Ray tracing isn’t supposed to make things look better, it’s supposed to save development time
If you spend enough time on lighting you can make static lights look better but that’s just it, it takes longer so it costs more
this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2025
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When I had a PS5 and Cyberpunk, I would sometimes switch ray tracing on and off to see if it made a huge difference. Well, the frame rate would be capped at 30 with it on...and I suppose if I stopped and looked around for a bit, it was noticeable, but honestly, I preferred the higher framerate. I've yet to see a game that really benefits from RT.
It's mostly developers that benefit from RT long-term. Not now while it's optional, but once it becomes a requirement, they can cut a couple of time-intensive steps from the development pipeline.
Can't wait until my GPU needs 1000W to run :'(
I think RayTracing is pushed so hard by the industry because it gives manufacturers an excuse to force consumers to buy better cards to get "the very best". I have a 4070 and I never use RT.
That's why I will literally never support Nvidia. AMD isn't perfect but at least they play nice with open source.
i wish they would just make more gpu so they aren't so supply limited geez
Why would they want to do what's bad for them and good for us? They're a corporation:)
I don't know but Path Tracing makes CBP2077 and Alan Wake 2 looks like a real next gen game.
Cy Ber Punk? interesting
There is a real reason to not use the "C + P" initialism in online chat these days... on some platforms it's likely to be flagged & reported by automods/bots/Eye of Sauron.
But I love CP!! It’s so next gen!
That's him, officer, right there ☝️🤓
“I have a shitty computer and can’t play my single player game at imperceptibly fast frame rates boo boo boo.”
Raytracing is being pushed so hard by the industry because it makes things easier for devs as opposed to making the games look better for the customer.
There is absolutely nothing about raytracing which makes it "easier" for devs compared to a traditional render pipeline.
The extra performance rquirements alone mean you're going to be doing more work elsewhere to make up for it, and that's ignoring the current bugs/quirks with RT in whatever engine you're using.
Yes, you can skip simulating GI with many small lights. Not a game dev, I work in animation. Up until fifteen years ago this was still a regularly taken approach to lighting scenes, before the advent of pathtracers
The extra performance rquirements alone mean you're going to be doing more work elsewhere to make up for it, and that's ignoring the current bugs/quirks with RT in whatever engine you're using.
No worries, we got upscaling and frame generation now!
I thought the ultimate goal was to encapsulate the lighting system entirely inside the engine to stop programmers/artists needing to micro manage light sources. Presumably if a game only supported ray tracing then they could interact with an environment at the object level and trust the lighting would work in a life-like manner without having to be confected as part of development.
trust the lighting would work in a life-like manner
Ah we've had raytracing for a long time already, and you can download something like Blender and play around with it yourself. You'll quickly discover that just because it conforms to some real-world principles (and works in a reliable manner) doesn't mean it's a magic tool that Just Works and immediately makes anything look good.
You still have to setup your world lighting (point/sun lights, skyboxes, emissive materials, whatever), adjust it to get the look you want, and your hardware requirement for testing this are now increased.
Raytracing is nice because it can make things look even better, not because it replaces parts of the workflow.
you still need to setup your world lighting
That was the locus of my misunderstanding. Thanks for explaining!
rt is a marketing trick very few games are made in a way that makes it look better
I am waiting for the GPU's to use the rotating kinetic power of the fans to feed back into the GPU to give them ERS boost like in formula 1, when scenes become to graphically demanding. If you steal my idea that is intellectual theft and I will be sad!
I'm running a 4070s
CP2077 with RT is around 50fps with dips. Without RT I sit at 90fps with max settings and 144p
Ray tracing is cool, problem is, it is still in beta basically. Once hardware catches up and you can still get good FPS then it won't be an annoyance
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