Never seen it in the flesh, tbh i've not seen any demos that have tempted me into throwing silly money at it. I'd like to see how it evolves with the next generation of cards.
I usually upgrade every 4 years or so, but I've been holding off waiting for the next gen of graphics cards that can hopefully hit at least 60fps with RTX on. I've been reading about Geforce Now streaming Cyberpunk 2077 with RTX on at release in September though, so it's got me wondering if I shouldn't spend a ton of money on a new rig and just upgrade my internet package and stream it instead?
I have enjoyed the visuals on the titles I have played, once you have used it you really do notice where non-ray traced reflections, shadows and illumination are lacking in a lot of the finer accuracy, especially with effects that are rendered off screen. Once ray tracing becomes a standard and starts to free up dev time to focus on everything else, that is when it will really get interesting and overall graphical fidelity will improve I think. Performance could be better but having a 2080 @ 1440p has given me acceptable performance at this stage of the tech in all honesty, however, with that being said, if the next round of RTX games like cyberpunk and watch dogs require ampere for it to keep up, then I won't be too happy about the price they asked because there isn't a huge amount of content to sink into even after all this time.
There's nothing wrong with ray tracing and it will obviously feature very prominently in the future, when gfx cards catch up. There's nothing wrong with Nvidia introducing it with their RTX cards - unfortunately, they chose to introduce it via extreme greed.
Ngreedia were quick to introduce RTX pricing at eye-watering levels (particularly the 2080/Ti). They could easily have afforded to introduce this at more acceptable pricing, thus gaining more sales, but chose not to. There's a very sizeable group who chose not to upgrade (particularly those with 1080/Ti) - Ngreedia knows very well they lost these sales through that word again, greed. They've also lost a lot of ‘heart and mind’ points too.
AMD: PLEASE get your drivers fixed and PLEASE have Big Navi show the same love to Ngreedia as your Zen2 products do to $ntel.
Anyway…but yes…RT will be a very,very important and welcome addition to the ‘gfx feature set’. Personally, with more powerful gfx cards, higher gaming resolution and RT, I can see VR really taking off, not least due to significant improvement in immersion.
I think this could be the new 3D TV.
Proof that the technology is not mature enough for budget prime time. It's grainy and buggy and slow performing. Often times looks worse than traditional technologies.
To be honest, I think it is ridicoulous… one company call it one thing and the other, something else, we need enforced industry/consumer standards much much more.
Think most would agree to that to be honest, then they can find out which card performs best, what niche this or that card would fit into and more, and just leave it at that, my take on it.
We need to set standards… I don't care if I get a Nvidia or AMD Radeon card or whatever whenever it get to it, as long as it perform excelent within the high end frames I am looking for, if in some cases that 5 FPS is the only difference… and the one with lowest is cheaper, then uh… can live without that little extra I can't see anyway ^^
Give it a few years and it will be fine but I'm in no rush (for the premium on the cards) for it.
I more wish the VR to finally be a major thing. Additional bling is just it. I agree that it looks better, however i still wait for cards that delivers snapy stable 60fps @4k ultra on all titles. 1080ti is not there yet, 2080ti is closer but still not there.
I don't think it'll take off while it's implemented using expensive fixed-function hardware. I hope AMD's response to RTX doesn't require silicon specifically dedicated to the task. That would just be damn wasteful.
I've been using Ray-Traced graphics for years in 3DS, so it's about time it became more widely used. That said we've got fairly close to it using other mapping techniques which use a lot less computing to render.
So until they can get a sold fps on at least the mid-range cards it's not something I’m going to rush towards getting.
I bought a 2080ti, got a good deal on it (£999).
In the games that support it (unfortunately few though they are) I notice the difference immediately. When I compare the RTX version of the new COD for instance to the non-RTX then you notice the lighting is more subtle, the reflections more real. The single player campaign looks almost real, and I caught myself thinking that while playing it (as did an RTX owning pal of mine). Shadow of the tomb raider does look spectacular with the RTX features on (though the game itself sucks). Control looks grainy, but I wonder if that is something to do with their engine, because I had the same complaint about Quantum Break. The RTX side of things is very cool tech (even if the performance even on my card is not as good as it could be)
Long story short, it's new tech that needs more support and a pricing structure that works. There also needs to be a set standard for all to follow, which if DirectX raytracing gets traction might actually come to pass.
Is it a game changer? Not really.
Is the FPS hit a lot? Yes
If the hardware can support it better in the future, do I think it is the way forward? Yes I do.
Should the pricing be better? Yes, but there is always a first adopter penalty to pay which I did in this case because I was upgrading my whole rig so it made sense.
Will people continue to bitch about Nvidia pricing? Yes, until there is genuine competition with GPUs - which there hasn't been really for the last 5 years or so.
Why are we arguing about graphics fidelity when we should be asking for games that play well and are fun first, then look good second? Who the hell knows
I don't play games for the look, so this make it very hard to play anything cuz they don't really seem to be making games with the kind of game i like.
I will any day play a stonking game and be forced to turn graphics down to low, that's how i played back in the day anyway, not really from a hardware perspective as the games i was able to play with 60 FPS just fine, but i played with 200 Hz and FPS, so graphics settings and resolution had to come down.
Played at 1024 / 768 or something on the 2048/1536 CRT screen, and had no problem keeping in top 100 of the games.
Mind you the RTX i have seen look fine, but so do the new games i have tried on my new 5700XT.
So i am not sure even with a major lotto win i would swap out my 1080p screen and throw money at Negreedia.
Only new game that seem to have the game speed i require are the new Doom, but somehow i am almost sure they managed to ruin that in some way too, will have to watch for open beta and demos / reviews, and maybe risk buying a disk that might turn into a very flashy and expensive clay pigeon.
DanceswithUnix
I think this could be the new 3D TV.
Expensive, faddish and (thankfully) short-lived?
Past that looks at demos etc it certainly adds something when I am looking for it but not sure how much it would add in actual use for me for the price.
In short I can't afford ray tracing but look forward to when its matured and works on reasonable price hardware.
Spreadie
DanceswithUnix
I think this could be the new 3D TV.
Expensive, faddish and (thankfully) short-lived?
Sounds about right to me.
Looks impressive but pointless for me because I'm using a peasant rig and it'll be quite a while before I can afford a new rig.
I did ray tracing on an atari ST. Took several hours for a 320x240 image. Looked cool, but wasn´t worth the effort.
Ray-tracing today is still the same. Looks cool, but not worth it. Games look great anyway, but paying the extra money at the moment for ray tracing is only for people with more money than me.
In a generation or two, then it will be a mildly cool extra to have.
What are Ray Traced Graphics?!
Like most things that have a high premium at launch, right now we'll say it makes no difference. Then, when it's ubiquitous, we'll fume at the temerity of any developer who dares to release a game without raytracing.
I'll take good fluid frame rates over too much eye candy every time. But nice to have the option in a growing number of games.
Well, my opinion hasn't changed in about 25 years.
Which is, I've played and enjoyed games with quite primitive graphics, and they've been great. I've also played some with really good (for the era) grapics but lousy gameplay, and they were a huge disappointment.
It is first and foremost about gameplay. RT might improve the user experience of a good game, but no amount of fantastic visuals or sound will rescue a lousy one.
You can polish a dogpile all you like, but it's still a dogpile.
So …. it comes down to how much difference RT makes to MY gaming experience, in relation to the cost of hardware. And right now, that's that RT is not essential to my gameplaying experience, and certainly not worth anything remotely resembling the cost.
It's a value-judgement thing, and mine is, for now, a clear thumbs down. Yours, of course, may be different. But I'll go for strong gameplay, whatever the genre, over fancy graphics every time
As above, gameplay over graphics any day of the week.
it is like the 80ish when Turbo became a thing… then they put Turbo on everything from sunglasses to combs and more haha….
I'm getting to the point where I'm due an upgrade anyway, and I don't find this exciting enough to make me take the plunge quite yet.
Just wish they would sell the RTX series without the raytacing at a discounted price .
I'd buy that, ray tracing I'm just not interested in and will not pay what they are currently going for.
QuorTek
it is like the 80ish when Turbo became a thing… then they put Turbo on everything from sunglasses to combs and more haha….
No, I'd say not. Well, actually maybe, in the sense that there were some things whee “Turbo” really did mean something …. on some models. .Like a Porsche 911 Turbo (loved the driving experience, albeit that it was a bit hairy) or the Lotus Esprit Turbo (preferred the normal V8 but the driving position was 'orrible in both). But then, there were lots of cars where the Turbo was tuned for efficiency not performance and yes, as a great marketing gimmick.
Similarly, ray-tracing
when done well provides for stunning realistic and fast-reacting visuals.
But for me, it's not even the icing on the cake, it's more like the cherry on the icing - i.e. nice to have, providing that first, it's done well, and second, it doesn't add too muxh to the cost.
Maybe like, would you buy a normally aspirated Ferrari (assuming you could afford it) at £150k, or the Turbo version at £5m?
Even if I could afford the £5m version, does it add enough value to be sworth it? For me, not unless I was a billionaire, or multi-billionare and £4,850,000 was insignificant.
So RT is good, worth worthing, but not at excessive price. IMHO, of course.
Not used it personally
I hope implementing of it in the next-gen consoles at a cost of around £500 drops the price of the cards in the future
If you think about it , Nvidia HAD to introduce it. When even mid range cards are capable of 1440/2556 gaming then you need something at the top end to drag the cards down. Otherwise everyone will just be buying mid-range or slightly higher ( xx60 xx70 ) rather than the super premium xx80/Ti. Nvidia know that the gfx card market is shrinking and may shrink even faster with streamed games. So they have to get their last hurrah in, eg super premium pricing. 5g and mobile will destroy the standalone Gfx market, for any reasonable volume of sales.
As DanceswithUnix says….The new new 3d, or Hairworks etc. Only very small parts of a scene are being RTX'd at the moment with performance penalties so horrendous that it brings the top end GFX cards to their knees. Not to mention the hit to one's bank account.
It is just ridiculous.
Still, there are suckers out there who have to have the latest fad, no matter the pointlessness.
Nvidia will quietly drop it in a few years….
Having used RTX since launch with the RTX 2080, and the slow start, I have been very impressed with it's improvement now, especially in combination with DLSS which has made all the difference. DLSS has come on leaps and bounds! This was always a risk for Nvidia with the old chicken and egg scenario, as without buying the RTX GPU's we would not really have gotten this huge push we now have with everybody jumping on board ray tracing especially the next gen consoles. Yes it was more expensive but thankfully the non RTX performance was still more than good enough and yes we were the guinea pigs..but we the early adopters welcome your thanks.
Never used it, not desperate to use it, resent the price hike of graphics cards to include the feature.
Huge FPS hit for not much benefit. Give it another 3-4 years and it may be worthwhile. Right now it's just a curiosity. The technology is just not ready.
If the recent resolution fab on computer monitors ( and other ) keep going at the rate it do, that i assume will also nullify any gains made in displaying GFX on a screen.
So you might soon have a GFX card that can do stunning graphics on a 4K screen, but everyone are buying 8K screens.
But if you like me don't jump on that band wagon and still stick to 1080p or maybe 1440p as the extreme, you can get really good FPS and high graphics settings in games for little money,,,,,, even RTX too.
The consoles on the other hand are locked in to the TV market, and everything there now is 4K at least and it will very soon be 8K cuz that's just the way it go.
I honestly think games should look like games, and i sort of blame the ever more realistic GFX graphics for the also increasing “ reality” in gameplay, which for me personally just ruin the fun, cuz if i wanted that in the FPS games i like i would be much better off getting off my ass and out to play some hardball or paintball.
Ray Traced graphics look good in the movies .. Oh, you mean ray tracing in computer games. What game .. I don't have any with RT?
Even though my 1070 sucks at rendering ray tracing. I would like a video card that could use them at the highest setting without frame drops. Sometimes ray tracing can make the game beautiful and other times make it look really bad. The technology and software still need tons of work. I think ray tracing can be a game changer in games, once ray tracing can be used in a way that's not extremely expensive then I will welcome rt officially. The video cards that support it are just too expensive at this time.
Need the 7nm NV cards then there will be more power than needed for first gen games MADE for it, and probably will come into it's own by xmas games or so (first gen made from the start with it show up then?). Most so far are after-thoughts, so YMMV until they design with it in mind from the start. Considering NV/AMD seed their tech to devs a little earlier than cards come (to support new features), I doubt many had it in mind with what we see so far. But now that everyone is coming with support on the hardware side by xmas, it should take a hard leap forward from xmas on. I see RT being FAR larger than any VR crap. RT is the future so says ALL hardware supporting it. You need EXTRA hardware to support VR and good ones aren't cheap and games aren't either (bang for buck is awful on VR). Surely some launch titles for next consoles will showcase it, no doubt NV will be pitching game packages for xmas etc.
I do not have an RTX capable card, so along with the fact that I have never seen an RTX enabled game I cant really comment. What I will say is that if I were to upgrade to an RTX Card it would not be because of RTX, it would be for increased framerate in “Normal” games.
With respect to Ampere/Big Navi again I am more interested in their performance in “Normal” games than Ray Traced. But if they are better value for money than the current Nvidia Cards and suffer less of a performance hit with RTX enabled , I may consider an upgrade.
RTX has left me a bit pissed off, to be honest. It was Assetto Corsa Competizione that I was looking forward to the most, and that was marketed as a “launch title”, but they're no longer implementing it.
It's been a massive let-down elsewhere as well, only really being usable at 1080p, which is a fairly terrible resolution in 2019.
Overall, not happy.
It's the future obviously. Play some old game and you immediately notice how bad the lighting is. Same will be true of non RT games in a few years. Right now it's only at the overpriced early adopter stage but that's been the same since Ati/Nvidia started making gpu's (the top end cards have some next gen features). As with previous next gen features you've to introduce it some time so the game makers start using it. They've done a good enough job that I wouldn't buy a new card without RT support.
Never seen it in real life, however AMD's version
of RT seems to be less taxing on the system then
nvidia, with almost no discernible difference.
QuorTek
it is like the 80ish when Turbo became a thing… then they put Turbo on everything from sunglasses to combs and more haha….
Porsche Taycan Turbo S anyone? It's an electric car if you don't know
I'm in no rush for it. I've a very limited in budget for PC gaming. Would I rather have a stable 60+ FPS or Ray tracing? I'd take extra FPS every time. When the hardware impact is minimal in a few years I might be interested (and AMD have implemented it - I'm not a nvidia fan).
Ray traced reflections look quite cool, but I personally wouldn't want the FPS penalty for ray traced illumination or shadows. As a 1080ti owner with an HP Reverb, I'm more interested in a GPU with more grunt to be honest.
Hoonigan
RTX has left me a bit pissed off, to be honest. It was Assetto Corsa Competizione that I was looking forward to the most, and that was marketed as a “launch title”, but they're no longer implementing it.
It's been a massive let-down elsewhere as well, only really being usable at 1080p, which is a fairly terrible resolution in 2019.
Overall, not happy.
You're looking at it all wrong.
You have to bear in mind that your investment is helping to fund the next generation of improved ray-tracing consumer hardware.
Or.. the next underwhelming fad they can successfully catfish you into swallowing whole.
Yeah, one of those.
I am as impressed with it as i was when i found out that the long awaited Half Life game is only for VR…
Not gonna spend a dime on it, unless i change the GPU, which i won't for at least another year (1660Ti)
I'm a solo indie game dev and my current project almost exclusively uses raymarching for the graphics. I'm on a GTX 980 and am currently running it around 100fps at 1080p with no rasterization at all. Admittedly, my scenes are mathematically simple, but there's a lot you can do with ray based graphics even with last (or last before that…) gen graphics hardware.
My main worry is that NVidia is currently poisoning the well. Using raytracing to enhance lighting within games is good - it will become the standard in the future there's no doubt in my mind about that. But Nvidia pushing it only for the ultra high end and using raytracing purely as a marketing tool is disappointing, if not unexpected.
It think it's a forerunner to a significant step forward in graphics, but it's just a forerunner, I don't think it's the framework we'll wind up with unless its shelved until storage capacity takes it's next leap.