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Maybe I'm crazy, but I don't feel the need for such realism in video games. Ray tracing is an awesome technology for things like pre-rendered video, but real ti

Maybe I'm crazy, but I don't feel the need for such realism in video games. Ray tracing is an awesome technology for things like pre-rendered video, but real time raytracing that takes up a huge portion of the graphics card computational power seems like a waste. I'd rather see more frames per second at higher resolutions.

Crespyl 8y ago
From discussions I've seen elsewhere and my own limited knowledge, I think a lot of the potential benefit in the near future is likely for the artists/designers more than the end users. Being able to quickly place lights and design materials for a scene with realistic ray-traced rendering gets believable results in simpler fashion than by having to painstakingly recreate all the details of natural lighting with existing conventional methods. It requires a lot more of the end-user hardware, but overall gives the artists more room to focus on things other than making sure the lighting and reflections aren't distractingly wrong.
- izzydata 8y ago
  That sounds like a good application of this technology. If Nvidia had some kind of split product line for professionals and gamers. Kind of like this exact thing they already did with the Quadro cards..
  - mattnewport 8y ago
    You're missing the point, for realtime rendering it's not enough for the content creators to have this technology to get the benefits, it has to be used on the target end user hardware too. Getting things to look good with traditional rasterization based pipelines involves a lot of special case hacks and tricks and work arounds for situations where they break down or don't compose. That is a lot of work for the artists to accommodate the limitations of the target platform. The promise of raytracing is that you can get great results without a lot of tricks and special casing which frees up the content creators to focus on the visuals they want to create without worrying so much about technical implementation details. That only really works if the target platform supports performant ray tracing as well as the content creation tools.
- fsloth 8y ago
  Actually empowering artists will benefit the end users with better visuals. Some people are happy with textures polygons but personally I enjoy cinematic art as much as other type and cinematic story telling wiht all of it's subtleties will definetly benefit from this.
dragontamer 8y ago
There's nothing "realistic" about a crown erupting in magic flames and dancing on the water on its own however. But making that look good is the question: the human eye has expectations for how the fire effect is supposed to look when reflected on the water, and if the fire is to be "believable", it needs to light up the area around it. Its clearly a demo explicitly designed to take advantage of Raytracing (a dynamically moving source of light), which is hard to emulate with traditional effects. -------- The idea is that artists can build new worlds, possibly with less effort, thanks to this technology.
truckerbill 8y ago
'640kB ought to be enough for anyone' This step towards real time raytracing is going to happen sooner or later. This kind of progression is why we aren't stuck with Wolfenstein 3D
- dragontamer 8y ago
  I disagree. Raytracing has always been possible. There are GPU demos of real-time raytracing back in 2010. But gamers typically care more about higher-FPS / higher-resolutions rather than more realistic shadows and reflections. I think a "killer app" needs to be done. Ex: a game designed around raytracing: a stealth game using shadows to gain information around a corner (and worrying about the placement of your own shadow). That sort of thing... For now, game developers have this cool visual technology, but no real way to integrate it into a gameplay mechanic that players really care about.
  - tntn 8y ago
    > gamers typically care more about higher-FPS / higher-resolutions rather than more realistic shadows and reflections. It's a balance though, right? Programmable shading took off because lots of people wanted the better shading that it enabled (at the cost of lower framerates/resolution). So it seems plausible that people might again choose quality improvements through raytracing over framerates/resolution (especially as 4k 120fps becomes more achievable).
    - dragontamer 8y ago
      The majority of the demo was probably traditional rasterized graphics. Raytracing isn't "replacing" anything outside of reflections and global illumination in these realtime demos. Will video gamers be willing to pay $600+ for GPUs like the 2070, 2080, or 2080 Ti, for a few improved shadows and reflections / refractions? I think yes, but ONLY if you get a game to actually make shadows and reflections important. RTX benefits are a very subtle shift that costs a LOT of money right now.
      - 8y ago
LifeLiverTransp 8y ago
No... no.. no.. can you imagine how much trickery and hacks can be tossed with this? Finally free. Finally not months spend on a shader for each model. Rendering does not have to be realistic, but even that part is easier with rendering.
- izzydata 8y ago
  So an artist gets to spend far less time creating content by making raytracing doing a lot of the lightning work for them and in order for the end user to benefit from this they have to sacrifice a ton of hard performance and drop their FPS. We haven't even gotten to a 4k60fps standard in modern titles and raytracing content will drop people to console like frame rates.
  - LifeLiverTransp 8y ago
    Have you any idea what i byzantine nightmare we can cut loose with this? Just look at your download of the nvdia drivers? Every more popular game has one complete rewrite of the shaders in there- some are even delivered defunct, and repaired by nvidia, the repairs added layer, by layer to this gothic cathedral mothership of code.
JabavuAdams 8y ago
Or decent AI? EDIT> No point having high-resolution if all it does is show you the puppet strings. NTSC was pretty real, back in the day.

Crespyl 8y ago

From discussions I've seen elsewhere and my own limited knowledge, I think a lot of the potential benefit in the near future is likely for the artists/designers more than the end users. Being able to quickly place lights and design materials for a scene with realistic ray-traced rendering gets believable results in simpler fashion than by having to painstakingly recreate all the details of natural lighting with existing conventional methods. It requires a lot more of the end-user hardware, but overall gives the artists more room to focus on things other than making sure the lighting and reflections aren't distractingly wrong.

izzydata 8y ago
That sounds like a good application of this technology. If Nvidia had some kind of split product line for professionals and gamers. Kind of like this exact thing they already did with the Quadro cards..
- mattnewport 8y ago
  You're missing the point, for realtime rendering it's not enough for the content creators to have this technology to get the benefits, it has to be used on the target end user hardware too. Getting things to look good with traditional rasterization based pipelines involves a lot of special case hacks and tricks and work arounds for situations where they break down or don't compose. That is a lot of work for the artists to accommodate the limitations of the target platform. The promise of raytracing is that you can get great results without a lot of tricks and special casing which frees up the content creators to focus on the visuals they want to create without worrying so much about technical implementation details. That only really works if the target platform supports performant ray tracing as well as the content creation tools.
fsloth 8y ago
Actually empowering artists will benefit the end users with better visuals. Some people are happy with textures polygons but personally I enjoy cinematic art as much as other type and cinematic story telling wiht all of it's subtleties will definetly benefit from this.

dragontamer 8y ago

There's nothing "realistic" about a crown erupting in magic flames and dancing on the water on its own however. But making that look good is the question: the human eye has expectations for how the fire effect is supposed to look when reflected on the water, and if the fire is to be "believable", it needs to light up the area around it. Its clearly a demo explicitly designed to take advantage of Raytracing (a dynamically moving source of light), which is hard to emulate with traditional effects. -------- The idea is that artists can build new worlds, possibly with less effort, thanks to this technology.

truckerbill 8y ago

'640kB ought to be enough for anyone' This step towards real time raytracing is going to happen sooner or later. This kind of progression is why we aren't stuck with Wolfenstein 3D

dragontamer 8y ago
I disagree. Raytracing has always been possible. There are GPU demos of real-time raytracing back in 2010. But gamers typically care more about higher-FPS / higher-resolutions rather than more realistic shadows and reflections. I think a "killer app" needs to be done. Ex: a game designed around raytracing: a stealth game using shadows to gain information around a corner (and worrying about the placement of your own shadow). That sort of thing... For now, game developers have this cool visual technology, but no real way to integrate it into a gameplay mechanic that players really care about.
- tntn 8y ago
  > gamers typically care more about higher-FPS / higher-resolutions rather than more realistic shadows and reflections. It's a balance though, right? Programmable shading took off because lots of people wanted the better shading that it enabled (at the cost of lower framerates/resolution). So it seems plausible that people might again choose quality improvements through raytracing over framerates/resolution (especially as 4k 120fps becomes more achievable).
  - dragontamer 8y ago
    The majority of the demo was probably traditional rasterized graphics. Raytracing isn't "replacing" anything outside of reflections and global illumination in these realtime demos. Will video gamers be willing to pay $600+ for GPUs like the 2070, 2080, or 2080 Ti, for a few improved shadows and reflections / refractions? I think yes, but ONLY if you get a game to actually make shadows and reflections important. RTX benefits are a very subtle shift that costs a LOT of money right now.
    - 8y ago

LifeLiverTransp 8y ago

No... no.. no.. can you imagine how much trickery and hacks can be tossed with this? Finally free. Finally not months spend on a shader for each model. Rendering does not have to be realistic, but even that part is easier with rendering.

izzydata 8y ago
So an artist gets to spend far less time creating content by making raytracing doing a lot of the lightning work for them and in order for the end user to benefit from this they have to sacrifice a ton of hard performance and drop their FPS. We haven't even gotten to a 4k60fps standard in modern titles and raytracing content will drop people to console like frame rates.
- LifeLiverTransp 8y ago
  Have you any idea what i byzantine nightmare we can cut loose with this? Just look at your download of the nvdia drivers? Every more popular game has one complete rewrite of the shaders in there- some are even delivered defunct, and repaired by nvidia, the repairs added layer, by layer to this gothic cathedral mothership of code.

JabavuAdams 8y ago

Or decent AI? EDIT> No point having high-resolution if all it does is show you the puppet strings. NTSC was pretty real, back in the day.