this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2024
285 points (97.0% liked)

Showerthoughts

29692 readers
1418 users here now

A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.

Rules

  1. All posts must be showerthoughts
  2. The entire showerthought must be in the title
  3. Avoid politics
    1. NEW RULE as of 5 Nov 2024, trying it out
    2. Political posts often end up being circle jerks (not offering unique perspective) or enflaming (too much work for mods).
    3. Try c/politicaldiscussion, volunteer as a mod here, or start your own community.
  4. Posts must be original/unique
  5. Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct-----

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
vatlark@lemmy.world
forkball@lemmy.world
quinten@lemmy.world
Thekingoflorda@lemmy.world
285
After six years of hardware ray tracing, the best examples of it are modified old games, like Quake and Minecraft. (midwest.social)
submitted 2 weeks ago by frezik@midwest.social to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
29 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

There might be a good reason for this. Raster effects were already really good in newer games, and ray tracing could only improve on that high bar. It's filling in details that are barely noticeable, but creap ever so slightly closer to photorealism.

Old games start from a low bar, so ray tracing has dramatic improvement.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] simple@lemm.ee 88 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Cyberpunk is a good example of gorgeous raytracing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pkuU0cGQu8

The problem is that proper raytracing is way too heavy for most machines, so game devs don't bother. The Cyberpunk example on max graphics would need an RTX 4090 just to run it over 60fps. No point in pushing tech that nobody can run yet.

Raytracing on older games looks great because they already weren't intensive to run, so developers can get away with maximizing raytracing while still running fine.

[–] Screen_Shatter@lemmy.world 22 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Control also did a fantastic job. At some point the reflections on the glass are almost too good. There is a puzzle where you need to look through some windows to solve it. I couldn’t see what the hell was going on because of the reflections and had to turn RTX off. It was otherwise great and I think the difference is dramatic.

[–] moody@lemmings.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

I've been playing Cyberpunk on an RX 7900XT at basically maxed out graphics, with only some of the raytracing reduced to get it to a consistent 60 fps. The game looks stupid good. But the raytracing is only for shadows and reflections and it has such a massive impact on performance, though I know my GPU is not as effective at raytracing as Nvidia would be.

Like the other reply mentions, Control also looks great with raytracing on, but the scale is not the same as Cyberpunk, so the framerates don't suffer as much.