this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2025
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ray-tracing? Sure let's give it a try.
Ok I don't see a difference and my fps dropped by a 100.
High performance lighting? We had a tool for that.
It was called texture baking.
The big benefit of raytracing now, imo (which most games aren't doing), is that it frees games up to introduce dynamic destruction again. We used to have all kinds of destructible walls and bits and bobs around, with flat lighting, but baked lighting has really limited what devs can do, because if you break something you need a solution to handle all the ways the lighting changes, and for the majority of games they just make everything stiff and unbreakable.
Raytracing is that solution. Plug and play, the lighting just works when you blow stuff up. DOOM: TDA is the best example of this currently (although still not a direct part of gameplay), with a bunch of destructible stuff everywhere, and that actually blows up with a physics sim rather than a canned animation. All the little boards have perfect ambient occlusion and shadows, because raytracing just does that.
It's really fun, if minor, and one of the things I actually look forward to more games doing with raytracing. IMO that's why raytracing has whelmed most people, because we're used to near-flawless baked lighting, and haven't really noticed the compromises that baked lighting has pushed on us.
If ray tracing can give me back the fun of tunneling through the ground with explosives that the first Red Faction games let me do, I will 100% change my mind on the technology. I have missed 100% destructible environments.
That absolutely is something that Ray Tracing could simplify/enable, yes!
It's not that ray tracing is a gimmick, it's more that modern cards still aren't powerful enough to fully trace every ray, so some cheating is still done with baked lighting I believe. Plus a lot of devs might not have gotten accustomed to using it properly yet.
Several new or in-development games have it. I'm playing Enshrouded right now and it's really impressive how good both the destruction and the building is, easily the best I've ever seen. And they just showed off the upcoming update with full water physics:
https://youtu.be/vBAnTKGioq4
The lighting is also superb, IMO, though I'm not sure if it's actual ray tracing or not.
Is there a story or what’s the gameplay like? Can I play by myself or must I work with others?
Think Zelda. You can play with others but it’s fine solo.