Baked lighting looks almost as good as ray tracing because, for games that use baked lighting, devs intentionally avoid scenes where it would look bad.
Half the stuff in this trailer (the dynamically lit animated hands, the beautiful lighting on the moving enemies) would be impossible without ray tracing. Or at the least it would look way way worse:
Practically impossible for this developer? Maybe. Technically impossible? No.
We do have realtime GI solutions which don’t require raytracing (voxel cone tracing, sdfgi, screenspace, etc). None of which require any ‘special’ hardware.
Raytracing is just simpler and doesn’t need as much manual work to handle cases where traditional rasterisation might fail (eg; light leaking). But there’s not many things it can do which we can’t already achieve with rasterisation tricks.
Raytracing is mostly useful for developers who don’t have the time/budget/skillset to get the same visual quality with traditional rasterisation.
However, in an industry which seems to prioritise getting things released as cheaply and quickly as possible, we’re starting to see developers rely heavily on raytracing, and not allocating many resources into making their non-rt pipeline look nice.
Some are even starting to release games which require raytracing to work at all, because they completely cut the non-rt pipeline out of their budget.
So I’d argue that you’re incorrect in theory, but very correct in practise (and getting even more correct with time).
That’s kinda the thing with ray tracing. You can save a lot of work but since you want your game available for gamers that don’t have the hardware you still have to do that work…
I’m expecting the next PlayStation to focus on ray tracing to set it apart in the market. They have the volume and it would be good for their exclusive titles.
Edit: Okey, maybe I’m just hoping, rather than expecting. Sony can absolutely screw this up.
Baked lighting looks almost as good as ray tracing because, for games that use baked lighting, devs intentionally avoid scenes where it would look bad.
Half the stuff in this trailer (the dynamically lit animated hands, the beautiful lighting on the moving enemies) would be impossible without ray tracing. Or at the least it would look way way worse:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d99E01tgOGw
Practically impossible for this developer? Maybe. Technically impossible? No.
We do have realtime GI solutions which don’t require raytracing (voxel cone tracing, sdfgi, screenspace, etc). None of which require any ‘special’ hardware.
Raytracing is just simpler and doesn’t need as much manual work to handle cases where traditional rasterisation might fail (eg; light leaking). But there’s not many things it can do which we can’t already achieve with rasterisation tricks.
Raytracing is mostly useful for developers who don’t have the time/budget/skillset to get the same visual quality with traditional rasterisation.
However, in an industry which seems to prioritise getting things released as cheaply and quickly as possible, we’re starting to see developers rely heavily on raytracing, and not allocating many resources into making their non-rt pipeline look nice.
Some are even starting to release games which require raytracing to work at all, because they completely cut the non-rt pipeline out of their budget.
So I’d argue that you’re incorrect in theory, but very correct in practise (and getting even more correct with time).
That’s kinda the thing with ray tracing. You can save a lot of work but since you want your game available for gamers that don’t have the hardware you still have to do that work…
I’m expecting the next PlayStation to focus on ray tracing to set it apart in the market. They have the volume and it would be good for their exclusive titles.
Edit: Okey, maybe I’m just hoping, rather than expecting. Sony can absolutely screw this up.