So, would you say Horizon Forbidden West is the first example of a non Raytraced next gen game looking better than pretty much all the RT based next gen games? Especially when compared to the most RT utilized title Pragmata when it's using both RT GI and RT Reflection. Ironically people were gaga over RT before the PS5 event but in the end it's the rasterization based game got praised the most in visuals. Sure R&C got mentioned a lot too but seems like HFW got the most praise for being the most impressive next gen title so far.
I think my prediction is coming true, the overall visual fidelity of using a rasterizer still outweighs RT in the end. GG used all the power on dynamic GI, maximum foliage, geometry density, highest quality of assets, huge scale, fluid dynamic sims like water and cloud, aided all by the super fast SSD streaming in those assets, than putting the power to RT usage. They knew by using RT on reflection, shadow or GI would not nearly get them this much detail and effects. So I think they made the right call here. Game like Pragmata and those heavily RT based games on high end PC now don't look anywhere close to the visual impact Horizon 2 offers here, maybe things would change later on as we see more titles but as it stands I just hope devs don't waste too much resources on RT for next gen console games.
I think my prediction is coming true, the overall visual fidelity of using a rasterizer still outweighs RT in the end. GG used all the power on dynamic GI, maximum foliage, geometry density, highest quality of assets, huge scale, fluid dynamic sims like water and cloud, aided all by the super fast SSD streaming in those assets, than putting the power to RT usage. They knew by using RT on reflection, shadow or GI would not nearly get them this much detail and effects. So I think they made the right call here. Game like Pragmata and those heavily RT based games on high end PC now don't look anywhere close to the visual impact Horizon 2 offers here, maybe things would change later on as we see more titles but as it stands I just hope devs don't waste too much resources on RT for next gen console games.