5 ms·

Raytracing is a good thing, not so much because of the better graphics, but because it enables produce nice graphics with less sophisticated engines and less ar

Raytracing is a good thing, not so much because of the better graphics, but because it enables produce nice graphics with less sophisticated engines and less artist input. A lot of the lighting etc. is currently baked into textures, hard coded, hand-optimized. This takes a lot of time. With raytracing, a lot of this comes "for free", so smaller / indie dev teams can produce games with AAA level graphics.

izzydata 8y ago
At the high cost of performance. As a consumer I am not really concerned with how easy it is to develop for. I'd rather see high frame rates than bleeding edge graphics. It's a good technology, but if we can't even manage 60 FPS minimum in 2020 I will be highly disappointed.
- acct1771 8y ago
  We manage 75+ with ease on PCs larger than toasters.
- hombre_fatal 8y ago
  > As a consumer I am not really concerned with how easy it is to develop for. I don't see how this could possibly be. Ease of development could mean the difference between your next favorite game existing at all. Or having the funds to become your next favorite game instead of cutting scope into a mediocre game that never got to realize its full creative ambition. All upstream concerns contribute to the end result that you do care about. Anything that helps people create AAA-quality games without needing the coffers of Electronic Arts is good for gamers.
  - ihuman 8y ago
    I don't understand what you are talking about. You don't need AAA-quality graphics or a 2019 AAA-size budget for a game to be great. The boom of indie games has shown that great games can have great gameplay and performance, but without the fancy graphics of an AAA game. Do you have any examples of the complexity of AAA graphics caused a game to either have its scope cut, or not exist at all? The only one remotely close to that is Destiny 1's devtools making created/editing levels difficult. However, that game had more fundamental problems, like needing to support the PS3 in addition to the PS4.
    - s_m_t 8y ago
      The point is that with ray tracing the indie game and the AAA game might not look all that different in terms of graphics. Right now AAA games use crazy 40-50 pass shaders and mountains of custom tweaked texture maps to get stuff looking like it does. With ray tracing you can accomplish a lot of that with almost zero effort.
  - izzydata 8y ago
    Because when people look to buy something they are judging the end product and not the process. If indie studio A and massive studio B both create a nearly identical game, but studio A spend 100x less on development because of ease of development due to raytracing it still doesn't concern me. I'd expect studios A and B to get similar sales. If studio A used raytracing tech to develop the same game, but it only ran at half the framerate I would go with studio B regardless of whatever processes they used to create the game.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- echelon 8y ago
  Raytracing democratizes graphics. Indie shops will have to spend less time writing shaders and lighting and can refocus that attention on making the gameplay and overall experience better.
PopsiclePete 8y ago
When they talk about ray-tracing, they don't mean that real-time ray-tracing at 60fps is suddenly possible. We're a decade if not more away from that. They're talking about extremely limited applications for a few effects here and there, in specific scenes. That's what's been demoed so far. NVidia has a bunch of demos with their newest hard-ware. The "Stormtroopers" demo was rendered in real-time, but on a very high-end >$60k workstation.
- davrosthedalek 8y ago
  you are absolutely right, the systems we have today are not fast enough. But they will get faster with every generation, and the fact that is is available in at least one next-gen console makes it more likely that the industry will indeed go in that direction.

izzydata 8y ago

At the high cost of performance. As a consumer I am not really concerned with how easy it is to develop for. I'd rather see high frame rates than bleeding edge graphics. It's a good technology, but if we can't even manage 60 FPS minimum in 2020 I will be highly disappointed.

acct1771 8y ago
We manage 75+ with ease on PCs larger than toasters.
hombre_fatal 8y ago
> As a consumer I am not really concerned with how easy it is to develop for. I don't see how this could possibly be. Ease of development could mean the difference between your next favorite game existing at all. Or having the funds to become your next favorite game instead of cutting scope into a mediocre game that never got to realize its full creative ambition. All upstream concerns contribute to the end result that you do care about. Anything that helps people create AAA-quality games without needing the coffers of Electronic Arts is good for gamers.
- ihuman 8y ago
  I don't understand what you are talking about. You don't need AAA-quality graphics or a 2019 AAA-size budget for a game to be great. The boom of indie games has shown that great games can have great gameplay and performance, but without the fancy graphics of an AAA game. Do you have any examples of the complexity of AAA graphics caused a game to either have its scope cut, or not exist at all? The only one remotely close to that is Destiny 1's devtools making created/editing levels difficult. However, that game had more fundamental problems, like needing to support the PS3 in addition to the PS4.
  - s_m_t 8y ago
    The point is that with ray tracing the indie game and the AAA game might not look all that different in terms of graphics. Right now AAA games use crazy 40-50 pass shaders and mountains of custom tweaked texture maps to get stuff looking like it does. With ray tracing you can accomplish a lot of that with almost zero effort.
- izzydata 8y ago
  Because when people look to buy something they are judging the end product and not the process. If indie studio A and massive studio B both create a nearly identical game, but studio A spend 100x less on development because of ease of development due to raytracing it still doesn't concern me. I'd expect studios A and B to get similar sales. If studio A used raytracing tech to develop the same game, but it only ran at half the framerate I would go with studio B regardless of whatever processes they used to create the game.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
echelon 8y ago
Raytracing democratizes graphics. Indie shops will have to spend less time writing shaders and lighting and can refocus that attention on making the gameplay and overall experience better.

PopsiclePete 8y ago

When they talk about ray-tracing, they don't mean that real-time ray-tracing at 60fps is suddenly possible. We're a decade if not more away from that. They're talking about extremely limited applications for a few effects here and there, in specific scenes. That's what's been demoed so far. NVidia has a bunch of demos with their newest hard-ware. The "Stormtroopers" demo was rendered in real-time, but on a very high-end >$60k workstation.

davrosthedalek 8y ago
you are absolutely right, the systems we have today are not fast enough. But they will get faster with every generation, and the fact that is is available in at least one next-gen console makes it more likely that the industry will indeed go in that direction.