Ok I wasn't very clear, I'm not saying to use the end visual results to compare when looking to the future, I'm saying look at the relative performance difference. Doubling the shader resolution allows us a clear look at how that stacks up in the context of an actual game engine and it's real world impact, as does RTX.
What would developers actually use that extra shader power for? Why I keep harping on diminishing returns is that we are already into very small incremental improvements with shader hardware, the devs have all the easy stuff done, and the moderate stuff, now we're getting into the expensive stuff and the really expensive stuff. So double the hardware shaders for a marginal increase, or move to ray tracing which is already quite playable today using a mid range part that's occasionally flirting with$300?
Now you think they should've rolled it out differently, and that is another completely valid discussion, I don't agree but I see that as far less of a black and white thing than discussing ray tracing versus more shaders.
On the rollout, I needed a new card during the mining boom and the only choice I had under $700(1070 non ti) was the 1060, I paid $350 for it and a year later gave that to my wife and grabbed a 2060(waiting for 7nm big boy parts) for the exact same price, oh yeah, that came with Metro for free. The 1060 was upgrading my old 780GHZ, it was a solid upgrade, but it just ran the same old things faster.
The 2060 was just fundamentally different, it could do things that I'd never seen in real time, and not just for tech demos, but in actual games. Metro is completely playable with RTX on, Q2 RTX the same, Tomb Raider also very playable(albeit only some shadows really benefit, nothing like the other two).
Real world, if you factor in the free game, the 2060 cost less than the 1060 and was fundamentally game changing. Now I get what you are saying, but as an owner of the slowest RTX card, I can play all the games they hyped with ray tracing on and completely playable. For a first gen part offering radical new technology? Straight up, the Voodoo 1 is the only part I can compare it to.