Ray Tracing and Why You Love to See It!

[The_Liquid_Laser]

The video does a good job explaining what ray tracing is. 

However, it is misleading to say that it is neither technology or marketing.  Sure, ray tracing is a physics concept, but you could also say that "3D" is just a math concept.  However, back in Gen 5 the vast majority of games used new technology to render 3D graphics.  When gamers were saying "3D", they weren't really talking about the math concept so much as the different graphics in the games.  Ray tracing is the same thing.  There is new technology that makes the graphics look different in the games using this physics concept.

Likewise, ray tracing is marketing, because that is the purpose of showing off graphics.  Gameplay is often hard to advertise.  Graphics are fairly easy to advertise.  Just show a screenshot or video and you can show off the graphics.  These big budget games put the largest chunk of their budget into graphics, because that is what markets the game.  Graphics = marketing.  That is why all of this talk about ray tracing is really marketing.