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[Corporal.Hicks]

People who say that RT makes no difference are lying to themselves, and probably because they simply cannot run RT well on their hardware, so they are forced to play without RT anyway.

More screenshots from the witcher 3 in the spoiler.

Spoiler: RT on vs OFF the witcher 3 screenshots

In some games, such as the RE3 remake, RT's effects are more subtle, but it's still very nice to see character reflections in TV's / and reflective surfaces. At the end of the game (the lab) almost every surface is reflective. I first played this game with SSR and the lab level annoyed me because the reflections kept fading as I moved. Now, with RT on the same level looked absolutely amazing.

 

[ElCasual]

60 FPS with 2k resolution>>>>RT. Also the Lumen tech is a better choice

 

[teokrazia]

I play beefy titles on GFN which has a RTX 4080 with 24 GB of V-RAM @ 1440p.
So, yep, I always set it to maximum.

 

[FIREKNIGHT2029]

I’ll just drop these here…..





Night and day difference between path traced CP2077 and normal rasterized graphics. Even if you mod the crap out of CP2077 you won’t get graphics close to this without PT.

 

[Allandor]

So far it's a nice to have but most times not worth it.
Also artifacts are to much for me even in control.

 

[Wolzard]

Taking specific pictures and photoshopped by the looks of it, isnt what Id call accurate.

How about leaving the house and walking a little? I see this kind of reflection all the time.
All it takes is rainy weather, puddles of water or areas with polished concrete floors.

 

[Mister Wolf]

60 FPS with 2k resolution>>>>RT. Also the Lumen tech is a better choice

Lumen is RT.

 

[Schmendrick]

60 FPS with 2k resolution>>>>RT. Also the Lumen tech is a better choice

Insert facepalm gif.....
And if you don't know why:

Lumen is RT.

this

 

[Diddy X]

I turn it off everytime I prefer the massive fps gain.

 

[JaseMath]

Could not care less about RT. It's a nice-to-have but by no means a gamechanger, especially if it sacrifices overall performance.

 

[MikeM]

Its worth it only if the performance hit makes it worth it. Metro Exodus and the Spiderman games are solid examples of having the best of all worlds.

 

[Wolzard]

My own comparison screenshots. People who say that RT makes no difference are lying to themselves, and probably because they simply cannot run RT well on their hardware, so they are forced to play without RT anyway.

In some games, such as the RE3 remake, RT's effects are more subtle, but it's still very nice to see character reflections in TV's / and reflective surfaces. At the end of the game (the lab) almost every surface is reflective. I first played this game with SSR and the lab level annoyed me because the reflections kept fading as I moved. Now, with RT on the same level looked absolutely amazing.

Read the first post or watch the video. The Witcher 3 joins the group of few games that are worth the effect.
Resident Evil 2, at the time the RT update came out, left the game with horrible performance, I don't know if they fixed it.

 

[Crayon]

The hub assessment makes sense to me. I'd agree with most of it.

Here's how I look at it - Cyberpunk. Over and over and over. I've already played the game, but I feel like I've spent more time scrolling by screenshots than playing it because we get pics constantly whipped out for this one game. It's much more meaningful than a literal tech demo but it's a mad outlier. Or at least was. Now there are how many more games that slap you in the face like cp overdrive? A few. But let's not pretend cp get's brought up first and sometimes last.

There's been a lot of hype but it's been slow going. The vast majority of games get very small upgrades from the raytracing option. From my perspective, I would basically have to spend like 50% more on a gpu to hit the same performance with rt than without. I think the cheapest card you can get to make that cp od mode playable would be like a 4070ti? If I'm correct on that, that's like $600. I know that's cheap to pcmr but a card at half the price will run the hell out of that game without rt.

Sure it's the future but after all these years it's been a very slow start so far.

 

[Corporal.Hicks]

Read the first post or watch the video. The Witcher 3 joins the group of few games that are worth the effect.
Resident Evil 2, at the time the RT update came out, left the game with horrible performance, I don't know if they fixed it.

Both the RE2 and RE3 remakes are the most optimized RT games I have ever played, running well over 100fps at 4K native on my PC. RE7 and Village also run amazingly well. In the RE4 remake I had to turn on FSR2 quality to get over 100fps with RT, but this game has way more detailed assets than previous RE games.

I played many RT games and I noticed visual improvements in all of them. Even simple RT implementation like in the Shadow Of The Tomb Raider made noticeable difference for me. I was really surprised how well RT games run on modern GPUs, because I wasnt expecting to play at high refreshrate at 4K. I can run most RT games at over 60fps even at native 4K. With the help of AI (DLSS) I usually see 100-130fps. Only in PT games like Black Myth Wukong, or Alan Wake 2 I have much lower fps with RT / PT, so I need to use nvidia FG on top of that to get smooth 80-100fps, but I dont mind doing that given how well nvidia FG works.

There is no way I am going to play without RT since I saw what I would be missing.

 

[Crayon]

Also gotta say that software lumen gets pretty fucking good at the higher settings. It's pretty heavy itself, though.

 

[Fortress of Regrets]

I turn it on for all games that offer it. Love RT at 60+ fps.

Path-traced Cyberpunk 2077 in HDR on OLED is just mind blowing.

 

[Fbh]

I think it depends on the hardware.
Like on a high end PC in a game with proper RT implementation (not just stuff like reflections) I think the hit to performance is usually worth it.

On lower end hardware or on current consoles where you basically need to destroy the performance or image quality (or both) I've yet to see a game where it's even remotely worth it. In fact it's usually the opposite like in Jedi Survivor where they finally disabled RT in the performance mode and it got a massive boost to resolution and performance while IMO looking nearly identical in most locations.

 

[Blank Space Invader]

Purely from a console user perspective: no. I don't need it and I don't want it. Games look amazing as it is. They need to improve performance across the board before worrying about shadows, smoke, and lighting that all already look fine.

 

[Revolutionary]

Looking forward to the "50% of gamers don't care about ray tracing" articles tomorrow

 

[Allandor]

How about leaving the house and walking a little? I see this kind of reflection all the time.
All it takes is rainy weather, puddles of water or areas with polished concrete floors.

Yeah, that correct, but videos and pictures give back a false impression and most games do it like in videos or pictures. False impression because cameras are much more sensitive to light. So it might look better than your eyes can actually see. E.g. that's why light in video material most times looks much more impressive than in real world with your own eyes (especially neon light).

Btw, all those reflections are meaningless while you just run/drive along the streets. You don't stay long enough (normally) to really look at those (when actually playing a game).

 

[Crayon]

I think it depends on the hardware.
Like on a high end PC in a game with proper RT implementation (not just stuff like reflections) I think the hit to performance is usually worth it.

On lower end hardware or on current consoles where you basically need to destroy the performance or image quality (or both) I've yet to see a game where it's even remotely worth it. In fact it's usually the opposite like in Jedi Survivor where they finally disabled RT in the performance mode and it got a massive boost to resolution and performance while IMO looking nearly identical in most locations.

This so much. That's why I think of it as essentially a cost barrier depending on your budget. At the low range, it's right out. At the high range, it's a no-brainer. And somewhere in the middle, you can do it but have to weight that huge performance hit.

 

[bender]

Might I chime in as a professional photographer and photo teacher?

 

[Griffon]

If a game has static environments (like 90% of all games are), it doesn't make any sense to use RT for lights and shadows when it can be prebaked (which can run on absolutely anything for free).

RT reflections are cute/nice to have on top of that, but it hardly justify its performance cost.

 

[The Cockatrice]

How about leaving the house and walking a little? I see this kind of reflection all the time.
All it takes is rainy weather, puddles of water or areas with polished concrete floors.

The vids prove my point. None of the reflections are perfect mirror like lol. Guess you need to get out and walk a little more than me if you think random puddles on streets are crystal clear. From your own fucking video

Reflections should be naturally blurry, puddles have ripples, dirt, etc. that rarely make them mirror-like. Emphasis on the word rare, I did not say never or dismissed that it's not possible. But games seem to aim for always perfect clear reflections which is stupid. The only benefit RT reflections have are the angle of them not vanishing, but a performance rt reflection setting is enough to be super realistic. Theres no need to render the reflections at full resolution like most devs seem to crank up. It's just fucking common sense.

 

[sachos]

Imo if you want your game to actually look next gen, then RT is a must, specially RTGI. It grounds the image so much.

 

[bitbydeath]

Insert facepalm gif.....
And if you don't know why:
this

Lumen is RT.

Different tech.
That’d be like saying AMD is NVIDIA because they both make GPU’s.

They accomplish similar tasks though.

 

[Schmendrick]

Different tech.
That’d be like saying AMD is NVIDIA because they both make GPU’s.

They accomplish similar tasks though.

nonsense....

 

[PurePlatinum]

Every year, what qualifies as "real ray-tracing" changes definition and someone moves the goalpost.

I remember years ago when they'd have videos of "Minecraft with raytracing!" and it looked absolutely incredible. There is no RTX in ANY PS5 game that looks remotely close to that good, and it tanks your frame rate by at least 50%.

Totally not worth it. Give me OTHER new graphical lighting techniques and interesting things to do with the power instead. RTX often seems like a very heavy gimmick used to sell new GPUs.

 

[bitbydeath]

nonsense....

Google it, or ask ChatGPT.

No, ray tracing and Lumen are not the same, although they are related in the context of real-time graphics.


Ray tracing is a rendering technique used to simulate how light interacts with objects in a scene. It calculates the paths of rays of light as they travel, bounce, and reflect off surfaces, producing highly realistic lighting, shadows, reflections, and refractions. It is very computationally expensive and has traditionally been used in pre-rendered images or films, though real-time ray tracing has become more common with advancements in GPU technology.

Lumen, on the other hand, is a real-time global illumination (GI) and reflections system developed by Epic Games for Unreal Engine 5. It provides dynamic lighting by approximating how light behaves in a scene, without the need for pre-calculated lighting data (baking). Lumen combines techniques such as screen-space reflections, voxel tracing, and distance field tracing to create high-quality lighting that adjusts in real time as the environment changes. While Lumen uses certain concepts similar to ray tracing for some effects (like reflections and GI), it is not full ray tracing but rather a hybrid approach optimized for performance in real-time applications.


In summary:


• Ray tracing is a general rendering technique for light simulation.


• Lumen is a specific real-time lighting solution used in Unreal Engine 5, which may incorporate aspects of ray tracing but is not purely ray tracing.

 

[Mister Wolf]

Different tech.
That’d be like saying AMD is NVIDIA because they both make GPU’s.

They accomplish similar tasks though.

It's RT. It raytracing against less accurate representations of the geometry. Voxels, screen space, signed distance fields, etc. Is it as accurate as per pixel raytracing? No. Buts its still raytracing.

amazon-lumberyard-user-guide/doc_source/rendering-graphics-svogi.md at master · awsdocs/amazon-lumberyard-user-guide

Amazon Lumberyard is a free AAA game engine deeply integrated with AWS and Twitch. - awsdocs/amazon-lumberyard-user-guide

github.com

"Sparse voxel octree global illumination (SVOGI), also known as voxel GI, is a global illumination solution based on voxel ray tracing"

SVOGI had existed long before Nvidia got on stage announcing real time raytracing. In fact Nvidia are the ones that created Voxel GI.

 

[bitbydeath]

It's RT. It raytracing against less accurate representations of the geometry. Voxels, screen space, signed distance fields, etc. Is it as accurate as per pixel raytracing? No. Buts its still raytracing.

Read my above post.
It explains why it’s not the same as RT.

 

[Ironman_Bad]

Console players need not to apply…ray tracing on low powered devices is just stupid.

So then 95% of pc gamers need not apply either

 

[Mister Wolf]

Read my above post.
It explains why it’s not the same as RT.

You're wrong.

 

[bitbydeath]

You're wrong.

I didn’t write it, it’s just the facts.

 

[Ironbunny]

I find it to be modest graphical upgrade on most games I've played. Looks better but its not miles apart from older trickery.

 

[Mister Wolf]

I didn’t write it, it’s just the facts.

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/explainers/ray-tracing/what-is-real-time-ray-tracing

"Unreal Engine’s Lumen is a fully dynamic global illumination and reflections system that uses multiple ray tracing methods."

Those "methods" are tracing against screen space and signed distance fields representations. Even when you use SSRTGI through Reshade there are options for how many rays you want to cast and how many bounces you want for said rays. What do you think raytracing is?

 

[bitbydeath]

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/explainers/ray-tracing/what-is-real-time-ray-tracing

"Unreal Engine’s Lumen is a fully dynamic global illumination and reflections system that uses multiple ray tracing methods."

Those "methods" are tracing against screen space and signed distance fields representations. Even when you use SSRTGI through Reshade there are options for how many rays you want to cast and how many bounces you want for said rays. What do you think raytracing is?

This part should answer your question.

While Lumen uses certain concepts similar to ray tracing for some effects (like reflections and GI), it is not full ray tracing but rather a hybrid approach optimized for performance in real-time applications.

 

[OverHeat]

So then 95% of pc gamers need not apply either

Guess your right…screw the bottoms feeder lol

 

[Zathalus]

This part should answer your question.

Lumen vs Ray Tracing: Is Ray Tracing Better? | Hardware Times

Epic’s Unreal Engine 4 is one of the most popular game engines. It has been widely used by AAA giants like EA, Ubisoft, and Microsoft, as well as tons of indie studios. With Unreal Engine 5 and its Lumen and Nanite technologies, Epic is looking to extend its dominance in the video game industry...

hardwaretimes.com

Okay, so before we begin, let’s make one thing very clear. Lumen is a form of ray-tracing, albeit a more optimized, and flexible form of it to allow more widespread adoption

By default, Lumen uses software ray tracing (doesn’t utilize RT cores/Ray Accelerators). It leverages multiple forms of ray tracing including screen-tracing (SSRT), Signed Distance Fields (SDFs), and Mesh Distance Fields (MDFs) in parallel to calculate the global illumination of the scene depending on the objects, their distance from the screen, and certain other factors.

A ray is cast from the camera which passes through the screen and then approaches the circular surface. With ray tracing, the most important part is figuring out which rays hit objects in the scene and which ones miss. SDF is used more specifically to find out (for a ray starting in a particular direction) the closest point on the surface of the object where there’s an intersection.

Screen tracing (screen space ray-tracing) is the first step in the lumen pipeline.

Mesh Distance Fields (called detailed tracing) are traced for the objects up to 2 meters away from the camera, while the rest are traced using global distance fields (called global tracing).

One of the primary drawbacks of Lumen software’s RT pipeline is that it doesn’t work with skinned meshes (primarily skeletons), as they’re dynamic and change their shape with every frame (deformations/movement, etc). The BVH structures for these objects need to be created for every frame, which isn’t possible with Lumen’s software ray-tracer. Lumen creates the BVH objects for static meshes only once at runtime, speeding up the process but rendering it useless for dynamic meshes.

Lumen also comes with hardware ray-tracing, but most developers will stick to the former, as it’s 50% slower than the software implementation, even with dedicated hardware such as RT cores.

Lumen is just Epic’s term for its GI solution that includes a bunch of inaccurate and fast ray tracing methods. Hardware Lumen takes advantage of RT cores to swap out some of the inaccuracy for better RT methods, at the cost of performance.

In terms of accuracy (increasing performance cost as well), it is: Software Lumen<Hardware Lumen<ReStir (path tracing).

 

[bitbydeath]

Lumen vs Ray Tracing: Is Ray Tracing Better? | Hardware Times

Epic’s Unreal Engine 4 is one of the most popular game engines. It has been widely used by AAA giants like EA, Ubisoft, and Microsoft, as well as tons of indie studios. With Unreal Engine 5 and its Lumen and Nanite technologies, Epic is looking to extend its dominance in the video game industry...

hardwaretimes.com

Lumen is just Epic’s term for its GI solution that includes a bunch of inaccurate and fast ray tracing methods. Hardware Lumen takes advantage of RT cores to swap out some of the inaccuracy for better RT methods, at the cost of performance.

In terms of accuracy (increasing performance cost as well), it is: Software Lumen<Hardware Lumen<ReStir (path tracing).

Agreed. Some people seem to think it’s exactly the same thing with a different name.

 

[Gaiff]

Agreed. Some people seem to think it’s exactly the same thing with a different name.

No, Mister Wolf was saying that they’re both ray tracing, ie that they both trace rays. They’re just different methods because Lumen uses SDF and voxels and still relies on traditional rasterization. It’s therefore an hybrid solution that still incorporates ray tracing.

 

[bitbydeath]

No, Mister Wolf was saying that they’re both ray tracing, ie that they both trace rays. They’re just different methods because Lumen uses SDF and still relies on traditional screen tracing. It’s therefore an hybrid solution that still incorporates ray tracing.

As per what I said before, it’s like saying AMD is NVIDIA. Different methods to achieve a similar product.

 

[Gaiff]

As per what I said before, it’s like saying AMD is NVIDIA. Different methods, same outcome.

No, it isn’t. It’s like saying AMD and NVIDIA both make GPUs. That’s true, but they don’t make the same GPUs.

 

[bitbydeath]

No, it isn’t. It’s like saying AMD and NVIDIA both make GPUs. That’s true, but they don’t make the same GPUs.

And different methods to achieve global illumination.

 

[Inviusx]

Worth it as a high end GPU feature on PCs. Worthless on consoles currently while we are still having to choose between RT and performance.

Until RT is just ubiquitous and not a "feature", it will remain the choice that is never chosen.

I dont even think the Pro is going to normalise RT, maybe the PS6 or beyond. Pro will not be powerful enough for RT on always at 60 so we're still going to get modes for "4k no RT, or RT at 1440 with PSSR".

 

[Unknown Soldier]

When implemented well, RT is amazing

Most games do not implement it well, often because they are console ports and limited to the shitty RT performance of current consoles

There are a few games where it is mind-boggling though, like CP2077

 

[Schmendrick]

Google it, or ask ChatGPT.

......
Lumen is RT at its core... It doesn't matter how many corners are cut,(in the software mode mainly, with HA not so much)

If we'd go with your stance suddenly a lot of RT implementations wouldn't be RT anymore because the lack of hardware power is usually compensated by denoisers or abstracted geometry fields or or or.... The only difference to countless other implementations we simply refer to as "RT" is that Epic decided to name their system......
And by the way... Chat GPT? Seriously.....

Watch the inside unreal presentation about lumen if you still don't understand it..... That may take longer than the 10s it took you to ask chat GPT, though.

You're basically discussing semantics here.

 

[Corporal.Hicks]

The vids prove my point. None of the reflections are perfect mirror like lol. Guess you need to get out and walk a little more than me if you think random puddles on streets are crystal clear. From your own fucking video

Reflections should be naturally blurry, puddles have ripples, dirt, etc. that rarely make them mirror-like. Emphasis on the word rare, I did not say never or dismissed that it's not possible. But games seem to aim for always perfect clear reflections which is stupid. The only benefit RT reflections have are the angle of them not vanishing, but a performance rt reflection setting is enough to be super realistic. Theres no need to render the reflections at full resolution like most devs seem to crank up. It's just fucking common ses

Your screenshot shows a wet surface, not exactly a puddle. If there is a real puddle (at least 1cm deep), you will see mirror-like reflections under the right angle and if there is no wind or rain (similar to that lake picture shared on previous page).

You say that RT reflections used in games are too sharp, but after playing countless RT games I know that's not the case at all. In most games that support RT reflections, you can actually see blurry and diffused reflections. I saw pixel perfect reflections in Cyberpunk and Alan Wake 2 (these two games support ray reconstruction which allows to get pixel perfect reflections) and only on certain reflective surfaces like windows (most reflective surfaces in these two games are diffused).

Here's the reflections on my panasonic GT60 plasma TV. I can see perfectly sharp reflections and real puddle will reflect the light without dimming the reflections.

 

[The Cockatrice]

Here's the reflections on my panasonic GT60 plasma TV

That aint exactly a perfect reflection, far from it, unless that was your point. I never argued that games have only pixel perfect mirror-like reflections, I only said, it's being overused on surfaces that shouldnt be seen or in certain case, on a lot of surfaces that are wasted since youll never notice them playing the game. Ill never give a shit if theres a mirror-like reflection on a random street in an open world game where I'll prolly see it once in 80 hours, but that reflection can cost framerates.

under the right angle and if there is no wind or rain

So very rarely as I pointed out lol

 

[darrylgorn]

It's definitely worth it when properly injected into older games.