Game graphics will get even better once developers can set #raytracing as the minimum requirement. Path tracing in Alan Wake 2 looks great, but it inherits some errors from lights pre-baked for an older rendering pipeline.
@kornel If we had computers that powerful, I'd prefer it if developers could instead not require raytracing and instead just made the game possible to run on cheap integrated graphics. It would make gaming PCs a lot cheaper.
@botahamec That’s a recurring argument against every GPU feature. There used to be GPUs without tesselation, texture compression, various levels of shaders, all they way back to primitive fixed pipeline. Every advancement starts being an expensive option, and eventually ends up being a built-in baseline in integrated graphics. SteamDeck can run Crysis!
10 years from now this conversation will be “instead of requiring fancy RT-turbo-NeRF, why don’t they stick to the cheap old RTX?”
@kornel I don't think I'm arguing against raytracing as a feature. I'm arguing against it being the minimum requirement. If I had to chose between making a game with PBR and making a game that runs on most people's computers, I'd chose the latter. But I think that's a moot point anyway, because I'd actually be aiming for both. If most people's computers can't do PBR, then it could be an optional setting that's off by default.
@botahamec I’m not saying games shouldn’t be working on most computers. Once most computers have RTX, devs will be able to drop pre-baked lights that make PBR worse. My point is that supporting both makes graphics worse. It requires designing lights and textures in all locations twice, and that’s expensive, limiting, and generally not done. Having both needs compromises or gives worse results in one of the pipelines.
@kornel I see. I think the thing I got caught up on is the phrase, "when devs can make raytracing a minimum requirement". The minimum requirements for games tend to be far higher than what most people have.
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