Comment on Hardware Unboxed: Ray Tracing in 36 Games, Geforce vs. Radeon - Is the Performance Hit worth it?
DdCno1@beehaw.org 1 month agoI get where you are coming from, but as someone who has been interested in ray tracing since the early 2000s, ever since I saw the amazing ray tracing demo heaven seven rendered in real-time (although not at a particularly high frame rate) by my trusty 1.3 GHz Athlon T-Bird, there has been no denying that this is the future of 3D graphics, just as much as the more recent invention of upscaling technology. It enables not just the biggest generational leap in visuals seen in decades, but also makes it far easier for developers to light their games, removing many of the clunky and labor-intensive workflows that are required to make conventional rasterized graphics look good.
If the above paragraph didn’t bore you to death, try Quake II RTX. It’s fully path-traced, but because it’s essentially a shiny coat of paint on a game from the 1990s, hardware requirements are surprisingly modest (it even ran on my old GTX 1080, albeit it at a very low upscaled resolution). Despite the simple geometric detail and ancient animations, it looks absolutely stunning thanks to realistic lighting and new surfaces. Screenshots are not doing it justice - it almost feels real when you play it, particularly outside sections in direct sunlight.
It’s free on Steam:
store.steampowered.com/app/1089130/Quake_II_RTX/
If you don’t own Quake II on Steam, you get the three levels from the old shareware version, which are more than enough to get an idea of the true potential of this technology. If you do, you can play the entire game with ray tracing. Note that this is not the same as the recent extensive remaster of the game by Nightdive Studios, which uses a conventional renderer, but makes far more substantial modifications to assets and level design (and includes lots of bonus features). Both remasters are awesome in their own different ways.
Your card can also handle some newer games with ray tracing. Control is an obvious candidate. It’s old enough to have reasonable hardware requirements even with RT on, but it was also designed from the ground up as a showcase for this technology. Medium RT at 1080p should get you close to 60 fps in this game. The other game you might want to try is Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, which is both visually stunning and incredibly well-optimized. You should get a locked 60fps at 1080p in this game - and even 1440p is possible. It’s night and day compared to the regular version of the game.
Telorand@reddthat.com 1 month ago
I think the spirit of what I was trying to get at comes down to the idea that RT is important for some and not for others. I’ve seen and played some games that look bad with raytracing, though I’d say on the whole it’s been positive.
Like other techniques, it comes down to intentional design choices. Where to place light sources, how strong they should be, what kind of surface radiance looks good aesthetically versus how well it functions to light the scene are all factors to consider.
I think until it becomes a requirement, there’s space for everyone’s tastes.