If RT is too expensive and the alternatives are also too expensive where does that leave us?
We need to keep working on more efficient solutions. That's not really the problem.
The potential problem i see is: If we raise mainstream standards to high, and it turns out even after years the methods are not affordable, it would be difficult to scale down to lower standards.
This may sound unlikely to happen, but it already did in other ways. Devs kept making their games larger and bigger, until they can no longer afford to make them. They barely manage, can't afford a single unsuccessful game, and thus they avoid risks and innovation on game design. We might see a similar cause of stagnation with graphics, although i don't see or worry about that now.
I'm sure many people will be happy to get better games running with last generation rendering tech but that's not what this debate is about.
To me that's exactly what i talk about. I became uncertain if people still demand better visuals at a cost, or if they rather want games with inferior lighting but a stable image and just fun to play at a lower cost.
In the absence of that the default conclusion is IHV favoritism / hate.
Never considered this seriously, but maybe that's a thing and i should.
I believe brand preference just mostly reflects peoples intersets. Somebody who believes in RT will likely use NV GPUs and share their visions. Somebody who doesn't may pick another GPU, and is likely to express doubts on the vision.
Because NV is the only IHV who has and advertises such vision, AMD or Intel are not really involved into such conflict at all, and because Intel does not have much impact yet, it may look like a NV vs. AMD fanboy conflict for wrong reasons.
No that doesn't fly any more. It's been 5 years that we've been hearing HWRT is too early and a waste of resources and something cheaper and better is right around the corner. How long do we need to wait for proof? 5 more years? 10?
There won't be a proof or change. We just keep improving our stuff, and ideally after some time we have efficient methods which scale to all our needs. HWRT will be part of that, and likely a big one.
So we won't have a winner, but we also won't have a reason to argue anymore.
Our current mistake is that we predict a winner from personal conviction and believe, and we try to defend it against alternatives which are also just assumptions, disbelieves, etc.
It's fighting windmills on both ends. Even calling it 'both' ends is already building windmills and i should not do that. We all want the same thing, and to get there, we will combine anything that works.
Well that's where we fundamentally disagree. You think the incremental progress is useless (even though nobody thought it would be remotely possible). I think it's amazing. We already have GI solutions that scale down to lower power HW - baked light maps. Dynamic GI is a high end feature and there's nothing wrong with that. With time it will trickle down.
I fail to build up context with my quote - surely some misunderstandings in the way.
I do disagree with saying dynamic GI at sufficient quality is a high end feature, and i (or/and others) should be able to proof that after some time. That's really how i at arrive at the assumption of iGPU being good enough for next gen and mainstream.
I'm also very optimistic such method can be used to accelerate a higher quality high end solution involving heavy HWRT. But could be wrong, and maybe we end up using completely different methods for different HW.
However, one thing is important: We need a low cost dynamic GI solution, so games can be made to utilize from the new option of dynamic lighting.
Currently that's not the case. RT enthusiasts only get improved visuals for games which were designed for 'static' content. (big reason i personally still refuse to upgrade)
Current RT GI (but also Lumen, etc.) is very laggy, so this limitation is no big problem yet. But as lag reduces with future improvements, we will notice and complain.
Right, RT has nothing to do with gameplay innovation for good or bad.
Maybe only because of the above - games are not yet designed for dynamic lighting. But once we can afford this an any platform, maybe dynamic lighting can add some thing to gameplay as well.
It won't be a game changer, and due to gradual progress we might not really notice, but there should be some reward for all the work, fuzz and costs, i hope... : )
This is factually incorrect, between Intel being the first with ray coherence sorting and AMD doing lots of stuff with D3D12 advancements like GPU node graphs.
So yes, we definitely can play it both ways and say that AMD "fans" are just as toxic to any discussion here as any other "fans".
No, no. Compare objectively:
NV: First with HWRT, showing off tons of videos and research work, promising a future of awesome gfx to everybody. Intense Marketing, noticeable at least to the technically interested general public.
AMD: Only hardcore developers care about node graphs.
Intel: Modern RT HW, but inferior AMD still beats them when it comes to RT end performance. Which is all at least some people may notice, and NV had coherence too just 3 days later anyway.
What i mean is: Only NV shows such investment into researching and marketing their vision by a noticeable amount. Neither Intel nor AMD do this. You have to agree after adding a appropriate weight to your arguments.
NV always invested much more into software development than any other IHVs. They deliver a message about innovation, always suiting their agenda.
Ofc. this generates a lot of critique and doubt which other IHVs won't see happening in that sense.
So, attempts to play both ways rarely makes sense, and only spur speculations about true motivations coming from fanboyism, shilling, etc. That's noticeable really often here, from my perspective.
To me it looks like NV simply has no competitor which does similar things. They also have no competitor if we look at GPU market share.
Thus, how should it be even possible that other IHVs like AMD 'hold back' NVs visions, for example? They simply can't. And AMD isn't guilty for console makers preferring 'inferior' AMD HW over 'superior' NV HW either, in case consoles would hold back PC awesomeness.
If i read such claims, it always looks like NV fanboy riding along, stepping down from his high horse just to shit over competitors, only to point out how superior the green badge is.
But it's good entertainment and fun, which is the primary objective of this industry. \
/
