Ray Tracing Simps - WHY?

[Stone Masonry]

okay, so i remember when ray tracing (i am told that the correct term is something else, i mean the technologies like rtx reflections, rt global illumination, etc. that require rtx or similar cards for instance*) first came out in 2018 or 19 or whatever on PC with battlefield, a lot of people were talking about how great of an evolution it will be for PC gaming (insert soyjack face).

Fast forward 4 years, and its still a bit divisive i would say, but mostly due to its performance/looks ratio. What I dont see discussed a lot is, is ray tracing holding back imporvements in terms of graphics? When i watch videos like digital foundry or most comment sections for graphics videos on youtube, everyone seems to mostly love and appreciate ray tracing.

I dont play a lot of games or understand technology, so thats why im making this thread, if someone could please explain to me, how is ray tracing making games look better? Here's my experience based on the games I played:

1. Fast forward from 2018, and I feel like still, many of the best looking games I played over the past few years use traditional lighting and reflections - the pc port of God of War, Red Dead 2, AC Odyssey, even Arkham Knight all hold up amazingly well (I feel in 2022). When I play games with ray tracing features/patches (like Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, the RE games, Control), I feel like the developers often sacrifice quality of textures/draw distances/facial animations to make some stupid light bounce around the room for a barely visible result.

2. The only ray tracing effect I see making a geniune difference is RT reflections - screen space reflections are pretty distracting/ugly at times, and with games like Spider-Man Remastered or Doom Eternal, they do make a pretty noticeable improvement in quality/realism. Although even in spiderman there are times when the highest resolution ray tracing looks worse in terms of clarity than the cube maps or whatever they used in the old version.

3. However, for me, ray traced global illumination or whatever its called just doesnt make that big a difference. I feel like you can pick out screenshots in games like Witcher 3, Cyberpunk, Metro where it does show a difference, but I feel like developers often sacrifice other things. For instance like with the new ray tracing patch in the witcher (i havent tested it out a lot), but for me the biggest differences seemed to be from the ultra+ quality settings - i feel like improved draw distances, physics, textures, etc. universally benefit a game. I looked at like the Metro Enhanced Edition (which was released earlier this year i think), and compared some of my screenshots with those from last light and 2033, and I honestly would struggle to tell the difference in most indoor scenes, even with all the emissive surfaces and stuff they added in exodus.

so what is going on with ray tracing? i feel like its 4 years past the technology's inception, and people are still getting excited about some stupid 90 year old game like quake getting rtx, when its not being implemented well into most games.

When i look at games released pre 2014 vs 2016-2018, I see a big difference - that was like a year after gta came out vs the year rdr2 (with much more physics, better volumetrics, better textures/foliage/water) came out, dark souls 2 vs 3 feel different because better textures, ac unity vs ac odyssey have comparable graphical quality i feel (but one is dynamic and on a much larger scale), watch dogs 1 vs 2 feel much more realistic. now compare pre 2018 to 2020-2022: metro exodus barely looks different from metro last light, hitman 3 with rtx barely looks different from hitman 2 i would say, and even traditional titles feel stagnant (ac odyssey looks comparable to ac valhalla while actually being larger, elden ring feels in some ways like a step down from ds3, etc.).

okay i forgot what i wrote about at the start but i was wondering if someone could offer their thoughts

[Komarimaru]

Even though most of your post history is complaining over Ray Tracing, I'll bite.

Because it just looks better.

The way lighting bounces and looks properly under objects, no more super bight under objects, or pure black for shadows.

The way reflections actually display yourself and the world around you like they should.

The way the light bounces off objects, casting the correct colors and illumination.

This is why people like ray tracing. Yes a game can look good without it, but when done right Ray Tracing looks infinitesimally better. The downside is, if you've poor hardware, then you'll be using lower ray tracing settings, so things will look odd.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Try Portal RTX or Quake RTX.

[Stone Masonry]

Publicado originalmente por Komarimaru:

Even though most of your post history is complaining over Ray Tracing, I'll bite.

Because it just looks better.

The way lighting bounces and looks properly under objects, no more super bight under objects, or pure black for shadows.

The way reflections actually display yourself and the world around you like they should.

The way the light bounces off objects, casting the correct colors and illumination.

This is why people like ray tracing. Yes a game can look good without it, but when done right Ray Tracing looks infinitesimally better. The downside is, if you've poor hardware, then you'll be using lower ray tracing settings, so things will look odd.

thank you very much for your response but i fail to see how that answers the question

your response would make sense if every game that utilized ray tracing looked like real life in every other aspect, and the only thing missing were the things that you mentioned. however, i dont think thats the case - almost all of the rtx games i mentioned suffer from poor texturing (especially ones like control and metro), poor draw distances, or poorly designed characters

i would challenge you to explain why ray tracing is a better investment for a game like metro exodus rather than focusing on improved texturing or faces that look remotely human

when there were previous technologies, like nvidia gameworks or whatever all the fog/hairworks stuff was called, they were additional expensive technologies added in games like ffxv and witcher, and combined with more holistic improvements across the board

now it feels like many games dont bother with realistic assets just to have the ray tracing sticker, hence why so much ray tracing is still in tech demo territory in terms of games (woooo, they added rtx to minecraft and quake, light bounce is soooo important when i play those games...)

my contention is that games without ray tracing like rdr2 and gow still manage to look better than most games with ray tracing, and that the focus on the sticker is holding games back from meaningful improvements in traditional areas as far as i can tell

[ShelLuser]

Publicado originalmente por Stone Masonry:

okay, so i remember when ray tracing first came out in 2018 or 19 or whatever on PC with battlefield, a lot of people were talking about how great of an evolution it will be for PC gaming (insert soyjack face).

You should look up the definition sometimes to learn what raytracing actually is because it's kinda obvious you don't know what you're talking about here (no offense).

2018 - 2019? ROFL! 🤣

Raytracing as a mechanic already existed way back in the 1980's. Sure, the implementation wasn't as extensive as it is now, but the underlying mechanics never really changed all that much over the years. As for PC usage, that already existed in the 90's; look up POVRay for example.

[Stone Masonry]

Publicado originalmente por ShelLuser:

Publicado originalmente por Stone Masonry:

okay, so i remember when ray tracing first came out in 2018 or 19 or whatever on PC with battlefield, a lot of people were talking about how great of an evolution it will be for PC gaming (insert soyjack face).

You should look up the definition sometimes to learn what raytracing actually is because it's kinda obvious you don't know what you're talking about here (no offense).

2018 - 2019? ROFL! 🤣

Raytracing as a mechanic already existed way back in the 1980's. Sure, the implementation wasn't as extensive as it is now, but the underlying mechanics never really changed all that much over the years. As for PC usage, that already existed in the 90's; look up POVRay for example.

okay sure, so what should i call the modern ray tracing implementation that like uses rtx cards or whatever? is that called rtx or whats the correct name for it?

[Komarimaru]

Publicado originalmente por Stone Masonry:

Publicado originalmente por Komarimaru:

Even though most of your post history is complaining over Ray Tracing, I'll bite.

Because it just looks better.

The way lighting bounces and looks properly under objects, no more super bight under objects, or pure black for shadows.

The way reflections actually display yourself and the world around you like they should.

The way the light bounces off objects, casting the correct colors and illumination.

This is why people like ray tracing. Yes a game can look good without it, but when done right Ray Tracing looks infinitesimally better. The downside is, if you've poor hardware, then you'll be using lower ray tracing settings, so things will look odd.

thank you very much for your response but i fail to see how that answers the question

your response would make sense if every game that utilized ray tracing looked like real life in every other aspect, and the only thing missing were the things that you mentioned. however, i dont think thats the case - almost all of the rtx games i mentioned suffer from poor texturing (especially ones like control and metro), poor draw distances, or poorly designed characters

i would challenge you to explain why ray tracing is a better investment for a game like metro exodus rather than focusing on improved texturing or faces that look remotely human

when there were previous technologies, like nvidia gameworks or whatever all the fog/hairworks stuff was called, they were additional expensive technologies added in games like ffxv and witcher, and combined with more holistic improvements across the board

now it feels like many games dont bother with realistic assets just to have the ray tracing sticker, hence why so much ray tracing is still in tech demo territory in terms of games (woooo, they added rtx to minecraft and quake, light bounce is soooo important when i play those games...)

Metro Exodus looks as it does due to it's art style. Very few games go for realistic faces etc, especially first person shooters. Most commonly you'll find detail like that in games where you're looking at the characters face a lot in cutscenes and moving around the world.

No game looks like real life.

[Stone Masonry]

Publicado originalmente por Komarimaru:

Publicado originalmente por Stone Masonry:

thank you very much for your response but i fail to see how that answers the question

your response would make sense if every game that utilized ray tracing looked like real life in every other aspect, and the only thing missing were the things that you mentioned. however, i dont think thats the case - almost all of the rtx games i mentioned suffer from poor texturing (especially ones like control and metro), poor draw distances, or poorly designed characters

i would challenge you to explain why ray tracing is a better investment for a game like metro exodus rather than focusing on improved texturing or faces that look remotely human

when there were previous technologies, like nvidia gameworks or whatever all the fog/hairworks stuff was called, they were additional expensive technologies added in games like ffxv and witcher, and combined with more holistic improvements across the board

now it feels like many games dont bother with realistic assets just to have the ray tracing sticker, hence why so much ray tracing is still in tech demo territory in terms of games (woooo, they added rtx to minecraft and quake, light bounce is soooo important when i play those games...)

Metro Exodus looks as it does due to it's art style. Very few games go for realistic faces etc, especially first person shooters. Most commonly you'll find detail like that in games where you're looking at the characters face a lot in cutscenes and moving around the world.

No game looks like real life.

okay, you mentioned metro so i guess for a point of discussion, the only time i noticed bounce lighting in metro was in the caspian level when the sun is shining really brightly through a narrow opening, or when you're shining a flashlight on some brightly colored object and it reflects light around the room.

how is stuff like that more important than making faces that actually emote in a game with a ton of characters/where tons of enemies are human, a game with supposedly emotional moments, and improving your impression at the tons of time you spend up close to the ugly textures for most metal objects (in a game with tons of metal objects)?

if you compare like the hospital you start off with in exodus to like the hospitals in 2033, it barely looks different i would say, and i dont see how like 8 years down the line thats a good thing for game graphics so we can have situational upgrades that are only meaningful when you stand at a specific place at a specific time of day at a specific angle

[Komarimaru]

Publicado originalmente por Stone Masonry:

Publicado originalmente por Komarimaru:

Metro Exodus looks as it does due to it's art style. Very few games go for realistic faces etc, especially first person shooters. Most commonly you'll find detail like that in games where you're looking at the characters face a lot in cutscenes and moving around the world.

No game looks like real life.

okay, you mentioned metro so i guess for a point of discussion, the only time i noticed bounce lighting in metro was in the caspian level when the sun is shining really brightly through a narrow opening, or when you're shining a flashlight on some brightly colored object and it reflects light around the room.

how is stuff like that more important than making faces that actually emote in a game with a ton of characters/where tons of enemies are human, a game with supposedly emotional moments, and improving your impression at the tons of time you spend up close to the ugly textures for most metal objects (in a game with tons of metal objects)?

if you compare like the hospital you start off with in exodus to like the hospitals in 2033, it barely looks different i would say, and i dont see how like 8 years down the line thats a good thing for game graphics so we can have situational upgrades that are only meaningful when you stand at a specific place at a specific time of day at a specific angle

Hate to break it to you, but every source of lighting in Enhanced Edition is from one source only, Ray Tracing. There is no global illumination. Everything you see, is Ray Tracing.

https://youtu.be/NbpZCSf4_Yk?t=185 Starting at 3 minutes in if doesn't do it automatically.

Secondly, your Spider-Man complaints in another thread, blaming ray tracing for the dirty windows... Well...

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2901833040

Because, umm..

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2901833088

They are dirty.

You also seem to be using a very very big upscaled, like performance or ultra performance in your screenshots, for why ray tracing looks so bad, and the edges of lines etc. Where as mine is crisp and clean.

[Stone Masonry]

Publicado originalmente por Komarimaru:

Publicado originalmente por Stone Masonry:

okay, you mentioned metro so i guess for a point of discussion, the only time i noticed bounce lighting in metro was in the caspian level when the sun is shining really brightly through a narrow opening, or when you're shining a flashlight on some brightly colored object and it reflects light around the room.

how is stuff like that more important than making faces that actually emote in a game with a ton of characters/where tons of enemies are human, a game with supposedly emotional moments, and improving your impression at the tons of time you spend up close to the ugly textures for most metal objects (in a game with tons of metal objects)?

if you compare like the hospital you start off with in exodus to like the hospitals in 2033, it barely looks different i would say, and i dont see how like 8 years down the line thats a good thing for game graphics so we can have situational upgrades that are only meaningful when you stand at a specific place at a specific time of day at a specific angle

Hate to break it to you, but every source of lighting in Enhanced Edition is from one source only, Ray Tracing. There is no global illumination. Everything you see, is Ray Tracing.

https://youtu.be/NbpZCSf4_Yk?t=185 Starting at 3 minutes in if doesn't do it automatically.

Secondly, your Spider-Man complaints in another thread, blaming ray tracing for the dirty windows... Well...

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2901833040

Because, umm..

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2901833088

They are dirty.

uh, isnt it literally called ray traced global illumination? rtgi? why are you saying them like tehy are different things

[Komarimaru]

Publicado originalmente por Stone Masonry:

Publicado originalmente por Komarimaru:

Hate to break it to you, but every source of lighting in Enhanced Edition is from one source only, Ray Tracing. There is no global illumination. Everything you see, is Ray Tracing.

https://youtu.be/NbpZCSf4_Yk?t=185 Starting at 3 minutes in if doesn't do it automatically.

Secondly, your Spider-Man complaints in another thread, blaming ray tracing for the dirty windows... Well...

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2901833040

Because, umm..

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2901833088

They are dirty.

uh, isnt it literally called ray traced global illumination? rtgi? why are you saying them like tehy are different things

Because it's not standard or like the poor 2019 version rtgi that was partial. In Enhanced, all lighting is ray tracing, why linked the video to explain it.

Also, as you commented on my screenshot, I was not crushing you. I was pointing out something is wrong your end for the image to look so poor. Either sharpening heavily over done, or running Ultra Performance, or Performance settings which drastically lowers internal resolution thus makes it look poor in detail(I know it has to be some form of upscaling due to the alpha lines around flags and poor RT image on buildings and over sharpened lines)

If your image looks that odd, at 4K, what other settings are you running in other games that can affect texture detail so much?

[Stone Masonry]

Publicado originalmente por Komarimaru:

Publicado originalmente por Stone Masonry:

uh, isnt it literally called ray traced global illumination? rtgi? why are you saying them like tehy are different things

Because it's not standard or like the poor 2019 version rtgi that was partial. In Enhanced, all lighting is ray tracing, why linked the video to explain it.

Also, as you commented on my screenshot, I was not crushing you. I was pointing out something is wrong your end for the image to look so poor. Either sharpening heavily over done, or running Ultra Performance, or Performance settings which drastically lowers internal resolution thus makes it look poor in detail(I know it has to be some form of upscaling due to the alpha lines around flags and poor RT image on buildings and over sharpened lines)

If your image looks that odd, at 4K, what other settings are you running in other games that can affect texture detail so much?

First off I said crushing ON me, as in hitting on me, not crushing me, no reason to be self conscious about your weight

Can you point on the map where that building is, I lost it? This was on dlss balanced, and sharpening was on 10 I think? I wanna test it out with the various sharpening methods and see what it is later tonight

Again, I'm pretty sure ray tracing is just a way of doing global illumination:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_illumination#List_of_methods
Where in the video does it say global illumination is something different from ray tracing?

[Komarimaru]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2901838702

There ya go. Gotta keep in mind, Ray Tracing will only look as good as the environment it is in. If you do upscaling, things get distorted in quite a few games. Think Control is one of the few where it actually gets better oddly. Balanced is only 57.8% of your 4k resolution. Meaning you're actually rendering at 2225x1252

And I didn't mean to confuse you. I meant as in, they have zero standard global illumination in Enhanced. Everything is done by ray tracing instead of the tricks done in 2019 release where things were mixed. Yes, it's global illumination, but everything is done fully ray traced this time in Enhanced version.

[Stone Masonry]

Publicado originalmente por Komarimaru:

Publicado originalmente por Stone Masonry:

uh, isnt it literally called ray traced global illumination? rtgi? why are you saying them like tehy are different things

Because it's not standard or like the poor 2019 version rtgi that was partial. In Enhanced, all lighting is ray tracing, why linked the video to explain it.

Also, as you commented on my screenshot, I was not crushing you. I was pointing out something is wrong your end for the image to look so poor. Either sharpening heavily over done, or running Ultra Performance, or Performance settings which drastically lowers internal resolution thus makes it look poor in detail(I know it has to be some form of upscaling due to the alpha lines around flags and poor RT image on buildings and over sharpened lines)

If your image looks that odd, at 4K, what other settings are you running in other games that can affect texture detail so much?

Okay, so I couldn't find that exact building, but I was curious how upscaling or whatever its called affects reflections, so I went to a random place and tried all the DLSS modes and TAA native or whatever it's called, and except for like DLSS Quality vs DLSS Ultra Performance, I can see just small differences, mostly on distant terrain, so I'm not quite sure what you are talking about? From what I've seen, the only places where you can see any crispness difference in motion where it is quite different between the modes. Here's all the screenshots (5 is TAA i think, i have no idea about the order in which the other ones go, I assume 1-4 is Quality through Ultra Performance
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2901839556
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2901839573
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2901839607
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2901839628
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2901839654
Also my in game settings were DLSS quality so I think that screenshot was on Quality, not balanced, but im not sure since i was experimenting around.

So yeah, TAA does look better marginally, I will have to see if maybe its the oversharpening that was doing it in the screenshot, not really sure.

[Komarimaru]

I can tell right away.
https://i.imgur.com/sRjnfPP.gif
Look at his left hand as the gif plays, the building and background. Look at the foliage right of his head.

Just keep in mind, again... Ray Tracing will only look as good as the internal resolution allows. Why when can run games at native 1440p+ without any AI upscaling, things look so much better. From shadows, to reflection to how the light bounces against surfaces.

Also, ray tracing can't magically make a game look better. Ray Tracing is supposed to enhance the experience, not over take it. Still requires good texture work and modeling, and ray tracing can oddly be done poorly as well, Quake 2 RTX for example =P

[Stone Masonry]

Publicado originalmente por Komarimaru:

I can tell right away.
https://i.imgur.com/sRjnfPP.gif
Look at his left hand as the gif plays, the building and background. Look at the foliage right of his head.

That's very interesting, thanks for making this gif im learning a lot!!! Also, wouldn't it be lower than 57% or whatever because the reflections arent native resolution anyways, so they'd be a fraction of the dlss fraction?

also i checked out taa/dlss quality sharpening 10/dlss quality, and it seems that dlss quality and sharpening both make the reflections look worse! for me personally i hate the taa blurriness of like the trees in there, so i still prefer the dlss look overall i think especially since the performance is better, but its interesting how it does hurt reflection quality!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2901846071
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2901846129
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2901846153

I'll have to check this out with a game with other ray tracing features, but I don't think ray traced effects exhibiting artifacts is as obvious as it is with reflections, but that makes sense actually!

okay, so after playing with it more i noticed:
1. dlss for some reason changes the game to be a bit brighter
2. taa resolves reflections a lot better, and for some reason shadows as well, which is important in this game bc lots of glass
3. dlss resolves distant lines a lot better (idk if they're "oversharpened") but i prefer them that way, i think, which i think is also pretty important because some buildings with TAA native look like they're all made up of one big window

so in some cases, taa makes one aspect of the image looks worse, and in some cases its dlss (like for me, i think TAA makes leaves all look very soupy in central park, but it also gives them way better shadows than DLSS does). So DLSS is kind of like playing with lower shadows/reflections and higher draw distances/textures or something