All those really great words mean that when real ray tracing is a thing these cards won't be able to do it due to performance.
There are different kinds of ray tracing. They're all graphics hacks to approximate what happens in real life. No one expects a comprehensive real-time algorithm for that anytime in the near future.
It's up to the game developers to decide what forms of RT to implement: reflections, shadows, ambient occlusion, global illumination, caustics are just a few. It's not an "all or nothing" proposition.
These are the same decisions computer scientists have been making since the earliest days of computer graphics. Remember that all computer graphics are faking it enough to look passably acceptable. That bicycle spoke in a video game? It's not a metal wire, it's just a bunch of mostly grey dots next to each other. Looks too much like a staircase? Well, just fake a smoother appearance with some anti-aliasing.
Most likely there will be differentiated silicon in the future that doesn't exist today to handle some of these RT calculations. I never expected my Apple II+ to do everything a computer 30 years in the future could do. Hell, my *phone* is way more capable than my Pentium II machine from 25 years ago. There was no anti-aliasing in the original
Choplifter game. Today there are plenty of helicopter simulation games with anti-aliased graphics but you need a certain level of hardware to accomplish it. You can't run
MS Flight Simulator 2020 on the IBM PC Jr.
Today, Nvidia announced an image improvement technology that works on three existing generations of consumer GPUs. That's great. There's no extra cost to people who own these products. It's just up to the developers to implement it as they see fit.
If you're an Nvidia card owner, don't complain. No one took anything away from you. If you don't want it, just turn it off in the settings. Or delete the nvngx_dlss.dll file.
If you're an AMD or Intel Arc card owner, maybe the question directed to your manufacturer is "Et tu?"
(Disclaimer: I own computers with GeForce, Radeon, and Intel XeSS GPUs in addition to the Mac mini M2 Pro in my System Specs. I'm not whining.)
I don't own a GeForce card with a Lovelace GPU so I don't get DLSS 3 Frame Generation. Did I complain when Nvidia made that announcement? NO.
Someday Nvidia will announce a new graphics technology that won't work with the GeForce 40-series cards. I promise you.
