With this Sunday question, the editors would like to know from you how you feel about ray tracing in video games. Do you use the rays for a more realistic depiction of light, shadows and reflections and do you see the future in this? Is ray tracing already an issue when buying new games and hardware?
Table of contents
- Ray tracing in games – a long road to success?
- The rays open up new possibilities
- A little more power with each generation
- How important is it to you Ray tracing?
- Do you look for ray tracing when buying?
- Which ray tracing effects are worth which compromises?
- A bright future or an abrupt end?
- Participation is expressly desired
- An overview of the last ten Sunday questions
Raytracing in games – a long way to success ?
In the past week, the Sunday polls were entirely dedicated to your preferred graphics settings for games on the PC. Just over half of the community members stated that they also activate ray tracing at least occasionally. Around ten percent no longer want to have to do without the rays.
Do you play your games with active ray tracing?
- Yes, I can't and don't want to do without raytracing
- It all depends how a lot of performance ray tracing in the respective game costs
- No, raytracing generally costs me too much performance
- Abstain (show result)
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Reason enough to dedicate today's Sunday question entirely to the topic of ray tracing in games. The alternative technology was first discussed on ComputerBase in 2007, when guest author Daniel Pohl talked about his research work in this area long before Microsoft DirectX Raytracing (DXR) and “RTX On” in the first part of his series “Raytracing in Games”, which continued for more than four years reported. He programmed Quake 4 in raytracing as his diploma thesis and went into the advantages and disadvantages of rendering with raytracing. At that time, the CPU was still responsible for the calculation, because ray tracing was implemented “in software” – gaming graphics cards were still a long way from the hardware acceleration used today. More reports followed on the latest developments and the ray tracing implementation of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, but things have quieted down since early 2012.
- Ray tracing in games I: Rays promise photorealism
- Ray tracing in games II: The realm of rays advances
- Ray tracing in games III: Quake Wars with ray tracing
- Raytracing in games IV: Raytracing in the cloud
- Raytracing in games V: News from the world of rays
- Ray tracing in games VI: How to accelerate rays from GPUs
At least since Gamescom 2018, with the presentation of the first GeForce RTX graphics cards from Nvidia, the calm has come to an end. With the new Turing architecture, the RTX 2080 Ti, RTX 2080 and RTX 2070 offered dedicated execution units for real-time ray tracing for the first time. A middle ground between conventional rasterizing and raytracing is pursued: not the entire graphic, but only selected components and effects are calculated by rays. If you are interested in the details of the rays, the section “How does ray tracing work in games?” is particularly recommended. The recommended article “Raytracing in Spiele VI” deals specifically with the current implementation in gaming graphics cards.
The rays open up new possibilities
The sticking point is that some graphic effects are difficult, incorrect or impossible to achieve with rasterization techniques – for example reflections, light refractions, shadows, ambient occlusion, global illumination and also special light calculations that until now had to be calculated in advance. There are also other possible uses such as visibility checks, audio simulation, particle simulations and visibility checks for AI. In this respect, it is not surprising that ray tracing has long been known as “The Holy Grail of Graphics”; Nvidia also used the name when presenting the Turing graphics cards. However, there was a catch: The rays require a lot of additional computing power, which was shown in the test of the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 2080.
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Cyberpunk 2077 (Image: CD Projekt Red)
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Cyberpunk 2077 (Image: CD Projekt Red)
Another hurdle was that corresponding games with ray tracing implementation were few and far between at the beginning – by the beginning of 2020 only five triple-A productions in which the rays were used had come onto the market. Almost two years later, however, things look completely different: Not only is ray tracing an indispensable part of many current blockbuster releases – the implementations in Cyberpunk 2077 (test), Metro Exodus Enhanced (test) or most recently A Plague are popular Tale: Requiem (test) – the technology is also finding its way into older games with new versions, for example in The Witcher 3 in mid-December 2022.
A little more power with each generation
And since the ray tracing execution units in GeForce graphics cards with the RTX 4090 (test) and RTX 4080 (test) have now arrived in the third generation, AMD with the Radeon RX 7900 XT (X) at least generation two is just around the corner and alternative upscaling algorithms such as DLSS Super Resolution (test), DLSS 3 with frame generation (test), FSR 2 (test) or XeSS are increasingly finding their way into new video games, the performance with ray tracing is now much better: While four years ago you often had to choose between ray tracing and smooth frame rates even with high-end graphics cards, today three-digit FPS with ray tracing effects in UHD are sometimes possible. And the majority of the ComputerBase community is still playing in a lower resolution, as the last Sunday question showed.
How important is raytracing to you ?
Nonetheless, half of the readers are not yet resorting to the rays—why is that? Are you missing the right hardware? While Nvidia, AMD and Intel now offer graphics cards that can accelerate real-time ray tracing in hardware, what is the proportion of the different GPU generations? Nvidia's ray tracing performance has improved noticeably with each new graphics architecture, and AMD also promises corresponding optimizations.
Does your graphics card support real-time ray tracing?
- Yes, I installed an Ada Lovelace GeForce RTX 4000 graphics card.
- Yes, I have an Ampere GPU from the RTX 3000 series at work in my system.
- Yes, I use the first generation of raytracing with a GeForce RTX 2000 based on the Turing architecture.
- Yes, I have installed a Radeon RX 6000 series RDNA 2 graphics card.
- Yes, an ARC graphics card from the Alchemist generation accelerates the rays on me.
- No, my PC does not support hardware accelerated ray tracing.
- Abstain (Show result)
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Do you pay attention to raytracing when buying?
Building on that, how important is ray tracing performance to you when you buy a new gaming graphics card: are rays a priority, or is rasterizing performance still the most important? And what is the proportion of users who still don't give a damn about ray tracing when buying new hardware?
Is ray tracing performance relevant to you when buying a new graphics card?
- Yes, high ray tracing performance is very important to me with a new graphics card.
- Yes, I do care about ray tracing performance, but rasterizer performance is more important.
- No, I don't care about ray tracing performance when buying a graphics card. But the rays should be supported.
- No, I don't give a damn about ray tracing when buying a new graphics card. The card doesn't even have to offer hardware-accelerated ray tracing for my sake.
- Abstain (show result)
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The same question is also interesting when it comes to buying behavior for video games. Large single-player blockbusters, in particular, are increasingly using opulent ray tracing effects, but does that go down well with the players? Is the use of the rays perhaps even an important argument for the purchase – or does it not play a role at all? The editors would also be happy to receive comments on which games you particularly liked ray tracing and which new release with ray tracing implementation you are already looking forward to.
Is ray tracing an issue for you when choosing new games?
- Yes, I'm specifically looking for games that set new graphical standards – and that includes extensive ray tracing support.
- Although I prefer games that implement new graphic effects such as ray tracing; I wouldn't buy a title because of that.
- If a game I'm interested in has ray tracing, that's another plus, but nothing more.
- It doesn't matter to me whether a new game comes with raytracing or not – that's not a criterion for me.
- Abstain (show result)
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Which raytracing effects are worth which compromises to you?
If a game offers raytracing, ask In the graphics menu, the question often arises as to which effects should be activated and which can be left out. How do you set your preferences for the different ray tracing modes that are available; In which scenario do you think the rays have the greatest potential? Or are you impressed by all previous raytracing implementations?
Which ray tracing effects are important to you or impress you the most?
- Raytraced reflections and refractions are my passion.
- In my opinion, global illumination benefits from rays in particular.
- I particularly like the ambient occlusion that has become more realistic with the use of ray tracing.
- I love the more precisely drawn shadows thanks to ray tracing.
- Abstain (Show result)
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However, when several or all ray tracing effects are activated at high detail levels, performance is often still the problem – and the last Sunday question showed that the community likes to play with high or even maximized details. However, if you don't have a high-end graphics card from the latest generation or even an Ada Lovelace GPU, you have to make compromises, especially in high resolutions. But in which direction: Is the graphic splendor above everything, is ray tracing more important than the other graphics settings or are the rays out of the question in favor of the FPS?
To what extent are you willing to make compromises for ray tracing?
- The graphical quality of a game is everything to me – as long as the refresh rate remains at least playable (30-60 FPS), I turn ray tracing up as high as possible.
- Raytracing is very important to me, but I still try to achieve high frame rates (60-100 FPS) and lower other graphics settings accordingly.
- Ray tracing is very important to me, but I still try to achieve high frame rates (60-100 FPS) and lower the ray tracing settings accordingly – other graphics settings take precedence.
- I only switch on ray tracing if I already achieve very high refresh rates (100 FPS or more) with graphics settings maximized.
- I would never consider turning on ray tracing – the FPS definitely comes first!
- Abstain (show result)
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A bright future or an abrupt end?
Finally, the editors want to know whether the community sees a future for ray tracing: will rays prevail in the long term or even in the short term? Or will it remain a temporary phenomenon that will soon disappear in favor of classic rasterizer rendering?
Will ray tracing catch on in games?
- Yes, ray tracing will become the standard model for all video game rendering in the future.
- Yes, ray tracing is already starting to become the tool of choice for lighting, shadows, and reflections.
- Well, the use of ray tracing effects will increase, but there is still a long way to go.
- Maybe, but not in the current implementation – I see no future for that.
- No – ray tracing in games overall is just a fad that will soon disappear.
- Abstain (Show result)
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Participation is expressly desired
The editors would be very happy to receive well-founded and detailed reasons for your decisions in the comments on the current Sunday question. If you have completely different favorites, please write it in the comments.
Readers who have not yet participated in the last Sunday questions are welcome to do so. In particular, there are still exciting discussions going on in the ComputerBase forum about the last surveys.
Overview of the last ten Sunday questions
- Graphic settings, presets, image output and peripherals
- Do you still rely on air or already on water?
- Would you like to read more about efficient or economical hardware?
- Is your pain limit with a gaming PC achieved?
- GTA I & II or rather San Andreas, Vice City & GTA V?
- What grades do you currently give AMD's AM5 platform?
- Is the power consumption of new hardware still up to date?
- How does Ada Lovelace calculate for Nvidia?
- How do you rate the separation of the two GPU specialists?
- From vacuum robot to household android?
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