RT vs. Pathtracing

[Dmitry Vorobyev]

I may sound like a graphics nerd (which I am), but ray tracing (RT) and ordinary lighting sometimes look very cheap. Many shadows are absent, especially in situations when one light casts a shadow and within this shadow there is another light source. While other games solve this issue via design, fake light, or better light design, here the devs just decided to leave some objects without shadows at all.

But all of this is solved when you enable path tracing. The problem is that it tanks my laptop with an RTX 3070 Ti. And with DLSS, the picture looks like an oil painting for some reason.

DLSS in RT mode doesn't make picture like oil painting.

[Bjørn]

Yes, the general consensus is that path tracing is much better than ray tracing, which makes sense, but it is much more demanding, which also makes sense.

I also have an RTX 3070 Ti (desktop, rest of specs in profile) and have tried it briefly. Looks great, but it made my card scream in agony.

I think it says that it requires at least a 3090 when hovering over the PT option in the game, though, so I knew I couldn't use it, but it makes me look forward to a new PC, especially if path tracing will be standard in other games from now.

But ray traced lighting and reflections is acceptable for me for now. Shadows I keep off, as I find them good enough when not ray traced.

Also keep in mind that not everything is ray traced when enabled, so Screen Space Reflections and some of the other options help fill in for it, but when using path tracing all lighting and reflections (and shadows) is properly generated on the fly, if I've understood it correctly.

[Dmitry Vorobyev]

Ye, i understand this. Partly. In some way it looks like they have usual light, raytaced one and pathtraced, but none of them is finilized. It would be better to have one, but completed :)

Got a good example:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3247327433
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3247327664

Complete absence of shadows in raytraced mode...