Dear reader,
You may have heard about this new ray tracing technology that promises more realistic graphics, and wondered – does it really make graphics noticeably better? As an investment analyst who evaluates new technologies, I‘ve done deep research into ray tracing and want to provide you with a comprehensive guide on what it is, its benefits and limitations, and whether it‘s ultimately worthwhile.
The short answer is: yes, ray tracing can substantially improve certain graphical elements like shadows, reflections and lighting when implemented well. However, it still comes with significant performance costs today. Let‘s dive into the details so you can understand exactly what ray tracing brings to the table.
How Ray Tracing Works
Ray tracing simulates the physics of real world light by tracing rays from the camera into the 3D scene. Here‘s a quick overview of how it works:
- Rays are traced from the camera through each pixel into the scene.
- Rays intersect with and bounce off objects, simulating how light interacts with surfaces.
- Reflections, refractions, shadows and other optical effects are generated based on ray paths and material properties.
- Lighting is calculated directly from ray intersections rather than approximated.
This contrasts with older rendering techniques like rasterization that use "faked" lighting by baking, approximate reflections, and other tricks.
Ray tracing more accurately captures how light behaves in the real world. Let‘s examine some of the benefits this provides.
Key Benefits of Ray Tracing
Based on my evaluations, ray tracing improves visuals in several key ways compared to traditional rendering:
1. More Realistic Reflections
- Reflections show proper shapes, depths and colors rather than rough approximations.
- Smooth reflective surfaces like metal and glass look much more realistic.
2. Lifelike Shadows
- Shadows have natural softness based on light source size, not harsh jagged edges.
- Area light shadows appear drastically more realistic.
3. Improved Lighting Accuracy
- Lighting behaves physically correct, interacting with objects properly.
- Subtle effects like light scattering through fog captured.
4. Reduced Artifacts
- Many rendering shortcuts create visible artifacts like jagged shadows.
- Ray tracing eliminates these for clean, artifact-free results.
5. Better Material Representation
- Materials like metal, glass, liquids and skin benefit greatly.
- Realistic reflections, refractions and light interaction.
This is not an exhaustive list, but gives you an idea of the major graphical improvements enabled by ray tracing. It can make certain elements appear far more realistic when implemented well.
Now let‘s look at some actual game examples that highlight the differences…
Ray Tracing Game Graphics Comparisons
Here are some side-by-side comparisons showing improvements in specific games with ray tracing enabled:
Reflections in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
| Rasterization | Ray Tracing ON |
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With ray tracing, you can see the gun is reflecting accurately in the glass, making the image look far more realistic.
Shadows improvements in Shadow of the Tomb Raider
| Rasterization | Ray Tracing ON |
 |
 |
The ray traced shadows exhibit natural softening based on light angle, versus the harsh aliased edges in the rasterized version.
Overall lighting realism in Metro Exodus
| Rasterization | Ray Tracing ON |
 |
 |
The ray traced version exhibits much more natural lighting intensity, shadows and bounce lighting from the illuminated signs.
These are just a few examples of the realistic graphical improvements you can see with ray tracing in the right scenarios. When done well, it can make certain elements look far closer to real life.
Performance Impact of Ray Tracing
However, this enhanced realism comes at a cost. Ray tracing is extremely computationally expensive compared to traditional rendering.
To give you an idea:
- 1080p with ray tracing can require similar performance to 4K without ray tracing.
- Frame rates often drop 2-3x with ray tracing enabled, even on high end GPUs.
- Ray tracing gets exponentially more demanding at higher resolutions due to more pixels to process.
This makes real-time ray tracing difficult without purpose-built hardware acceleration, like Nvidia‘s RTX GPUs. Even with this special hardware, performance is still a major concern and tradeoff compared to standard rendering.
Advanced techniques like variable rate ray tracing, DLSS upscaling, and foveated rendering can help mitigate the performance impact. But in general, ray tracing will significantly lower framerates in exchange for improved visuals.
Is Ray Tracing Ultimately Worth It?
Whether it‘s worth the performance hit comes down to your priorities:
For slower paced, cinematic games:
- Ray tracing can greatly enhance immersion and realism when used for select effects.
- Some depth of field, shadow, reflection and lighting improvements may be worth lower FPS.
- Framerates in the 30-60 range are likely sufficient if visuals are the priority.
For fast competitive games:
- Every frame per second matters, so ray tracing may not be advisable.
- Visual intricacies are less important than high framerates for gameplay.
- Stick with traditional rendering optimized for speed.
In production applications:
- Ray tracing is considered essential for high quality film CGI and other production use cases.
- Rendering time is less important than accuracy and realism.
The bottom line:
Ray tracing excels at replicating real world optical effects accurately. It will become increasingly useful as performance improves over time. However, traditional rendering still has advantages in applications where speed matters more than visual intricacy.
Intelligently balancing ray tracing with rasterization based on use case is key to maximize both performance and visual quality.
I hope this detailed guide gives you a good overall understanding of what ray tracing is, its benefits and limitations, and where it makes sense to use today given current hardware. Let me know if you have any other questions!
Regards,
Wendell
