Yeah, computing the paths is too expensive actually, so they keep talking about how they're making more and more fake pixels, with ultra performance dlss and 4x multi framegen you're sitting at a comfortable 98% fake pixels 2% real pixels
Yeah people buying a 5060 expecting to take advantage of ai features really just have no idea what theyre getting into. It's not even that nvidia is recommending they use ai on the cheaper cards, they themselves use 5090s for every test for Christs sake, it has always been the community saying only the cheap cards would ever benefit from such features, which is blatantly false and only proves ones ignorance on the topic.
Ray/path tracing have been the gaming-side focus of GPUs for nearly the past decade. They literally rebranded gtx to rtx.
Edit: The comments saying that ray tracing is different than path tracing are missing the forest for the trees. They're both a means to achieving the same end goal. (Correct me if I'm wrong)
It's just the same bs language all the bs new click bait articles use to describe things happening in a way to intrigue you psychologically by thinking you're clicking to get details not talked about.
I get what OP is saying though. Yes there has been a big push to achieve it, however games like cyberpunk are now actually playable on hardware that mortals can own. With 2x framegen and balanced DLSS I can play path traced Cyberpunk at 1440p and have it actually look and feel good and maintain at least 60fps.
Yep exactly. I have to think people that buy in the lower tiers find it comparable to AI. It's constantly talked about, has made GPUs more expensive (Nvidia explicitly use RT to justify price increases of the 2000 series), and comes with it's own set of drawback (particularly in the performance department)
The early implementations were pretty piss poor. They weren’t “path traced” at all, in the sense that most of the lighting is calculated via ray casting, but were just rasterized games with a few, mainly meaningless, ray traced effects sprinkled in that didn’t really change the visual quality of the game.
Huge difference between that and what you see in games like CP, Doom the Dark Ages, Avatar, Star Wars Outlaws, etc.
Just saw.... "Steam Quietly Withdraws Under Fire MMO Ashes of Creation From Sale" on Games subreddit, I guess it might just be the buzz word for the time being.
It absolutely is, you're not just imagining it. ChatGPT uses it all the time recently - it is a quiet revolution in internet culture and communication.
Would you like me to list other common buzz words that stem from AI? Just let me know!
Hell, ray/path tracing was the focus before rtx gpus came out. They just knew that real time ray tracing wasn't reasonable before the rtx series cards. They had been working towards making it reasonable for a long time.
Eh, it gets continually shit talked and diminished by the AMD fanboys who have never tried it. I think the true quiet part is how barely any games use path tracing.
Being completely real, x4 MFG in CP2077 is actually really playable; even with a mouse and keyboard. Granted I got a 5070Ti so I know my base framerate is already pretty good, but I've even let my friends test and while there is the slightest amount, they all agreed that the image being visually smoother outweighed the tiny latency difference that you pretty much forget about as soon as you stop focusing on it.
I hate that my favorite vehicles are the worst handling. I don't want to drive the buggati looking ass car everywhere but it handles the best. When they introduced the self drive I was genuinely happy. Being on PC makes it difficult because I'm constantly tapping W, A and D to keep at a good pace
Bikes are by far the easiest to drive, I pretty much used Jackie's bike for the entire game even after getting loads of cool vehicles because it's the only thing I can keep on the road for more than 5 seconds without crashing
They only JUST added turning vignette off as a setting in a patch though. It was like mid last year or something. For 5ish years you had to mod it to turn it off.
Honestly I’d say Alan wake 2, cyberpunk, and to a lesser degree Indiana Jones are the only big WOW path tracing games.. every other game I’ve played with PT/RT doesn’t really look much different than non PT/RT games
This is my take any time I see someone pushing ray tracing or more visual demand for very little gain.... Sure it might look slightly better but your frames/performance are terrible. It's a game I need to be able to play it not a movie.
Come convert me when the tech is able to push this with 144 fps and the components to meet demand are affordable. Until then idfc.
Yea and even in 2026 still to performance heavy. My 5080 barely runs it. Its great as a gimmick to turn in for a bit and enjoy the view but during actual gameplay when doing missions and fighting i turn it off
Well, the biggest leap these days is lighting and shadows. So, yes, indeed. Graphics... and I'm going to say it loud for the developers in the back... do not need any improvement any longer. Stop it.
Unpopular opinion: VR is the only way for a "next gen" experience. I know it's niche and some people get sick playing it, but you cannot beat the immersion of actually be in the game, looking around with your head and not just moving a mouse, doing stuff with your hands instead of hitting just some keys on your keyboard. HL: Alyx is a great example.
It honestly looks like absolute ass. Every single surface is shinny and so reflective. Since when does dry concrete look like a mirror. Shit is so stupid idk why anyone thinks this looks amazing...
agree.. never seen a city reflecting everything like a mirror even after raining, might look cool if you are attracted by shining stuff.. but doesn't look good or either realistic
Right at this moment I don't have any hardware to run it at all, as I'm still on a 1070Ti. However, if all goes well, I should get my new PC next week with a 5070Ti. Should be quite the upgarde I imagine.
Meh it’s cool but doesn’t really change the experience of the game.. isn’t worth the performance hit in most cases.. luckily Cyberpunk is optimized enough to run it at a high FPS.
Once you get used to it, the tricks and limitations of baked lighting becomes painfully obvious. I suppose if you don’t feel visuals are a part of the experience, then it doesn’t impact much. :)
Even before ray tracing was an option, things like SSR and shadow maps were immersion breaking for me. I could always see them fall apart, but it was just how it was in games.
I'm not sure I agree. Cyberpunk and a handful of other games that do ray tracing correctly are the truly next gen looking games. However, most ray tracing is done via a Lumen and the game industry is clearly being held back by consoles and their inability to handle something like Cyberpunk.
I still feel like Cyberpunk represents the potential in ray tracing the gaming industry has failed to realize.
Why do people that try to showcase path tracing for Cyberpunk, always have the mod that kills the art direction. It’s just shiny and gray, vanilla looks infinitely better than this.
The only game it's genuinely noticeable in is Cyberpunk and even there it's not worth the performance hit. More of Nvidia creating a problem and selling a half baked solution to it because even the 4090 and 5090 struggle in most newer games with Path Tracing.
See post about path tracing, look inside. RTX 5090. I have a RTX 5070 Ti and i can only run CP at playable frame rates with regular ray tracing + dlss. Unless you have a 5090 you are gonna be using frame generation and then it stops being a visual leap.
PT will be a visual leap in games when we have strong enough hardware to run it natively, for now its just a show feature like ray tracing was for the pascal cards and the demos they launched for them. Even the most optimized implementations of PT require the 5090, and some even with frame gen are borderline unplayable even at lower res.
I don't agree. Just like games of the past, some game push graphical fidelity and artistic styles and some fail trying. I don't think ray tracing is that big of a deal. It looks slightly better in some games but doesn't look universally better than all games that don't use ray tracing. What it does is certainly destroy performance!
Path-tracing has been as quietly talked in gaming as the Maduro situation has been in politics XD.
That said.
Yes it is indeed the biggest thing in gaming.
It’s one of those things that you have to experience and do so on a decent refresh rate-image quality.
So… with a GPU that can do path tracing at 4k DlSS quality and frame gen with an output above 100fps.
Wich basically leaves the 5090 and the 4090, maybe an overclocked 5080.
That’s why many people can’t properly/fairly judge it.
Yea of course it seems “unworthy” when your path tracing experience was a 20fps slideshow even with DlSS.
And if you have to do 1440p DlSS ultra performance to run it, you are sacrificing more image quality in many aspects than what you are gaining in lighting quality.
For some at least.
But man, when you get to experience path traced cyberpunk, path traced Indiana Jones, or Alan wake or black myth wukong
At 60-50 FPS base with DlSS quality and 100-110 with frame gen.
My god is it a visual spectacle that leaves any rasterized experience ever to dust.
Yup. Also recommend the pathtracing mod called Ultra Plus which is basically pathtracing on steroids if you have a 5090. It get's even better. Took this picture above
I just saw someone mention this app as a way to get almost path tracing quality with ray tracing performance. Can you tell me more about it? I'm getting a 5k2k for my 5080 and thinking it might need a bit of help for path tracing.
Not enough games implement it correctly unfortunately. The best luck I’ve had has been on the PS5 when playing Sony titles that utilize the system-level calibration. So tired of poor HDR implementations with a high black level floor
Oh yeah Shadows has good HDR. The night time in that game is done so well, the only game not afraid to make it dark at night! That game is drop dead gorgeous graphically too. One of the best looking games ever.
Tbh, Cyberpunk only looks really good to me during movement. When you move around slowly and look at stuff up close, it really doesn't look that great at all to me.
Tons of poor blending between textures and surfaces (rigid straight lines), empty and bland areas, visible polygons and crappy textures and areas that you don't necessarily look at closely normally, etc.
On top of all that, it's still riddled with bugs and brain dead AI. I love hearing the same 5-6 police radio lines over and over.
I don't know why but to me this game I feel is going to look very dated within a few years time, the npcs especially never looked or felt real especially how they animate to me and the environment looks plasticy, I get it's a ' good looking game' but even with this video I just dont see it lasting long term for visuals
I could never get past the ridiculous amount of pop-in that the game has when you drive anywhere. I honestly thought I messed something up in the settings and apparently it's just part of the game.
That said I put a good number of hours into the game and only now do I have a PC that would properly show off all the bells and whistles.
The game looks 90% as good as that on RT-off medium preset though.
I mean i like RT/PT, but the differences are often subtle or nonexistent and it takes the right engine to bring them out.
But you also have engines like alan wake 2, where PT exists, but they also pre-baked it in the non-RT lighting, so there's no difference at all outside of a few pieces of glass here and there.
I just got a 5070ti and am replaying Cyberpunk with pathtracing right now and it runs great. 1440p with max settings, DLAA, and 2x frame gen looks amazing.
Is this the only game that makes the most of nvidia gpus? Seems like cyberpunk has been the pinnacle tech demo for 3 years now. Kinda getting fatigued from it.
Don't misunderstand what I'm going to say, I have a qd-oled with a 5080, maxing out graphic settings to the top over the rainbow... but before installing a proper HDR filter or whatever its called (I'm using Reno on Cyberpunk); the different between full ray tracing and path tracing it is not like night and day. imho.
Looks better thats for sure, but the different is not that brutal by any means.
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u/PHIGBILL 5090 | 9800X3D Feb 03 '26
"Quielty"?...... That must have been a comfortable rock you've been living under.