I love ray tracing and path tracing when they’re done right. Ik fully ray traced scenes are hardly playable even on high end cards without upscaling but like if one has a powerful enough card, why not utilize its potential? Yet most people don’t seem to care about RT.
When it comes to upscaling though, I hate it, and I’m not even talking about frame gen. It makes things look blurry and causes annoying artifacts. I think playing on lowest settings with clear textures is more enjoyable long term than maxed out in 4k with a consistently blurry image. Also this new technology makes devs care less about optimization (which will backfire btw as we’re approaching the physical limit of transistor size).
Ray Tracing isn’t used well enough to justify the performance hit in pretty much all but 1 game I have ever played (cyberpunk 2077; real time reflections off wet surfaces and glass really stand out and look fantastic).
And upscaling looks horrendous compared to just running at a native resolution. I prefer to not use it, but sometimes it’s necessary either because the game doesn’t let you not use it or because it’s so poorly optimized you need it to just get a baseline acceptable fps.
I personally don’t see much of a difference between RT and the established lighting algorithms, so that’s that.
Super resolution / upscaling is something I love, given that I play on a 4k TV. DLSS is black magic wizardry.
I think they usually bring negligible improvements in visual fidelity, provided the traditional methods are well implemented.
I also think it’s silly to focus on these while the physics coding hasn’t kept up. Even showcase trailers often have weapons clipping through armour. A slightly more realistic shadow isn’t going to immerse me into your world if the slightest touch sends a huge bear carcass flying through the air or my sword clips through walls.
Efficient ambient-light ray tracing (like Lumen) is amazing. It contributes massively to making environments feel believable and immersive.
Path traced reflections and shadows are a indefensible waste of processing power (for now).
Upscaling and frame generation are crutches that are actively harming gaming right now. From disocclusion artifacts to unsightly “sharpening” distortions to developers/publishers skipping optimization because they expect DLSS/FSR will pick up the slack, it’s a cool thing that has unfortunately resulted in games being worse all around.
I’ve personally hit the point where I don’t care much about graphical improvements, especially as someone with a vision disability. I’d rather have games run smoothly on any old console. Everything is advertising 4k meanwhile I’m still using a 720p tv lol
I dont like ray traced lighting, it doesnt feel right and isnt worth the performance cost. I do like raytracing for sound. Scenes look better when they’re handcrafted.
Upscaling sucks. It looks so bad. But the tech is really cool and it allows people to run games at higher fps (only if they have a card with a ton of ai cores).
DLSS is amazing, if it’s available in a game I’m playing I use it.
Ray tracing and path tracing are incredible and the industry needs to quickly cut ties with all hardware that can’t do it. It makes game development significantly quicker, it looks better, and it has genuine gameplay advancements by the very nature of it (like being able to see reflections/shadows of off-screen enemies).
Hmm I decided not to interact with the answers a lot as they are personal opinions but yours is very radical so I decided to step in. Please keep in mind that not all people have an ability to buy any kind of expensive setup. Ray tracing is great but it indeed has a severe performance impact and not all manufacturers have efficient hardware for it yet so an ethical and nondiscriminatory way of implementing forced ray tracing will not be possible any time soon. Just something to keep in mind when forming a strong opinion.
an ethical and nondiscriminatory way of implementing forced ray tracing will not be possible any time soon.
Sorry but I just don’t care. Sometimes we need to just leave some people behind in order to move forward. Devs having to cater to people with 10 year old potato hardware is holding the industry back.
Yea that is kind of not ok.
It’s definitely ok. You’re not owed the ability to play every single game that releases on your hardware. Should PS2 owners still be getting every 2025 game released on the PS2, with no games allowed to be built with capabilities requiring better hardware than the PS2?
Thankfully some devs are now moving with the times and giving us games built on modern technology, like doom the dark ages and Indiana jones.
It’s OK.
