Transformative RT as big part of the industry love to talk about is a pipe dream. Right now RT has been used in 3 scenarios.
1 : to step up in scenarios when rasterisation trick clearly fail -> both Spiderman game building's reflection -> work nicely, perf to visual cost is OK, actually run not too shabby on AMD hardware.
2. To make game with a "cartoony" visual identity have a much more well-rounded, grounded, consistent visual identity by using some form of cheap GI -> Tiny Glade -> small, but noticeable visual positive impact, relatively cheap to run on both AMD and Nvidia
3. "transformative RT" To improve immersion and the overall lighting realism -> Cyberpunk 2077 or Alan Wake 2 -> really expensive to run for all GPU, even harder on AMD.
The problem with number 3, the poster child of RT, is to get a good result, RT alone is useless, you also need :
1. Great and detailed texture (add vram usage and development cost)
2. Good high poly model (add RT performance cost and also development cost)
3. Great animation (big development cost)
And at last but not least, the most important, because without it even path-tracing look bad.
4. Spot-on material properties, without it even the best lighting system will give you unrealistic result if different object with different material don't behave correctly with light (big increase in development cost and require advance knowledge that most studio, today, lacks in different amount)
With the video game industry already having a huge cost problem, can someone explain me how that transformative RT future will come to reality ?
A much more probable future (not for now, obviously) is let's render a frame in raster with "good enough and cheap enough" quality and ask an AI model to make it look realistic in real-time...That is the only way you truly save on development time and cost.
1 : to step up in scenarios when rasterisation trick clearly fail -> both Spiderman game building's reflection -> work nicely, perf to visual cost is OK, actually run not too shabby on AMD hardware.
2. To make game with a "cartoony" visual identity have a much more well-rounded, grounded, consistent visual identity by using some form of cheap GI -> Tiny Glade -> small, but noticeable visual positive impact, relatively cheap to run on both AMD and Nvidia
3. "transformative RT" To improve immersion and the overall lighting realism -> Cyberpunk 2077 or Alan Wake 2 -> really expensive to run for all GPU, even harder on AMD.
The problem with number 3, the poster child of RT, is to get a good result, RT alone is useless, you also need :
1. Great and detailed texture (add vram usage and development cost)
2. Good high poly model (add RT performance cost and also development cost)
3. Great animation (big development cost)
And at last but not least, the most important, because without it even path-tracing look bad.
4. Spot-on material properties, without it even the best lighting system will give you unrealistic result if different object with different material don't behave correctly with light (big increase in development cost and require advance knowledge that most studio, today, lacks in different amount)
With the video game industry already having a huge cost problem, can someone explain me how that transformative RT future will come to reality ?
A much more probable future (not for now, obviously) is let's render a frame in raster with "good enough and cheap enough" quality and ask an AI model to make it look realistic in real-time...That is the only way you truly save on development time and cost.
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