We all know why there aren't any higher options on PC, it's a political thing. Even with max Ray Tracing, reflections are of low quality.
It's the same reason why the game lacks DLSS, despite being upscaled to hell and beyond on consoles.
ehhh.. perhaps a touch bit unfair here.
You're going to see all games tread this path going forward as the main audience for development will be consoles and they do have parity clauses in there. At the end of the day, nvidia will perform better, but ultimately the most important thing is that these enhanced RT hybrid rendering paths run on the lowest of systems like the Series S. And those consumers who are more than willing to pay the premium or have the luck to get an nvidia card, the more power to them. If running games at 60-120fps with RT on is exactly the type of thing players are looking for, then Nvidia offers that.
But for everyone else, if you're lucky enough to get a device, whether GPU or console to even run it, it is sufficient. I don't think there is a need at this point in time to charge the RT profile all the way up to requiring Nvidia hardware to run it. Once again, whether it's CBR, TAA, DLSS, using RT to augment existing technologies, the goal here isn't to stress hardware needlessly. We should be applauding developers who can get away with a particular look and feel without bombing your system. And to that point, we should be hoping more of these games can run on lower and lower specs instead of higher and higher specs. Your investment lasts longer, the numbers of players that can experience it increases.
Sure it may be inferior to a different algorithm that requires more muscle to run smoothly, but we're already going to be head and shoulders beyond where we used to be. I think Metro proves that, and that will run on consoles (not with everything absolutely on) but enough to make a generation difference in graphics.
With DLSS, that one is a tougher subject to crack. Not all engines may have an easy time supporting it quite yet, and perhaps it's just a matter of time before that happens. It really depends on where the developers want to put their resources, and a company like Capcom has it's roots in console development, so it's understandable that all their solutions are developed for that space. When we talk about low to ultra settings, those are all really just however the developer sees fit. It's not like Ultra is a universal quantifier of graphics prowess one title to the next. Console games are designed specifically for the hardware, so they may not think a lot about this ultra settings concept.
And there could be technologies we don't know about still, and some developers may be opting to curating their engines for those technologies that are vender agnostic (therefore wider spread), and are just waiting for the time in which these features are announced so that they can enable them. It may be inferior to nvidia's solution (honestly, wrt my profession, I think there is a high possibility that DLSS models will not be surpassed by another vendor) but that does not mean there can't exist a compromised solution that provides fairly great upscaling while still holding a decent performance ground over TAA or native. Nor does that imply that the TensorCores will never be leveraged because there isn't a nvidia model in there. Quite the contrary with DirectML.
I get that nvidia owners are peeved that games are going to be designed for the lowest common denominator, and not really take advantage of the power on tap of nvidia hardware; but at the same time, that should really draw out the longevity of the hardware though. This is sort of paradigm is happening in the console space as well; it seems to me, if you design a game for PS5 as your base, XSX more or less falls into parity with PS5. It can't really make enough headway to make a worthwhile difference. But if you design a game for XSX, then perhaps that gap can be expanded on further. Most developers will choose parity in this case, perhaps rightly so considering that's often the result they want and it's likely cheaper labour wise.
Just something that XSX owners will need to accept; a large number of titles will likely end in parity. And that's something nvidia owners will need to accept as well; a lot of the RT algorithm development will be based around adhering to the weakest system and ensure that it will hit 30-60fps. And that's okay honestly, because no one wants to rebuy their 3080/3090 more than every 7-8 years. These GPUs aren't cheap anymore, so I don't really look forward to anyone having to rebuy hardware that quickly.
