiance and general scenery which is why lots of time the RT’d options seem so minor. I expect as the number of gamers using RT enabled cards increases the amount of time they spend implementing many of those effects in the traditional rasterized methods will proprietary decrease so the visual impact will seem larger over time.
 
It’s important to studios, it saves them craploads of time during development which saves them money and lets them put out a more reliable product. So by extension it’s important to the rest of us.
It will be important in the future. There is no current game that is "make or break" with respect to RT.
 
It will be important in the future. There is no current game that is "make or break" with respect to RT.
RT enabled cards doesn’t yet have enough market share for studios to risk it beyond slight additional things, shadows, weapon effects, detailed surface reflections and the likes. General ambiance is still done with the normal methods. But as the years progress I very much expect that to change and they will spend less and less time manually adjusting the scenes for lighting and other such effects and rely more and more on Ray Tracing to implement them.
 
It will be important in the future. There is no current game that is "make or break" with respect to RT.

Then I will worry about it on my future card, when ray tracing becomes standard in most games. Till then it just a check mark on a box that most will never use or even can.
 
It’s important to studios, it saves them craploads of time during development which saves them money and lets them put out a more reliable product. So by extension it’s important to the rest of us.
It will save them time-------one day, when Ray Tracing is the standard way to implement some effects.

Right now, it costs more time and money. Because they also create the RT fx, in addition to "regular" methods. They still have to make VFX without using RT, to maximize sales potential.

And actually, they don't have to do the RT versions. which is why a lot of games still do not have RT.
 
Once again, it’s not about the quantity but what the user is going to play and how they’re going to play it. More games are going to support RT moving forward.

You’re trying to assign a baseline importance to something that is entirely subjective to individual users. If it’s not important to you, that’s fine.
There is a good way to determine how relevant RT is now, hold a survey that asks people buying a new GPU how important RT was in their decision. I'm sure that study has been done.
 
Then I will worry about it on my future card, when ray tracing becomes standard in most games. Till then it just a check mark on a box that most will never use or even can.

There are loads of graphic settings that most will never use or even can. If they only put out graphical features that everyone could use there would have been very little advancement in the last 30 years.
It will save them time-------one day, when Ray Tracing is the standard way to implement some effects.

Right now, it costs more time and money. Because they also create the RT fx, in addition to "regular" methods. They still have to make VFX without using RT, to maximize sales potential.

And actually, they don't have to do the RT versions. which is why a lot of games still do not have RT.

So? I mean that has been the case for every major advancement in graphics. They make Vulkan versions, they make Dx11 version of games. They make backward compatible versions of most games.

Have you got any figures for the time and cost of putting in Ray Tracing in games along with normal rasterised effects? Because I don't believe it actually does cost much of either. Not now, maybe in the beginning back when no engine supported it. But now game engines have it built in. Developers are getting more used to working with it. Even solo Indie Developers can put Ray Tracing in games alongside normal effects. Look at Bright Memory for example.
There is a good way to determine how relevant RT is now, hold a survey that asks people buying a new GPU how important RT was in their decision. I'm sure that study has been done.

That really isn't the point though. It has to start somewhere. Look at DirectX 12 or look at mantle which morphed into Vulkan. If the push hadn't happened in the last few years, there would be no games out now with any kind of Ray Tracing. And I can't understand the negativity by people on tech forums. This just an exciting time, We have games that are playable with Real Time Ray Tracing. 6 years ago I never thought I would be saying those words. Even when the rumours started that Nvidia were putting Ray Tracing hardware into Turing cards, I didn't believe it would amount to anything.

But now we have Ray Tracing in loads of games. Every new generation of Graphics cards have more GPUs that support Ray Tracing. Consoles have Ray Tracing.

AS for your survey. Well, for the people who don't know, they won't care. But, if you asked those same people if antialiasing or directx 12 is an important factor in their purchase of a new GPU, they wouldn't know that either. However for people in the know, like on tech forums. Well, they should answer "yes" or else they are been stupid. Of course Ray Tracing is relevant. It's here, it's not going away, it's only going to be coming out in more and more games. If you are buying a GPU in the next GPU release, then you should definitely be taking the Ray Tracing performance into consideration.
 
This is true. RT’s impact on visuals also greatly depends on the extent of its implementation.

Some games, RT barely makes a difference while in others it definitely is a noticeable difference.
The issue is most games are still rendering using a hybrid of rasterization and ray tracing. Games that are purely ray traced like Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition look absolutely amazing.
 
The issue is most games are still rendering using a hybrid of rasterization and ray tracing. Games that are purely ray traced like Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition look absolutely amazing.
Agreed. Metro Exodus EE is remarkable and shows what to look forward to with RT games.

I also thoroughly enjoyed CP2077 and Chernobylite despite both being hybrid. RT adds a lot to the visuals in those games as well.
 
Oh look, more expensive cards that can't play the games I want to play. No thanks.
 
Have you got any figures for the time and cost of putting in Ray Tracing in games along with normal rasterised effects? Because I don't believe it actually does cost much of either. Not now, maybe in the beginning back when no engine supported it. But now game engines have it built in. Developers are getting more used to working with it. Even solo Indie Developers can put Ray Tracing in games alongside normal effects. Look at Bright Memory for example.
An asset that may take 4hours of work to optimize for normal raster methods takes 4h5m to optimize for both, but would only take 5m if optimizing for Ray tracing alone. Development tools pretty automate the whole process. The tools aren’t cheap, but works out a lot less than the man hours.
 
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