So far we've seen ray tracing demoed on 2080 Ti at 1080p60. Yes, it's only a few games with pre-release software, but it's nevertheless quite clear ray tracing would be quite computationally expensive.
It is my belief that, now more than ever, developers should include techniques that have been used on console, often by the same developers, for many many years, but this time to offset the cost of ray tracing, rather than the relative weakness of console hardware. Techniques like dynamic resolution scaling, rendering the HUD at native resolution, upscaling from atypical resolutions, and checkerboarding to name a few.
Even one of these techniques could substantially improve the user experience. For example, dynamic resolution scaling by itself would help to keep the framerate up even in frantic situations, smoothing out gameplay and increasing responsiveness at a very low, and temporary, hit to image quality.
Combining these techniques would even allow for ray tracing on high-resolution monitors. Upscaling from 1280x1440, or 1720x1440 for a 21:9 monitor, rather than 1920x1080 on a 1440p monitor should make for a sharper image, or better still - upscale using checkboarding. That way you're still rendering a similar pixel count to 1080p's ~2m pixels, instead of a 1440p monitor's ~4-5m, with a small overhead. Dynamic scaling on top of this smartly reduced resolution should further improve things. The HUD can be permanently rendered at native resolution at little to no expense, avoiding fuzzy text and elements.
I could definitely see 2080 Ti, or even 2080, and hopefully future AMD hardware, powering a 1440p monitor with HDR and ray tracing at high settings and stable performance, using the above-mentioned techniques. The end result being vastly superior image quality, to what's being shown without these already existing techniques, on the same hardware.
What do you think? Any other techniques you can think of? I've always thought that these should've come to PC shortly after their introducing to console. There seems to be a prevailing understanding that PC is so powerful it could do anything, which is of course a bit silly, but more importantly - PC is a lot about playing the way you want, customizing, fiddling, and the absence of already-developed techniques that allow you to do this better, to get more out of your hardware, is quite unfortunate in my mind, ray tracing or not.
It is my belief that, now more than ever, developers should include techniques that have been used on console, often by the same developers, for many many years, but this time to offset the cost of ray tracing, rather than the relative weakness of console hardware. Techniques like dynamic resolution scaling, rendering the HUD at native resolution, upscaling from atypical resolutions, and checkerboarding to name a few.
Even one of these techniques could substantially improve the user experience. For example, dynamic resolution scaling by itself would help to keep the framerate up even in frantic situations, smoothing out gameplay and increasing responsiveness at a very low, and temporary, hit to image quality.
Combining these techniques would even allow for ray tracing on high-resolution monitors. Upscaling from 1280x1440, or 1720x1440 for a 21:9 monitor, rather than 1920x1080 on a 1440p monitor should make for a sharper image, or better still - upscale using checkboarding. That way you're still rendering a similar pixel count to 1080p's ~2m pixels, instead of a 1440p monitor's ~4-5m, with a small overhead. Dynamic scaling on top of this smartly reduced resolution should further improve things. The HUD can be permanently rendered at native resolution at little to no expense, avoiding fuzzy text and elements.
I could definitely see 2080 Ti, or even 2080, and hopefully future AMD hardware, powering a 1440p monitor with HDR and ray tracing at high settings and stable performance, using the above-mentioned techniques. The end result being vastly superior image quality, to what's being shown without these already existing techniques, on the same hardware.
What do you think? Any other techniques you can think of? I've always thought that these should've come to PC shortly after their introducing to console. There seems to be a prevailing understanding that PC is so powerful it could do anything, which is of course a bit silly, but more importantly - PC is a lot about playing the way you want, customizing, fiddling, and the absence of already-developed techniques that allow you to do this better, to get more out of your hardware, is quite unfortunate in my mind, ray tracing or not.