Ray Traced Shadows within World of Warcraft Shadowlands have now been enabled on the game’s Beta/PTR. ; Requires DirectX Raytracing 1.1 and Capable GPU and the first comparison shots have now surfaced online.
Ali Rashid From Tech4Gamers writes "Ray Tracing has been out for over five years at this point; however, most of its issues still remain relevant even with modern GPUs."
In titles that lack environments with prominent reflective metallic surfaces you often don’t notice the ray-tracing very much. Most players are going to stare down at puddles and wet surfaces. Ray tracing doesn’t impact immersion as much as some other graphical effects.
That is only true in cases where the ray tracing is only being used for reflections. When it is used for all of the lighting, indirect illumination, etc... it makes a world of difference. However, we're still a couple GPU generations away from being able to do all that at 4K. The vast majority of games that use ray tracing only use it on select parts of the scene, and they rasterize the rest.
Ray Tracing makes a big difference, it's just a question of having enough processing power to actually do it, so most developers are selectively choosing to use it on certain things. I would love to see Ray Tracing using a lot more, for more things, especially if it makes it easier for developers and shortens development times, unfortunately, it'll be a long time before we see that happen.
@fr0sty I agree with you, on the console side especially, but Cyberpunk 2077 with full path tracing is very, very playable on a 40 series GPU. That was also a game that wasn't built with full path tracing in mind for gameplay and it doesn't take a lot of imagination to imagine what gameplay possibilities full raytracing (path tracing if you will), or even just raytraced reflections, will bring us. We just haven't seen an example of it yet because consoles set the standard and they aren't there just yet.
It's not for every game, but it can be very useful for a lot of games. Not only that, once we can stop worrying about cached lighting/shadows, it will often speed up that part of game development because it takes ages to do lighting the traditional way.
Whenever these articles go up, it irks me a bit because it's always from gamers who are not developers who don't actually realize what is made possible with these new techniques that write them. It's like fans yelling at players in an NBA match, telling them what they should be doing.
Seriously, it's been such a thief of processing power that could've been used to add something of actual substance to the game. We got this sizeable leap in power from last gen, and a lot of it is being wasted on Ray tracing imo
it's honestly expected, it will cost less relatively the more time passes. The 4000 series from nvidia does especially well with raytracing compared to the previous 3000 series. For now it's a waste still, but give it some time and it will get exponentially less costly
Yep. Ray tracing kills the framerate for slightly better lighting and reflections. I have seen some impressive tech demos where it seems to make a meaningful difference, but in real games it is never worth it.
I do CG rendering for a living.. Ray tracing isn't just "slightly better" when properly utilized. The problem is, they don't properly utilize it in most games. Many games only have ray traced reflections, but the rest is still rasterized. A few use it for lighting as well, but so far no game has ever been fully ray traced. Systems just aren't powerful enough for it yet. Once they are, you wouldn't want to play a game that was rasterized again.
Not really “lost” per se but the cost and requirements don’t match up for the reward
This is what purpose the ps5 pro serves. Just as ps4 pro was for higher resolutions. You need a purpose built machine for ray tracing.
Side note
Amd gpus are better value than nividia, except when you want raytracing. Which is why I went with a 4070ti super.
I honestly rarely notice it in some games. Like RE Village used it and I couldn’t tell you if any example I noticed. I only know because the trailer mentioned using it.
I think it had to do with lighting mode, but like if you asked me what was improved by ray tracing in that or stood out, i really couldn’t say.
Frankly, RT reflections do not interest me much, on the other hand, RT lighting makes a huge difference.
And then there's GT7. It relies only on reflections... which creates all the other lighting phenomenon including bounce lighting or global illumination. Of course GT7 only deploys that system at 30FPS and people think that makes it not worth it. In reality there are many other games that deploy it without issues even at 60FPS like Fortnite which everyone ignores is a F2P 60FPS UE5 game with RT on consoles.
The smart deployment of RT makes it worthwhile. Even in a game like GT7 RT is used on every non-transparent surface. The asphalt the grass the guardrails... literally everything that isn't transpanrent glass sees RT in GT7 in replays and photomode and it's truely transformative, but 30FPS is too much of a compromise for most people honestly even PD thinks so because they limit RT to replays only not gameplay. Even so PD still also felt necessary to include RT and make it the default quality option.
So PD is right on the fence with RT while Insomniac is an even stronger believer in RT making the taxing reflections work at 60FPS at up to 1440p on PS5 in graphically accomplished games even those taking place in open world settings. Then we have 3rd parties like Rockstar and Machine Games which offer RT in some of their recent current gen games like GTAV and Doom: Eternal (before MS' acquisition).
RT is the future and while you can turn it off so your PC can run games at 60 or deal with limitations which consoles sometimes have or don't as in the examples I listed (all offering 60FPS gameplay except GT7 which still features 30FPS RT with 60FPS rasterization which I didn't touch on earlier).
RT will become more efficient as GPUs get more powerful. My phone handles RT reflections in an OK manner. I do play mobile games at 20FPS already so if we could get RT at 20FPS (already doable on my phone at 1080p at 23FPS) then 20FPS at 532p is just fine for me on phones - though I'd turn it off for additional battery longevity and better thermal performance.
I'm actually looking forward to seeing how PS5 Pro handles GT7, with its supposed 400% increase in ray tracing power.
Mainly the GI/ambient occlusion which weirdly enough is like the least expensive ray tracing, only takes like 3fps off your framreate most times.
Devs want it though because its a less time and labor intensive way of creating reflections.
It will be on the PS5 Pro when the RT is separated from the CU's and doesn't cause performance loss.
I find it hilarious that people actually believe there is a PS5 Pro coming considering there is no leak coming from anyone reliable. How are you enjoying that Switch Pro? Pretty much everyone who claimed to be important said it was real and you people actually fell for it. Now you're gullible enough to fall for it again.
BLG writes: "To celebrate the announcement of Dragonflight, the latest World of Warcraft expansion, we decided to rewatch all the game’s cinematics and rank them from worst to best. Including the latest one, of course. In fact, we purposely waited until the new expansion got announced before putting together this list because we wanted to see how the Dragonflight trailer stacked up against all the other WoW cinematics. Spoiler alert: it’s not amazing, but it's not the worst one either."
From PC Gamer: "When Shadowlands first launched a year ago, it felt like World of Warcraft was on a comeback streak. Battle for Azeroth, the previous expansion, had been one of the most contentious in the MMO's history—even if Blizzard did improve some of the features that players hated. But Shadowlands was a clean slate. A chance to press reset and push WoW into a new era, all while tearing the veil off of one of Azeroth's most fascinating realms: the afterlife. There were new zones to explore, new gear to obtain, and a whole smattering of new progression systems to learn and tinker with. It was an exciting time.
Fast forward one year, though, and I couldn't feel more differently about World of Warcraft."
Cool story. I loved Legion, loved BfA, and have loved Shadowlands. WoW is great, it's players like you that have changed.
I saw zero diffrrence lol
Wonder how much ihave to spend on video card, just to play wow with ray traced shadows
I didn't see any difference at all.
He says, "There's quite a bit of difference..."
LOL. No... no... this is the worst improvement I've seen in any game getting RT.