Ray Tracing Hardware

Huntn

Whatwerewe talk'n about?
Site Donor
Posts
5,254
Reaction score
5,189
Location
The Misty Mountains
I’ve had a an RTX 2070 card for couple of years now, and have never really tried to make a comparison in any game I’ve played with it on or off. Maybe I have a subconscious block that my in-game graphics look good enough, or that RT has associated overhead that effects frames, and I even thought it might have been an automatic, default on feature. I guess I should look into this. :oops:

I’ve got 2 candidate games, Cyberpunk2077 and Witcher 3, if I discover something personally, I’ll report back. in the meantime, the biggest difference seems to be in the quality of reflections. At this point I see a subtle difference in images, and videos, and not sure how much of a performance hit (if there is any) that I would accept.






E44622F7-A415-41F2-951E-D6ACB2973A0D.jpeg

Really nice reflections in the water, but if it was not side by side, would you miss it?
Maybe. :D


C5E57A4D-D040-4F85-AB4E-60C68FA1B7D7.jpeg

This image, really not much difference. Maybe in game it would be more significant depending on several factors such as Card and monitor. I’ve had a 4k monitor for several years now.

6B9E8A19-6528-4685-8803-1CC3E390EF5A.jpeg
 
Last edited:

Colstan

Site Champ
Posts
822
Reaction score
1,124
I’ve had a an RTX 2070 card for couple of years now, and have never really tried to make a comparison in any game I’ve played with it on or off.
I have yet to have experience the glorious grandeur of real-time ray tracing, but I am curious to hear your thoughts on the matter. While it may become more useful down the road, thus far it seems to be a way to create more realistic puddles.
Really nice reflections in the water, but if it was not side by side, would you miss it?
That's the question. Most of the games that currently take advantage of ray tracing are also games where you don't spend much time to look at the pretty visuals. I'd be curious to see how much of a difference there would be in RPGs and strategy titles, where there are sufficient pauses in gameplay to appreciate the graphics quality. It's one thing to look at a screenshot and see the difference, but if the gameplay is too fast for it to matter, then I'm not sure what the benefit is, other than a major performance hit.

Also, not every game looks superior, and depends upon the implementation. In that last screenshot, I think the car looks better with RTX off, or at least not appreciably worse.

I still think we aren't quite there yet with performance. From my admittedly limited research, it appears that the 4090 is the only graphics card that doesn't take an unacceptable performance hit with ray tracing enabled. It may be another generation or two before "mainstream" GPUs are able to do the same. (And by "mainstream", I mean price points under $800, as ridiculous as that sounds.)

Apple has apparently been working on their own form of ray tracing, at least according to press rumors and our own @Cmaier, but I don't think they need to hurry in implementing it. Let the other companies push to make it mainstream, then have an efficient implementation for Apple Silicon, once it's ready.

Anyway, I appreciate the feedback @Huntn, and feel free to keep us updated. I don't know when I'll personally have access to ray tracing hardware, but I do find it interesting, even if it's currently little more than a gimmick that Nvidia uses to sell over-priced, power hungry hardware.
 

Cmaier

Site Master
Staff Member
Site Donor
Posts
5,213
Reaction score
8,257
I have yet to have experience the glorious grandeur of real-time ray tracing, but I am curious to hear your thoughts on the matter. While it may become more useful down the road, thus far it seems to be a way to create more realistic puddles.

That's the question. Most of the games that currently take advantage of ray tracing are also games where you don't spend much time to look at the pretty visuals. I'd be curious to see how much of a difference there would be in RPGs and strategy titles, where there are sufficient pauses in gameplay to appreciate the graphics quality. It's one thing to look at a screenshot and see the difference, but if the gameplay is too fast for it to matter, then I'm not sure what the benefit is, other than a major performance hit.

Also, not every game looks superior, and depends upon the implementation. In that last screenshot, I think the car looks better with RTX off, or at least not appreciably worse.

I still think we aren't quite there yet with performance. From my admittedly limited research, it appears that the 4090 is the only graphics card that doesn't take an unacceptable performance hit with ray tracing enabled. It may be another generation or two before "mainstream" GPUs are able to do the same. (And by "mainstream", I mean price points under $800, as ridiculous as that sounds.)

Apple has apparently been working on their own form of ray tracing, at least according to press rumors and our own @Cmaier, but I don't think they need to hurry in implementing it. Let the other companies push to make it mainstream, then have an efficient implementation for Apple Silicon, once it's ready.

Anyway, I appreciate the feedback @Huntn, and feel free to keep us updated. I don't know when I'll personally have access to ray tracing hardware, but I do find it interesting, even if it's currently little more than a gimmick that Nvidia uses to sell over-priced, power hungry hardware.

my guess is that it’s a bigger deal for AR/VR than for games - there’s an uncanny valley thing that can happen when your reflections aren’t quite right, I hear. Anyway, that’s why I think Apple is focusing on it.
 

Huntn

Whatwerewe talk'n about?
Site Donor
Posts
5,254
Reaction score
5,189
Location
The Misty Mountains
I think the problem is that developers have become so good at faking global illumination that the real thing doesn't impress us quite as much.
I find it very interesting how Unreal Engine simulates natural lighting. Don’t ask me to describe it, but to simulate a single light source, there are multiple lights used to emulate natural and man made light.
 

Renzatic

Egg Nog King of the Eastern Seaboard
Posts
3,896
Reaction score
6,817
Location
Dinosaurs
I find it very interesting how Unreal Engine simulates natural lighting. Don’t ask me to describe it, but to simulate a single light source, there are multiple lights used to emulate natural and man made light.

Yup. You use a source light to cast shadows, then other lights to act as a fills to get that bounced lighting look.

The nice thing about raytracing is that you only need the single source light, and everything realistically falls into place from there. It's more computationally expensive, but it's easier to make cool looking scenes without having to futz around.

Though there are half-step measures. UE5 has Lumen, which isn't actually a raytracer, being based, I believe, on voxel fills. Plus, there's Screen Space Global Illumination, which is like raytracing, but only accounts for what's onscreen, making it less taxing alternative on the GPU.

 
Top Bottom
1 2