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Somewhat off-topic here as it's not about DD2 but I was wondering about raytraced shadows the other day and what the real advantage even was to it. I have some PS5 games with raytraced shadows (no reflections unfortunately) and swapping between RT and non RT, I honestly can't see a difference in the quality of the shadows. If the previous methods of soft shadowing is already really good looking, what's the point of ray tracing them and losing the speed? Other lighting and reflection effects look way better than the current methods of faking it, but shadows not so much.
In short
Raytracing is pure math. Its sort of a realistic simulation of real light and how it interacts with materials. As you now color is light and colors can bleed and mix trough light even on non transparent materials.
Of course the games implementation matters a lot, i bet not a single game is capable of using the full capacity of what raytracing can offer.
On the point of traditional light still looking as good (or better in some cases) that makes alot of sense because this is done with manual labor and intend. (Yes even with dynamic lighting though gamd engines make it easier) The results are technically leas realistic (but depending on cut corners neither is rtx) but they may be more creative and atmospheric if done by skilled artists.
For a player its going to be up to preference and realistically non rtx light will remain just fine but now imagine the dev perspective where rtx may be far easier to implement.
Though i never heard of a game ditching traditional ligjt for exclusively raytracing but as the tech goes fully mainstream we may see that happen.
Edit: not so short but still far from complete
Though i never heard of a game ditching traditional ligjt for exclusively raytracing but as the tech goes fully mainstream we may see that happen.
Teardown's renderer uses raytracing exclusively. Interestingly it doesn't even need a raytracing-capable card, it just runs slowly without one.
What’s the game?
Elden Ring, Control, Deathloop, and Rift Apart. Rift Apart is the best looking of the bunch, but also has the most ray tracing features afaik.
I did most comparisons of the shadows alone in ER because I know for sure that it only has RT shadows. The games only give you RT on or RT off or Quality vs Performance, so it was the best I could do to eliminate variables. My PC still has a 1660 super so I can't exactly test on that lol
I can agree ER doesn’t have an interesting implementation. I always assumed they added it just to get some experience with the tech rather than anything practical. It was just randomly dropped in an update.