Ray Tracing, does it make sense?

[Adriano Ruggieri]

Do you think it makes sense to have ray tracing in this game, which is the only one I have trouble with? I've noticed that disabling it in addition to better performance you can also see everything better because I can push almost everything on Ultra

[MetsaSketch]

Ray tracing is almost never really worth it imho. The balance between visual improvement and performance hit is just not good. ~5% better visuals for ~50% less fps is a hard sell for anyone. Add to that increased artifacting and blur from things like dlss, which you're often forced to run to make it even playable, and you're left with too many negatives.

I'd always take a cleaner looking and better running game over some added reflections that, unless you stop and stare right at them, are often almost imperceptibly better than traditional rendering.

[Maki Nishikino]

I have it on. Performance is pretty good on my end and I play fully maxed out (I don't use DLSS).

[Adriano Ruggieri]

Originally posted by Narcoleptic Narn:

Ray tracing is almost never really worth it imho. The balance between visual improvement and performance hit is just not good. ~5% better visuals for ~50% less fps is a hard sell for anyone. Add to that increased artifacting and blur from things like dlss, which you're often forced to run to make it even playable, and you're left with too many negatives.

I'd always take a cleaner looking and better running game over some added reflections that, unless you stop and stare right at them, are often almost imperceptibly better than traditional rendering.

it's true but the market is now all moving there. They need to push GPU sales! If I were a developer I would use Ray tracing to improve the audio or the AI

[Adriano Ruggieri]

Originally posted by Maki Nishikino:

I have it on. Performance is pretty good on my end and I play fully maxed out (I don't use DLSS).

Me too, but not all tracks have undergone the same optimization, and that's why I asked the question

[Quick☢420™]

I run it on full RT,once you see the difference it's hard to go back.It works really well with HDR too,unlike FM7,it was a washed out mess with HDR enabled.(still is)

[Adriano Ruggieri]

Even me with everything enabled and honestly, excluding some small landslides where you are left speechless, I don't know how much it is actually worth it, considering I repeat, that not all the slopes are well optimized

[The Met4l God]

Originally posted by Adriano Ruggieri:

Do you think it makes sense to have ray tracing in this game, which is the only one I have trouble with? I've noticed that disabling it in addition to better performance you can also see everything better because I can push almost everything on Ultra

Given the resource costs, no. Ray Tracing isn't worth it. Does it create visually stunning images and reflections? Yes.

The issue I have with this game is that because they want to use RT the regular reflections look underwhelming. The graphics quality of FM7 was much better.

[Voodoochile]

Resolution and FPS are king and queen.
Getting rid of RT you can either push resolution to 150-200% or just double your FPS.
RT is an absolute MEME with the current tech we have. In most games you need to stare at a side by side for 5 minutes to even tell the difference and sometimes the RT looks faker than traditional lighting techniques.

[ItsMeatt]

I really enjoy the ray tracing in Forza Motorsport. I think it adds a lot to the atmosphere. There are, of course, time of day and weather changes regardless of ray tracing, but it seems more convincing with RT enabled. The lighting is a lot more realistic and natural. Can I get native 4K 60 FPS without it enabled? Yes. But with DLSS, I am still able to maintain 60 FPS on the Quality setting. It seems like a good trade off for the atmosphere.

Detailed settings: I've been able to get a smooth 60 FPS during gameplay using an RTX 4070 Super. 4K, DLSS on Quality, all settings as high as they go with the exception of car liveries, which I have to put on High to save VRAM. I recently turned off Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling (HAGS) in Windows 11, and I think this may have helped. Last thing, you can't go by the game's estimate for required VRAM, it said 9350 MB for me, but it was pushing the 12 GB the 4070 Super has when I monitored it for a while. Before I made the HAGS and liveries adjustments, RT was a mess for me and I had been playing without it. I haven't had any hiccups since making these two changes and enabling DLSS.

[Adriano Ruggieri]

Originally posted by ItsMeatt:

I really enjoy the ray tracing in Forza Motorsport. I think it adds a lot to the atmosphere. There are, of course, time of day and weather changes regardless of ray tracing, but it seems more convincing with RT enabled. The lighting is a lot more realistic and natural. Can I get native 4K 60 FPS without it enabled? Yes. But with DLSS, I am still able to maintain 60 FPS on the Quality setting. It seems like a good trade off for the atmosphere.

Detailed settings: I've been able to get a smooth 60 FPS during gameplay using an RTX 4070 Super. 4K, DLSS on Quality, all settings as high as they go with the exception of car liveries, which I have to put on High to save VRAM. I recently turned off Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling (HAGS) in Windows 11, and I think this may have helped. Last thing, you can't go by the game's estimate for required VRAM, it said 9350 MB for me, but it was pushing the 12 GB the 4070 Super has when I monitored it for a while. Before I made the HAGS and liveries adjustments, RT was a mess for me and I had been playing without it. I haven't had any hiccups since making these two changes and enabling DLSS.

Let's say that times have changed since I opened the post. Even with the same hardware, I had an incredible boost with RT active. I play at settings almost like yours but I think the RT is useful for making everything more "coherent" with reality, it doesn't necessarily mean that it makes it "better", in fact it happened to me that at sunset a car in front of me was "Metallic Blue" color, illuminating it with my headlights, the "metallic" light was reflected on the asphalt. Nice to look at, but this made everything more "cinematic" but not realistic. This is why I reiterate that RT has yet to demonstrate whether it is worth spending money on

[The Met4l God]

Originally posted by Adriano Ruggieri:

Originally posted by ItsMeatt:

I really enjoy the ray tracing in Forza Motorsport. I think it adds a lot to the atmosphere. There are, of course, time of day and weather changes regardless of ray tracing, but it seems more convincing with RT enabled. The lighting is a lot more realistic and natural. Can I get native 4K 60 FPS without it enabled? Yes. But with DLSS, I am still able to maintain 60 FPS on the Quality setting. It seems like a good trade off for the atmosphere.

Detailed settings: I've been able to get a smooth 60 FPS during gameplay using an RTX 4070 Super. 4K, DLSS on Quality, all settings as high as they go with the exception of car liveries, which I have to put on High to save VRAM. I recently turned off Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling (HAGS) in Windows 11, and I think this may have helped. Last thing, you can't go by the game's estimate for required VRAM, it said 9350 MB for me, but it was pushing the 12 GB the 4070 Super has when I monitored it for a while. Before I made the HAGS and liveries adjustments, RT was a mess for me and I had been playing without it. I haven't had any hiccups since making these two changes and enabling DLSS.

Let's say that times have changed since I opened the post. Even with the same hardware, I had an incredible boost with RT active. I play at settings almost like yours but I think the RT is useful for making everything more "coherent" with reality, it doesn't necessarily mean that it makes it "better", in fact it happened to me that at sunset a car in front of me was "Metallic Blue" color, illuminating it with my headlights, the "metallic" light was reflected on the asphalt. Nice to look at, but this made everything more "cinematic" but not realistic. This is why I reiterate that RT has yet to demonstrate whether it is worth spending money on

I've had similar sentiments on RT. In the cases where I've seen it implemented, the ray-traced reflective surfaces look more "wet" than anything. A freshly waxed car is not as reflective as the cars are in this game.

I feel like developers don't really know what to do with ray tracing yet and are adding it because they can. Baldur's Gate 3 is visually stunning and only uses DX11 and doesn't use ray tracing.