Is it worth using ray tracing?

[NeuroAtypical]

I've noticed that ray tracing reduces the FPS of games, like if a game runs at 60 FPS in normal, it ends up reducing to 30 FPS in ray tracing, at least that's the impression I've noticed when watching videos on YouTube. The game looks better, but if the FPS really reduces, for me it's not worth it. I prefer more FPS than ray tracing.

[Azza ☠]

It depends on your graphics card.

The RTX 40xx series can do Ray Tracing a lot better than previous generations and then add DLSS 3.0 to certain games.

DLSS 3.0 allows AI generated frames between the real ones. So while your game might be dishing out 60 FPS, you end up with 120 FPS at no performance lost. 30 FPS ray tracing and ultra settings, would be a smooth 60 FPS.

Otherwise some graphics card and games work a lot better with Ray Tracing off. Some of their textures and shadings look fine faking it using preshaders, compared to real ray tracing.

[Silverlight]

Long story short: no.

Even with nice cards, you need DLSS and DLSS is just fancy tech for resolution scaling, and it makes games look muddier than the original image

It's under baked, and honestly , I've seen Minecraft shaders that look nicer

[Masque]

For which of the 12 games that use it?

[Azza ☠]

Originally posted by Bellen:

Long story short: no.

Even with nice cards, you need DLSS and DLSS is just fancy tech for resolution scaling, and it makes games look muddier than the original image

It's under baked, and honestly , I've seen Minecraft shaders that look nicer

That's Dynamic Super Resolution (DSR) which scales resolution upon the Nvidia card.

Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) is something else, which uses the graphics card chipset AI to calculate and generate frames on the fly in real-time, depending on the previous frames and their movement.

YouTube™ Video: Portal with RTX | 4K NVIDIA DLSS 3 Comparison Video 

Views: 249,924

Portal with RTX is launching December 8th, bringing full ray tracing and DLSS 3 to one of the best video games of all time. Here’s a quick look at DLSS 3 performance gains.

The graphics card and games have to support DLSS thou and only version 3.0 is really good with ray tracing...

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/confirmed-ray-tracing-and-dlss-games-2022

[ZAP]

Similar to Hairworks, if lighting is important to you then go for it.

For most people it's not, it's dumb as hell.

[Pieshaman]

I always game in the dark so it does look nice with awesome lightning effects on good gaming screen.

[UmmUmBurst]

I feel you. It's similar to when aniso started being used. Didn't like it. Hated it in some games. Now that it's better implemented I can't really play without it.

I'd bet ray tracing is gonna end up similar to aniso, where it's just a default "Normal, High, Ultra" setting in future games.

Once they implement it well in Battle Royale or FPS it's game over and it'll be standard. Lighting is super important to seeing silhouettes in shooting games.

[ZAP]

Once down/upscailing and fake frames aren't needed for an acceptable experience it'll be just another graphics setting but yeah, maxing your refresh rate at native resolution is the way to go not slightly better lighting.

[LQIM]

Do you think it's worth it? Personally, I don't, but if you like the graphics change and don't mind the frame drop then go right ahead

[Azza ☠]

I think it's quite worth it...

However, at the moment just for 4K 120Hz+ with HDR and G-SYNC, juiced by a RTX 40xx to support the Ray Tracing and DDLS 3.0. Then next gen games to fully support it.

You get better graphics with better performance.

YouTube™ Video: Nvidia DLSS 3 vs DLSS OFF [RTX 4090] | Direct Comparison 

Views: 151,447

This video is sponsored by Nvidia. You can learn more about Nvidia's DLSS 3 Technology using this link: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/technologies/dlss/ Nvidia RTX 4090 Store Page:...

Ray Tracing pops in certain games, specially adventure or horror (like a dark cave with the sunlight beaming through and casting shadows, including your own torch and creatures crawling around, etc), when your monitor also supports HDR. Performance lost is regain to be even better with DDLS 3.0 and G-SYNC will just make it super smooth gameplay.

If you haven't seen that, you won't understand. Yet it's like having a solid state drive vs standard hard drive. When it's first released, it's high priced and not really necessary. For those without the high-end PC specs and some spare cash to splash out, stick with 1440p resolution and disable ray tracing.

People don't really know how far we have come in pc gaming. It's become ultra realistic.

Such as the Unreal Engine 5

YouTube™ Video: Unreal Engine 5 Forest Demo 

Views: 167,981

A photorealistic forest demo running in Unreal Engine 5 captured at 4K on my PC. I think it's a pretty impressive showcase of Lumen's GI solution which is technically a cheaper form of ray-tracing...

That's using Lumen's GI, which is a lower level of Ray Tracing.

[rock]

If you like pretty lighting and reflections, sure. Otherwise, unless you're running the highest end cards, not really worth using. It mainly depends on how it's implemented.

Then again, I have like, 2(?) games in my library that have ray tracing support. For the most part, I play a lot of a indie games so I don't typically see any rays to be traced. I'll take the fps over the lighting that I don't pay attention to. That's just my take.

[Affronter]

Ray tracing makes a mediocre game look better for what it is. Like lipstick on a pig.

Cyberpunk 2077 for example.

[AdahnGorion]

Originally posted by Affronter:

Ray tracing makes a mediocre game look better for what it is. Like lipstick on a pig.

Cyberpunk 2077 for example.

That is not really what it does.
Ray Tracing is nothing new, its been used in all the animation movies you have seen, the thing is that up until now, it have been to costly to use in videogames for most cases.

Ray tracing is not just more realistically looking, it also makes it much easier for artist to work with the lighting, as opposed to all the fake lighting (that we currently use in most games) in a few years, nobody will be talking about Ray Tracing like its some obsure feature, it will instead just be a integrated thing, that nobody remember....

If it is worth it currently depends on a few factors, like your setup, the game played, what performance you want.
There are different ways to implement it and sometimes users have a choice in how they wanna use it (in the near future, as I said above, it will just be stanard, it wont be a choice, it will just be how games look)

It would also make it a lot easier for indie developers.. yes.. again.. ray tracing is the easy method that also looks the best.

[Azami]

too much reflection is never a good thing.

[Sir Dookface McFerretballs]

Depends on how well the game utilizes it.

I've seen games where it is mind-blowing how good it looks like "Control" and then games that completely screw it up to the point turning it off makes things look better like "Cyberpunk 2077".