I love ray tracing and path tracing when they’re done right. Ik fully ray traced scenes are hardly playable even on high end cards without upscaling but like if one has a powerful enough card, why not utilize its potential? Yet most people don’t seem to care about RT.

When it comes to upscaling though, I hate it, and I’m not even talking about frame gen. It makes things look blurry and causes annoying artifacts. I think playing on lowest settings with clear textures is more enjoyable long term than maxed out in 4k with a consistently blurry image. Also this new technology makes devs care less about optimization (which will backfire btw as we’re approaching the physical limit of transistor size).

  • @[email protected]
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    216 days ago

    I do like upscaling, it lets me my poor 6650xt reach 75fps (my monitor refresh rate) on games where it can only get 60fps on native 1080p.

    I don’t play those games that need upscaling to barely run ok. They aren’t getting my money, at least until they fix their shit.

  • @[email protected]
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    1116 days ago

    I personally don’t see much of a difference between RT and the established lighting algorithms, so that’s that.

    Super resolution / upscaling is something I love, given that I play on a 4k TV. DLSS is black magic wizardry.

  • PonyOfWar
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    16 days ago

    Raytracing and path tracing can look pretty nice and raytracing especially is worth turning on when it’s a game where it’s properly optimized. Unfortunately in many games, it really isn’t, which means the performance impact is too large compared to the visual benefits. So in many games, I don’t turn it on as I prefer the much higher framerate.

    Upscaling technologies are pretty great. Especially in their current iterations, the image quality they can achieve from low resolutions is impressive. That said, they should be used as a way to get graphically advanced games working on low to mid-spec GPUs. Using them as a crutch to get unoptimized games working on high-end cards is not acceptable. Neither is pretending that upscaled and frame-generated performance is directly equivalent to native-res performance (looking at you, nVidia).

  • @[email protected]
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    616 days ago

    I think it’s incredibly overrated. Modern games already look incredible without it, so I really don’t think it’s worth the cut in performance.

  • @[email protected]
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    216 days ago

    It’s not for me I don’t want be spending a thousand on a GPU and a hundred on a game that takes my whole SSD and refuses to run off a spinner

  • asudox
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    415 days ago

    I wouldn’t have finished The Last Of Us Part 1 without FSR, which I desperately wanted to play again for the nostalgia. That game is so fucking horribly optimized.

  • @[email protected]
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    15 days ago

    DLSS is amazing, if it’s available in a game I’m playing I use it.

    Ray tracing and path tracing are incredible and the industry needs to quickly cut ties with all hardware that can’t do it. It makes game development significantly quicker, it looks better, and it has genuine gameplay advancements by the very nature of it (like being able to see reflections/shadows of off-screen enemies).

    • @[email protected]OP
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      15 days ago

      Hmm I decided not to interact with the answers a lot as they are personal opinions but yours is very radical so I decided to step in. Please keep in mind that not all people have an ability to buy any kind of expensive setup. Ray tracing is great but it indeed has a severe performance impact and not all manufacturers have efficient hardware for it yet so an ethical and nondiscriminatory way of implementing forced ray tracing will not be possible any time soon. Just something to keep in mind when forming a strong opinion.

      • @[email protected]
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        315 days ago

        Graphics are, like it or not, the main thing the majority of people look for first when they go to buy a game, and raytracing is a ridiculously easy way to achieve that in comparison to the time and skill required to elevate traditional lighting to that same level of beauty. PS5 and XSX both support raytracing, and PC graphics cards that don’t are coming up on 10 years old at this point.

        Any AAA developer is going to see those two facts, that it’s way cheaper and runs on most of the market’s hardware, and abandon development work on traditional lighting. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is RT-only, and it was a huge success.

        DLSS is in a similar boat - it reduces the need to spend time and money on optimization.

        Now, let me be clear, I lament both of these facts. I think raytracing looks gorgeous, and DLSS is usually a nice performance boost for minimal tradeoff, but I don’t think every game should look photorealistic, and some games just don’t look good with DLSS on. What I’m saying is they both make game development cheaper and faster for very little relative downside, so I wouldnt be surprised if all AAA games required raytracing within the next few years.

      • @[email protected]
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        115 days ago

        an ethical and nondiscriminatory way of implementing forced ray tracing will not be possible any time soon.

        Sorry but I just don’t care. Sometimes we need to just leave some people behind in order to move forward. Devs having to cater to people with 10 year old potato hardware is holding the industry back.

          • @[email protected]
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            14 days ago

            It’s definitely ok. You’re not owed the ability to play every single game that releases on your hardware. Should PS2 owners still be getting every 2025 game released on the PS2, with no games allowed to be built with capabilities requiring better hardware than the PS2?

            Thankfully some devs are now moving with the times and giving us games built on modern technology, like doom the dark ages and Indiana jones.

  • wingsfortheirsmiles
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    116 days ago

    It has it’s place but if a choice between that and raw raster within the same power envelope give me the latter every time

  • @[email protected]
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    516 days ago

    I like upscaling when it’s done well (some older iterations of dlss and fsr were not great compared to the current versions). If I have to lower my resolution to get a good frame rate then the image will already look blurry. Using upscaling to hit my monitors native resolution will generally look better. I could care less about raytracing because I don’t have a GPU strong enough to handle it.

  • Dizzy Devil Ducky
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    14 days ago

    I don’t care for either of them, personally. Simple as.

    I’m a simple guy. I don’t need super ultra realistic graphics/ray traced reflections, I don’t need things upscaled to “look better”. I don’t care about any benefits it could give. If the game runs and looks good enough on my 2010s TV monitor, I’ll be fine.

    I am definitely not the target audience for this kinda technology.

  • @[email protected]
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    115 days ago

    The new “Dune Awakening” has great visuals in general. But sometimes elements (like bushes or inventory items) are extremely blurry. I blame improper use of anti-aliasing.

  • @[email protected]
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    115 days ago

    It’s fine, but I really don’t like the trend of devs just using upscaling as default rather than properly optimizing their game.

  • Frenchfryenjoyer (she/her)
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    114 days ago

    overused imo. I don’t care about upscaling, I’d like to see the raw frames myself. this is prob gonna be an unpopular opinion but I think the new Thousand Year Door game looks shit compared to the original. there’s no need to make cartoony games all raytraced and reflective. it just looks uncanny and bloom is overused so much in games in general too