The gaming industry has consistently pushed technological boundaries, driving advancements in areas like handheld computing, online communication, and crucially, graphics. For the past seven years, ray tracing has stood at the cutting edge of graphical innovation. Yet, even as ray tracing-capable GPUs become common in consoles, PCs, and even portable devices, many gamers remain skeptical. What explains this disconnect?
This is a multifaceted issue, stemming from several key factors. These include game development practices that lead to subtle or poorly implemented ray tracing effects, the fact that real-time ray tracing is still an evolving technology, shifts in player preferences and gaming habits, and the unfortunate timing of ray-tracing hardware launches amidst economic volatility.
While ray tracing is an ancient technique in pre-rendered computer graphics, its real-time application in gaming is relatively new. Real-time ray tracing simulates how light bounces around a scene, accurately rendering lighting, shadows, and reflections without extensive prior artistic input. Let`s explore how ray tracing has been integrated into the gaming world so far.
Is Ray Tracing Hardware Widely Available?
First, let`s consider the prevalence of ray tracing-capable GPUs. Developers and publishers wouldn`t invest in these features if players lacked the necessary hardware.
Owners of PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X|S consoles have access to some form of ray tracing, with over 95 million of these systems in homes globally (PS5 alone accounts for nearly 80 million, often outselling Xbox consoles by a significant margin). The upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 is also expected to offer limited ray tracing capabilities, further expanding the installed base.
Beyond consoles, a vast number of gaming PCs, laptops, and handhelds exist. Data from the Steam Hardware Survey indicates that roughly 30% of surveyed users possess ray tracing-capable graphics cards.
Collectively, these figures demonstrate that a substantial number of gaming devices can utilize ray tracing. While it remains a demanding and rapidly evolving technology, it`s no longer an exclusive feature for a tiny segment of high-end users.
Are Games Designed to Leverage Ray Tracing?
Many games brilliantly showcase real-time ray tracing, either by being built with it from the ground up or through effective post-launch integration. An early example was Minecraft`s optional RTX implementation (initially a Mojang-Nvidia collaboration, now largely driven by mods like BetterRTX). Minecraft`s simple geometry and dynamic nature made it an ideal candidate; ray-traced lighting profoundly transforms its appearance, turning underground areas into truly dark spaces and forests into vibrant, dynamic environments.
Nicolas Lopez, Technical Director for Assassin`s Creed Shadows, demonstrated how ray tracing accelerates development and delivers visible benefits to players. For instance, the game`s dynamic lighting system, enhanced by ray tracing, allowed the team to implement four distinct seasons and varied weather conditions without completely re-lighting the world. This resulted in a more diverse game experience and freed developers to focus on other aspects of world design.
Other titles use the technology in a simpler, yet still impactful, way – effects that are easy to spot but don`t fundamentally alter gameplay. Examples include the Spider-Man games and Remedy`s Control, both featuring numerous large, reflective glass surfaces. Players can observe accurate reflections appearing and disappearing as they move past, through, or over these panes – a feat previously impossible without elaborate graphical tricks. Remedy`s Alan Wake 2 leverages ray tracing to dynamically bounce light in dark, foliage-rich, flashlight-illuminated scenes. Both the flashlight beam and the reflecting foliage are in motion, enhancing realism and reducing developer workload.
Some upcoming titles, such as Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and Doom: The Dark Ages, are being developed with integrated ray tracing, requiring compatible hardware for PC play.
However, a significant number of games, particularly many AAA titles, don`t effectively utilize the technology. Many linear games, like first-person shooter campaigns, are often static “theme-park rides” with pre-set animations. While open-world games feature more dynamic objects, their environments often remain largely static, even lacking complex elements like seasonal or significant weather changes.
In a multiplayer shooter, ray tracing could genuinely enhance gameplay – for example, by using reflections and shadows to help players spot or conceal themselves from enemies. Yet, in their current form, many shooters are a poor fit. Ray tracing can significantly impact performance without offering substantial visual benefits unless players are “pixel-peeping.” Shadows might be slightly sharper or more accurate, and reflections more precise, but many players prioritize smooth gameplay over minor cosmetic improvements.
Consequently, in many games, players must actively search for ray tracing effects, which often remain nearly invisible during regular play. Conversely, enabling ray tracing can severely impact performance, even for subtle improvements like making fences look “slightly more fence-y.” For players of competitive multiplayer titles like Call of Duty, Dota 2, and Fortnite, prioritizing higher frame rates by lowering graphic settings is common. Furthermore, the large demographic of gamers who prefer indie titles, often with less demanding graphics, may not even have hardware where ray tracing capability is a relevant factor.
For instance, Battlefield 6 will not incorporate ray tracing in the near future, according to Technical Director Christian Buhl. Given Battlefield`s history of challenging launches, ensuring optimal performance from day one is a priority, making ray tracing an unnecessary addition at this stage.
Ray Tracing`s Immaturity (and Player Awareness)
As noted, real-time ray tracing is still a relatively nascent technology. It was impractical until shortcuts and specialized hardware emerged to manage its considerable computational demands. Even with modern GPUs, ray tracing remains computationally intensive and generates significant visual noise, necessitating upscaling and upsampling technologies like Nvidia`s DLSS and AMD`s FSR to achieve acceptable visual quality.
Therefore, there`s ample room for improvement, both in increasing ray tracing hardware capacity and optimizing its underlying algorithms. With each new game featuring ray tracing, performance comparisons inevitably surface on platforms like Reddit and YouTube, consistently highlighting the performance penalty. For many gamers, this makes ray tracing a “wait-and-see” technology, more of a novelty than an essential feature until it matures.
Moreover, the near-requirement for upscaling and upsampling can deter some players. Discussions frequently arise online where some argue that upscaling is a “cheat” and that images should always be rendered pixel-for-pixel at native resolution. This sentiment is particularly strong on consoles, where players are typically offered a simple “Quality” (higher resolution, lower frame rate) or “Performance” (lower resolution, higher frame rate) choice, a common approach predating ray tracing to balance visual fidelity and frame rate.
The enduring popularity of the Nintendo Switch and the growth of handheld gaming PCs also influence perception. Handheld enthusiasts desire games that run well on their devices and tend to avoid features that might compromise playability. While the Nintendo Switch 2 and some handheld PCs can support limited ray tracing, its widespread use on devices where battery life is a concern remains uncertain. However, some developers are exploring its potential; Digital Foundry recently praised Star Wars Outlaws as a “ray-traced revelation” for its handheld implementation, suggesting a promising future for the technology on these systems.
Unfavorable Economic Timing
The economic landscape has significantly impacted ray tracing`s availability and public perception. GPU prices have been highly volatile over the past seven years. The initial surge occurred around the launch of Nvidia`s RTX 2000-series cards in Q3 2018, coinciding with the waning crypto boom which inflated GPU prices. Prices stabilized between 2019 and 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic triggered another period of instability.
A new wave of GPUs, increased institutional adoption of cryptocurrency, supply chain disruptions, and a surge in demand from pandemic-driven PC upgrades collectively caused a second price spike in 2020. As we now face an era potentially marked by unpredictable tariff implementations, further price increases are almost inevitable, driven by availability and production costs.
Furthermore, general inflation has driven up costs across the board, with high-end graphics cards seeing some of the steepest increases. This makes staying at the forefront of gaming hardware increasingly difficult, effectively putting some of the most advanced game features out of reach for many players.
The Next Frontier in GPU Features
Ray tracing (often paired with upscaling solutions like DLSS) is not Nvidia`s first endeavor to push a new graphics feature into the mainstream. In 2001, Nvidia introduced the GeForce 3, the first GPU to utilize shaders – a fundamental component of real-time graphics rendering that supports the vast majority of games in various ways. Nvidia aims to achieve similar widespread adoption with ray tracing and upscaling, making them so ubiquitous that game developers will integrate them into as many titles as possible.
Ray tracing is here to stay, but it still faces challenges at multiple levels. Primarily, game development paradigms need to adapt. While games like Assassin`s Creed Shadows demonstrate innovative and practical applications, and developers are learning to incorporate it into design, seven years in, it`s still relatively early days for this integration.
The proliferation of GPUs capable of significant ray tracing is also crucial. While many PC gamers own ray tracing-capable hardware, it`s far from universal. Nvidia RTX cards account for about 30% of Steam survey respondents, but the most common among these is the five-year-old RTX 3060. This widespread adoption is hampered by rising PC hardware costs, especially for GPUs, which leads to slower upgrade cycles.
We are approaching a critical mass for ray tracing-capable GPU penetration, but haven`t quite reached it. As game development evolves and hardware becomes more accessible and updated, ray tracing will become a more viable “must-have” feature, offering a significant and undeniable difference to gamers. Until then, players will likely remain cautious about its value in video games.