Ray Tracing’s A Game Changer ,Call of Duty: Modern Warfare , and RTX review for "Control" ,Minecraft NEW Ray Tracing RTX Mode Hands-On And Tested

[Stuka87]

Arguably the best thing about ray tracing, angry fanboy cheerleaders can't do anything to stop it. Everyone who works in graphics knows it fundamentally changes the game and is a massive leap in visual fidelity.

The only time in gaming history that graphics have fundamentally changed the game was when we went from 2d, to 3d worlds. Mario 64 fundamentally changed platformers in comparison to 2d platformers like Super Mario World.

Ray Tracing is not going to fundamentally change anything. One day it might make game development easier. But that is a very long ways away. For the next 5+ years its going to make game development significantly more difficult, because developers will have to do both rasterized and RT. But for the perceivable future, RT will remain a niche option that few use. Because people with expensive video cards, tend to have expensive displays. And few pay big money to run a game at 1080P on a 4K display.

 

[Dribble]

Part of the problem is pre-existing game engine structures - it would seem that CryEngine for once has a home court advantage for RT with its highly developed SVOGI implementation already showing promise on a Vega 56. That will only get faster with better cards and adding DXR or Vulkan RT support.

Time will tell if other engines can catch up in efficiency, though I'd say it's fairly likely for at least Unreal and Unity.

As for myself, I'm inclined to wait for the standardised Vulkan RT extension which will likely land next year along with Navi 2x.

Very likely that extension will become part of Vulkan 2.0, if RT isn't enough to justify that major uptick in version then likely nothing is.

The Crytek demo isn't that amazing - it managed 30fps at 1080p in a canned fly through without much going on. There was also pretty obvious issues with the reflections (e.g. the hexagonal bullets). Crytek did state it would work better with hardware that can accelerate it (which RTX could do).

Also got to remember that this wasn't invented by Crytek. Nvidia and UE4 tried SVOGI years ago - it was probably the work the Nvidia dev did that Crytek used as a basis for their demo. I think it was going to go into UE4 at one point but they changing their minds because it wasn't going to be usable. Anyway Nvidia having done a lot of research on this decided to go with what we have today for I assume good reasons.

 

[soresu]

Also got to remember that this wasn't invented by Crytek. Nvidia and UE4 tried SVOGI years ago - it was probably the work the Nvidia dev did that Crytek used as a basis for their demo. I think it was going to go into UE4 at one point but they changing their minds because it wasn't going to be usable. Anyway Nvidia having done a lot of research on this decided to go with what we have today for I assume good reasons.

If by what we have today you mean RTX - you are confusing implementation of the ray tracing in software with the hardware that accelerates the traversal/intersection part of the compute problem.

Even if all the 2 big engines are using a standardised SW implementation pre-made by nVidia, there will still be differences between them as they have to plug in to the respective shader architectures of each engine anyways.

Likewise the big offline GPU RT renderers (Renderman, Arnold, Octane, Redshift) have used nVidia Optix to speed up development, but there is still significant proprietary software differences between them due to large differences in their respective software engineering.

The only thing nVidia has really 'gone with' you might say is BVH, whether their architecture is completely fixed to a rigid interpretation of BVH or allows for derivative data structures in unclear (my bet would be not to be clear).

Interestingly Octane Render is straying away from the loving (or stifling?) embrace of Optix and CUDA towards a Vulkan based implementation of their render engine, presumably hoping to take advantage of pervasive cross platform compute and hardware RT acceleration support as it gets a standardised generic Vulkan extension, likely next year.

 

[BenSkywalker]

Game changing for graphics, not gameplay changing. If this were a discussion in the gaming forums I'd word it slightly differently.

 

[happy medium]

The only time in gaming history that graphics have fundamentally changed the game was when we went from 2d, to 3d worlds. Mario 64 fundamentally changed platformers in comparison to 2d platformers like Super Mario World.

Ray Tracing is not going to fundamentally change anything. One day it might make game development easier. But that is a very long ways away. For the next 5+ years its going to make game development significantly more difficult, because developers will have to do both rasterized and RT. But for the perceivable future, RT will remain a niche option that few use. Because people with expensive video cards, tend to have expensive displays. And few pay big money to run a game at 1080P on a 4K display.

It makes game development easier today,right now.
Take it from the words of a game developer.
https://babeltechreviews.com/stay-in-the-light-rtx-required-game-preview-dev-interview/

 

[Thala]

The only thing nVidia has really 'gone with' you might say is BVH, whether their architecture is completely fixed to a rigid interpretation of BVH or allows for derivative data structures in unclear (my bet would be not to be clear).

I am pretty sure that the HW does not only do BVH intersection test but also triangle intersection test.

 

[Stuka87]

It makes game development easier today,right now.
Take it from the words of a game developer.
https://babeltechreviews.com/stay-in-the-light-rtx-required-game-preview-dev-interview/

Right, if a game is RT ONLY, it will be easier. However, it will be a long time before main stream games do this.

 

[jpiniero]

Right, if a game is RT ONLY, it will be easier. However, it will be a long time before main stream games do this.

If both consoles have hardware RT, the transition will likely be fairly quick but you are talking about 2021 at the earliest. I could see launch titles designed around the PS5/Scorpio requiring HW RT on any PC version but I think it's unlikely to happen. Not because of PC but because they want to sell to PS4/XBO.

 

[nurturedhate]

If both consoles have hardware RT, the transition will likely be fairly quick but you are talking about 2021 at the earliest. I could see launch titles designed around the PS5/Scorpio requiring HW RT on any PC version but I think it's unlikely to happen. Not because of PC but because they want to sell to PS4/XBO.

The same was said for GCN/dx12 before this current era. While there has been movement it has been terribly slow. We're looking at more of the same.

 

[railven]

The same was said for GCN/dx12 before this current era. While there has been movement it has been terribly slow. We're looking at more of the same.

True, but at least for this specific forum. There is interesting overlap between those that praised DX12/Async versus those bashing DXR/RTX. It's very comical.





I'm in the DXR camp. One thing that is most interesting is that it seems posters just conflate RTX with DXR. They're different things. I was also in the DX12 club. The tessellation club. The PhysX club (ATI+NV hybrids FTW until NV killed ). The Unified shaders club. The Texture & Lighting club. Hell, before I had a good paying job I was those in those clubs before I even had the hardware to run it! This LGR video reminded me of playing Quake on software! I regaled my wife with the similar story and she called me a loser.

Outside of the premium tax, why is anyone even against DXR? You don't have to buy into it, but you expel large amounts of energy to bash it. Have you seen it? It's gorgeous. My biggest complaint thus far is I only have two games to use it. This sucks. I expected NV to money hat galore and I'd have at least a dozen titles by now. Instead I'm stuck as I was during the DX12 hype, waiting.


We're hating technology solely for who it's tied to. Come on. Stop being so petty. Hate the companies, kudos, but why shoot yourself in the foot if RT actually catches on sooner rather than later?

 

[Stuka87]

I don't think anybody here hates RT. We all know that one day it will be the standard. What most have been saying is that right now it costs a fortune to use at 1080P, much less the higher resolutions most people with higher ends cards use. Its going to be quite a few years before RT is common place.

And then what stirs the pot is a few here who are attacking anybody that that doesn't say its the best thing ever. And then you have NV of course going out and basically insulting people that don't buy into their RTX cards.

RT's success will come down to hardware getting significantly faster, and the implementation of it in games. If you look at Minecraft, its unplayable in RT mode. Sure it looks cool, but you can't see anything. There is no ambient light at all. Issues like this will need to be resolved.

 

[railven]

I don't think anybody here hates RT. We all know that one day it will be the standard. What most have been saying is that right now it costs a fortune to use at 1080P, much less the higher resolutions most people with higher ends cards use. Its going to be quite a few years before RT is common place.

Are you going to tell me people are this angry towards it because they can't afford it? I called out BFG on a similar sentiment. Someone has to pay for this. It's usually early adopters. Do we all have OLED TVs? I'm sure we're all upset it cost so much, but is anyone here actively posting on forums bashing the technology? I don't think so. But for some odd reason, that's a rallying call around here.

And then what stirs the pot is a few here who are attacking anybody that that doesn't say its the best thing ever. And then you have NV of course going out and basically insulting people that don't buy into their RTX cards.

Like Ben? I'm with Ben. There is so much animosity for DXR solely because it's more popularly tied to NV. If it were an even split we'd be arguing the performance, not one being absent from the race.

DXR is universal. But RTX is exclusive to NV. That NV is already getting it's greedy paws around the tech should be the more concerning issue. Ignore that AMD is absent, by the time it is present, it will be better known as RTX, not even DXR, and it'll be another round of GameWorks bashing. NV is out maneuvering AMD in this aspect and it's just getting ludicrous.

If you look at RT for what it is, simply what it does as a new technology, and come away saying "it's inferior to what we have now" I would ask you to look again. Sure, it cost a lot, so does my Cadillac that I wish I had, but I'm not bashing Cadillac owners for thinking their Cadillac is the best car ever (man I want a Cadillac...soon.)

RT's success will come down to hardware getting significantly faster, and the implementation of it in games. If you look at Minecraft, its unplayable in RT mode. Sure it looks cool, but you can't see anything. There is no ambient light at all. Issues like this will need to be resolved.

Of course, and with that the increase of accessibility to more users. This is common sense. But again, enthusiasts of tech forums are not where I'd consider the front line for decrying new technology to be held. I expect the slant against NV, but some of these posters are tying themselves to that ship and I don't even understand why. If it's a price issue, they come off even more petty than it being a "because Nvidia" issue.

It's like a stupid version of the console wars where all of a sudden resolution wasn't important, because reasons.

 

[soresu]

RT's success will come down to hardware getting significantly faster, and the implementation of it in games. If you look at Minecraft, its unplayable in RT mode. Sure it looks cool, but you can't see anything. There is no ambient light at all. Issues like this will need to be resolved.

That ambient light thing is exascerbated by the need for multi bounce GI for effective illumination in highly enclosed spaces.

If the main light only bounces once, theres a fair chance that alot of the geometry will not be adequately lit, RT acceleration resources should be limited to lights and shadows first and foremost, and only then reflections if enough horsepower is there.

The problem is also worsened by adding simple blocky normal maps which add extra places on the geometry to gain shadow without adequate bounces to light them.

 

[nurturedhate]

True, but at least for this specific forum. There is interesting overlap between those that praised DX12/Async versus those bashing DXR/RTX. It's very comical.





I'm in the DXR camp. One thing that is most interesting is that it seems posters just conflate RTX with DXR. They're different things. I was also in the DX12 club. The tessellation club. The PhysX club (ATI+NV hybrids FTW until NV killed ). The Unified shaders club. The Texture & Lighting club. Hell, before I had a good paying job I was those in those clubs before I even had the hardware to run it! This LGR video reminded me of playing Quake on software! I regaled my wife with the similar story and she called me a loser.

Outside of the premium tax, why is anyone even against DXR? You don't have to buy into it, but you expel large amounts of energy to bash it. Have you seen it? It's gorgeous. My biggest complaint thus far is I only have two games to use it. This sucks. I expected NV to money hat galore and I'd have at least a dozen titles by now. Instead I'm stuck as I was during the DX12 hype, waiting.


We're hating technology solely for who it's tied to. Come on. Stop being so petty. Hate the companies, kudos, but why shoot yourself in the foot if RT actually catches on sooner rather than later?

I think a lot of it stems from disappointment. People treat press releases from Nvidia/AMD as gospel and it's unhealthy. We have people who claim to not game yet buy gaming level cards and constantly act as mouthpieces for these companies. It's completely unhealthy. We've also seen a lot of this from tech companies before. We've seen specialized hardware introduced only to perform poorly and be replaced by more generalized hardware later on that's also faster. I'm with you on DXR, this is where we are heading currently but there needs to be a better path. The perceived jump for the cost isn't there TODAY. This isn't the Voodoo2. The cost isn't worth it. Then there's 4k. The marketing has beed 4k for years now. 1080p is for peasants etc. 60hz is for peasants. Now Nvidia is telling everyone to go back to 1080p 60hz. The rollout and presentation has been botched by Nvidia from day one for RTX. That is why people are ultimately mad (outside our wonderful traffic drivers, blessed by their names), not the tech itself.

It's also a chicken/egg issue. We need* DX12/Vulcan for DXR and just to move things along. We aren't there yet. We'll see studios change over to more DX12 based engines as the ps5 console generation progresses and that will lead into ps6 gen and better RT hardware.

Hype is worthless, progress is slow but the ride is worth it people. I want my holodeck.

 

[BenSkywalker]

1080p 60Hz is what the eighth fastest DXR card is doing.

If people are actually interested in a real conversation, start with an honest analysis. What happened to 4k?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.tomsguide.com/amp/us/nvidia-rtx-2080-ti-benchmarks,review-5779.html

In the majority of games tested five cards were clearing 60Hz at 4k. The body of your text implies that 4k was hyped for the high end and then abandoned, most reasonable people would say 4k has been largely solved, particularly when looking at RTX Titan, 2080Ti and Titan V. Yes, you can find edge cases where that isn't true, but most people would call 98% of games at 4k 60Hz or better a very solid experience.

So now where do we go? There are two choices, go beyond standard rendering or stay put and over time drop prices. Option one leads, very obviously, to ray tracing. Option two is anti technological progress not to mention really, really dumb for a business, any business.

I don't care what any press release says, the pre launch 'hype' was a 2080Ti was having trouble maintaining 30Hz at 1080p on these very forums, that swapped to the 2060 being twice that speed in the real world. The anti ray tracing crowd tries to go find instances where it didn't work well and ignores the mountains of evidence that's it's here and quite playable today on any of the RTX cards. It's really hard to do anything but laugh and belittle people when you hear these insane made up stories and you directly observe something wildly different.

Railven, which two games do you have? Metro Exodus is a legit great single player game with overall the best visuals I've seen in a game to date. This isn't like Crysis that was an ok ish game with mind blowing eye candy, it's really good.

 

[Glo.]

Outside of the premium tax, why is anyone even against DXR? You don't have to buy into it, but you expel large amounts of energy to bash it. Have you seen it? It's gorgeous. My biggest complaint thus far is I only have two games to use it. This sucks. I expected NV to money hat galore and I'd have at least a dozen titles by now. Instead I'm stuck as I was during the DX12 hype, waiting.


We're hating technology solely for who it's tied to. Come on. Stop being so petty. Hate the companies, kudos, but why shoot yourself in the foot if RT actually catches on sooner rather than later?

I always find funny when people actually do not know what is being discussed, see just the tip of the iceberg, and then jump out to conclusions about what is the discussion, and respond, with stuff like this.

NOBODY is against DXR. But every sane person, is pointing out, that with CURRENT software and hardware, it is not ready for prime time, which makes it completely and uterly useless at this point of time.

Everybody have to sacrifice something in order to enjoy slightly better Image Quality, than standard rasterization. Developers have to sacrifice both: Image Quality, of what they COULD do if hardware would be more capable of Ray Tracing than it currently is, and at the same time they have to sacrifice performance, even with limited increase in Image Quality, when implementing Ray Tracing.

Consumers then have to sacrifice money, if they want all of the bells and whistles. Or, sacrifice everything else: performance and image quality if they cannot afford it.

Whole matter is that everybody is jumping the bandwagon of new technology too early. Its similar matter with Google and their game streaming service. Everybody wants to be Apple these days.

I would gladly call out AMD for the same BS if they would jump on RT bandwagon today with cards like RX 5700 XT.

And once more. Ray Tracing will be big. But it will take us at least 2-3 years, and ONE FULL GPU generation in future, to really matter for CONSUMERS.

 

[BenSkywalker]

Completely and utterly useless?

Specific examples needed. The game, the segment, put up.

You've been proven wrong so many times it's just getting tiring. Videos, benchmarks, screenshots it's all been shown that prove you are simply completely and utterly wrong.

Provide evidence that it's worthless.

 

[Hitman928]

1080p 60Hz is what the eighth fastest DXR card is doing.

*citation needed*

(and not a single average number of an ambiguous benchmark scene).

 

[AtenRa]

Outside of the premium tax, why is anyone even against DXR?

I believe that the vast majority of gamers including myself, do like and want RT, the problem is with the RTX cards and NVIDIA.

Premium prices for a feature that after one year of the cards release only a single game is available to truly take advantage of the RTX feature.

"You must be crazy to spend more for the RTX feature today"

 

[BenSkywalker]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...e-rtx-2060-super-rtx-2070-super-review?page=2

But what about the RTX 2060 at 1080p? Here, we achieve much more pleasing results. At worst, the lowest drops are to the low 50s at stock clocks, adding around 10 per cent of performance with a +150MHz core overclock and a +750MHz OC to the GDDR6 memory. We're achingly close here. Even re-enabling tessellation doesn't incur too much of a hit, with only scenes heavy in alpha effects dropping us beneath 60 frames per second in less taxing stages. If only we had a more exhaustive settings selection, a 60fps lock would surely be possible. Regardless though, the RTX 2060 - Nvidia's cheapest ray tracing card - can carry this off and 1080p60 looks simply beautiful.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2019-metro-exodus-ray-tracing-4k60-analysis

This has been linked before of course, I cite reality, not delusional fantasies.

 

[Stuka87]

Are you going to tell me people are this angry towards it because they can't afford it? I called out BFG on a similar sentiment. Someone has to pay for this. It's usually early adopters. Do we all have OLED TVs? I'm sure we're all upset it cost so much, but is anyone here actively posting on forums bashing the technology? I don't think so. But for some odd reason, that's a rallying call around here.

Its not that I can't afford the card. Its that the cards are over priced (GPU's in general are, we all know this) for a feature that only exists in a very few games, and only one of those games has an implementation that isn't buggy (Metro). And when the next generation of games come out, todays RTX cards will most likely lack the performance to run them.

There are early adopters that buy what ever is latest, and that's fine. But people should not be coerced into buying RTX 20x0 cards expecting to be able to run future DXR games. If they can barely run today's games, the next gen games (After next years consoles launch) are going to be more demanding. Happens every time new consoles come out.

So again, I believe that RT will be the future. But that future is at least 5 years off. Especially with the longer GPU iterations we have now.

 

[Hitman928]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...e-rtx-2060-super-rtx-2070-super-review?page=2




https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2019-metro-exodus-ray-tracing-4k60-analysis

This has been linked before of course, I cite reality, not delusional fantasies.

Yes, if you start turning down settings you can get to 1080p60 with some level of RTX, this is true.

 

[BenSkywalker]

They were shooting for 60Hz minimum-

https://www.anandtech.com/show/14618/the-amd-radeon-rx-5700-xt-rx-5700-review/7

That's the 5700xt missing by just under 20Hz that same bar, while shutting off settings. Real world the 5700xt is quite playable in non DXR mode at 1440p, they weren't going for playable, they were going for rock solid 60Hz and just barely missed out(mid 50s minimum while OCd).

 

[happy medium]

Its not that I can't afford the card. Its that the cards are over priced (GPU's in general are, we all know this) for a feature that only exists in a very few games, and only one of those games has an implementation that isn't buggy (Metro). And when the next generation of games come out, todays RTX cards will most likely lack the performance to run them.

There are early adopters that buy what ever is latest, and that's fine. But people should not be coerced into buying RTX 20x0 cards expecting to be able to run future DXR games. If they can barely run today's games, the next gen games (After next years consoles launch) are going to be more demanding. Happens every time new consoles come out.

So again, I believe that RT will be the future. But that future is at least 5 years off. Especially with the longer GPU iterations we have now.

Ray tracing is 5 years off for you, because your waiting for AMD to perfect it for under $200.
Meanwhile there are thousands and thousands of people that bought ,2070,2080,2080ti, 2070S,2080S and the soon to be released 2080ti S cards that are seeing it and playing games with it right now.
The truth is right in front of you, but for some reason you keep closing your eyes.

 

[AtenRa]

Ray tracing is 5 years off for you, because your waiting for AMD to perfect it for under $200.
Meanwhile there are thousands and thousands of people that bought ,2070,2080,2080ti, 2070S,2080S and the soon to be released 2080ti S cards that are seeing it and playing games with it right now.
The truth is right in front of you, but for some reason you keep closing your eyes.

There is only a single game currently that really uses RT as it should be, the truth is that in 99,99999% of the games RTX is useless today.