EvilRedEye wrote:

I don't think they are putting the decent ray-tracing GPUs in the next gen because they're too expensive, just normal GPUs with an added bit of ray tracing.

If you want 60fps full RTX  1440p/4k on PC currently you're looking at ridiculous expense on a PC. 1080p is still hard to hit 60 but can be done on cheaper builds.

Its still the biggest revelation for me in gaming in a while, its just hard to get across how good it looks to those who can't have that full experience/haven't seen it in action properly.

Yossarian wrote:

It will be hardware based on the new consoles, but it’s software based on PC. I think the newness is around being able to do it in real time rather than using it as a pre-rendered effect, making it suitable for use in gameplay rather than cut scenes or animation.

Some pc graphics cards have it hardware based don't they?

Stuff like Killer Instinct had ray-traced sprites I think. Just rendered ahead of time and saved as images. And even that was fairly mind-blowing back in the day...

All RTX branded cards have RTX cores that are specialised to accelerate low level DXR raycasts, in the same way the tensor cores are specialised towards the kinds of scalar maths used in AI/NN/TensorFlow etc.
Nvidia recently broadened DXR-support onto other non-RTX cards, it just doesn't run as fast (IIRC, delta of about 10x). Still requires Turing chip though.

acemuzzy wrote:

Yossarian wrote:

It will be hardware based on the new consoles, but it’s software based on PC. I think the newness is around being able to do it in real time rather than using it as a pre-rendered effect, making it suitable for use in gameplay rather than cut scenes or animation.

Some pc graphics cards have it hardware based don't they?

Stuff like Killer Instinct had ray-traced sprites I think. Just rendered ahead of time and saved as images. And even that was fairly mind-blowing back in the day...

Yeah Killer Instinct would have been made by creating high end (for the time) character models lit well, then they would have rendered out all the poses they need and turned them into sprites. Basically the Mortal Kombat technique but with high res 3D models instead of actors.

A similar preproduction technique has been used in games for a good while now. Objects are created, put in a generic environment then the lighting and shadows are hard baked into a bitmap which is then reapplied to the model, sometimes it might even be a lower res version of the model. This workflow is why HD versions of games have become easier for devs to make. Just bake higher res bitmap from the source models already created.

Raytracing is just the standard for lighting a scene or object in 3d. What is happening now in games is realtime raytracing. This means shadows can change based on unpredictable player actions, so shining a torch, or muzzle flashes for example.

I think it is a big leap. Even though it is unlikely to be top notch like DS's PC it will look much better than what we have now. The reason it is particularly interesting though is that beyond just looking better it offers gameplay opportunities with light play.

I have also seen discussion on whether the tech can be high jacked to be used beyond lighting.
A ray is a point that moves in a direct line then when it hits geometry it gathers data and changes it's starting data and/or the data on the object. So it conceivably be used for something like AI line of sight or a whole host of other stuff dreamt up by people smarter than myself.
Bringing it to a wide console market often allows for more exploration.

Its gonna blow console pleb minds though. No kappa.

I'm not talking about visual impact though so nerr.

Nice guy that Ray Tracing, owes me a tenner.

mistercrayon wrote:

I’m mostly looking forward to the reflections. I think when people see things move in mirrors (or glass windows) in a way they haven’t before it will genuinely feel weird to go back.

I've been underwhelmed by the examples shown so far. I don't run around in games staring at puddles. A lot of the earlier demos (like Atomic Heart's) understandably threw loads of chrome and mirrors in to show off the tech differences. 
More options broaden the palette of tools available for game designers, so maybe something will be created where using reflections is an integral part of the gameplay (hunt vampires at a party using a hand mirror because they won't be visible in it?) - but I have a fairly dim view of art being designed around exercising a technology, because that's cart-before-the-horse/solutions-looking-for-problems time and IME doesn't lead to high quality products. More options is great. Fancy demos that show nice shiny new tech are great. But I'm not paying for it unless it's fun.

I think it's worth highlighting that ray tracing is nothing new and hasn't been developed to just make games prettier. It is the standard way of calculating light in 3d scenes that is physically accurate.

The techniques employed by game devs prior are actually bodges to get around the fact the processing power wasn't available to calculate it on the fly.

I’ve been saying this since the end of the 32 bit generation; while the shinies are not unwelcome, I would be much, much more interested in the development of how things behaved to how they looked. For example, character models largely have a central vertical axis through their bodies, about which they pivot and rotate. It makes their isolated movement unrealistic, which is compounded by the way the models then interact with the world. We’ve consistently had 3D environments for over 25 years, and still character models spin on the spot to walk directly away from an object, spin and return, instead of a minor sideways adjustment.

Make things look as superficially real as you want, if you don’t make them behave more realistically, it just increases the disjunct and makes things less immersive, not more.

Physics stuff is going to benefit massively from the increase in CPU power this next gen, honestly it should be quite exciting to see what we get from the really big budget titles, at least technically.

Shiny graphical stuff is much easier to market, all you need is some technical buzzwords and nice pictures to entice people to keep buying your things. Complex interaction less so.

[img]https://media0.giphy.com/media/cLtvKDcQYkSRO/giphy.gif

Seems console gamers will get first dibs on next gen ddr6 ram, ultra hi speed ssd's and amd rt cores? I'm almost starting to feel pangs of jealousy now.

Isn’t that pretty standard for the start of a new console cycle?