This, so much this. Raster is a hack to emulate realism that has had 3 decades to get good at that emulation; the practices, tooling, and mindset of the entire graphics industry is focused on those hacks. RT isn't just fighting a massive performance disadvantage, it's fighting inertia which is a far more formidable force.
This is why I get so annoyed when people complain that ray-traced lighting is bad. It's not bad, it's realistic - but years of exposure to raster has conditioned you to think that raster is right, solely because it's what you know. Stop using raster as the benchmark, use your EYES! Literally.
See, I don't disagree on that fact, in isolation - but much like how engineers don't design in isolation, RT doesn't live in isolation. It deals with a world of problems and people and opinions.
But there is more to this than just the graphical change - its not really about being conditioned to anything, I think that's in your head and yours alone. Graphics have been changing all the time, quite radically, too. And I remember that every time, 'we' (gamers) judged what we got versus what performance hit it gave. Many things we simply turned off - and still turn off today, if we can.
Also I think you're easily glossing over the fact that an overwhelming majority of games
is not made to be realistic graphically. They pursue various (artistical) styles.
What I've put forward as the counter argument to the use of RT is an economical one. People keep saying 'time will fix this'. So far what I'm seeing isn't encouraging. My anti-RT stance has been economical of nature all the time, ever since the first announcement. Brute forcing is expensive - its really that simple. I do see a lot of value in
@remekra 's response and I'm not blind to the progress on the various approaches on RT implementation. For example the Cryengine SVOGI demo was impressive - it also had some small inaccuracies, but wasnt' that quite the sweet spot right there between performance and graphics wins? Why are we pursuing a PT that no card can feasibly run? The answer is
economical. Not for your economy mind, but that of a three trillion dollar company.
I'll readily admit RT
can indeed look better. But I've also seen raster based games deploy an equally good scene. Both are rare occurences and what sticks here is that its the scene you're looking at, that matters most. Not how it is lit. So far, I've not been convinced RT is a unified method to improve lighting in games. It can indeed improve them at a massive performance hit. But most RT implementations never even go there, and are a weaksauce alternative that shows inaccuracies just the same as raster does - the only, literally only objective thing non-PT RT has going for it is the offscreen reflection. That's truly something raster graphics can't do. But is it something that'll make or break graphics in a game? I beg to differ. This is all concluded using my own eyes, looking at many hours of RT content. I see the differences. I value them rather low.
Oh ok, I see, you're not just being an ahole to me, you're doing it to everyone. Frustrated are we?
NEWS FLASH, 8GB of VRAM is still enough for gaming in 2025! Also, raytracing is here to stay. You doing your nay-saying(and being a jerk about it) matters not.
Just pointing out there how your 8GB is 'managing' to remain enough. No need for caps. Surely you're not frustrated. I do hope you see the immense irony of it - missing quality on textures and assets is no biggie, but those rays shall be cast or its 'unrealistic'
Honestly, my stance can be captured in my signature. It just says it all: the utter ridiculousness of the money we spend for a few ray casted pixels, when in fact graphics are 99% done. The silly chase for realism in games built to escape from reality and specifically do things not really possible. Yes, it'll barely improve from now on... live with it. RT ain't gonna be changing that. The implementations that will survive are the ones that still use tricks to simulate reality - and still don't quite entirely get there.
So that's why I think... I'll see it when it actually is worth a damn. Not in a rush... let them figure out their consistency and performance issues first.
What's with the personal attack? Good grief man..
Sorry, you get that when immovable object meets impenetrable wall.
If you haven't figured out why raytracing is here to stay after 7 YEARS, you have the problem. See to that.
It was an objective question and I got an objective response to it. Tell me again who's frustrated here. I'm not having any kind of FOMO or problems because of RT... all I do is save money. I'm not gaming a second less for it, nor is the gaming less fun without it.
Better graphics. It's the whole point new gpus are released.
Except the new GPUs are the same thing you already had. And I think the sell for them wasn't better graphics, but more frames on the same graphics. Interesting nuance I think.
12-years-old 
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