Ray Tracing and Why You Love to See It!

[The_Liquid_Laser]

ZyroXZ2 said:

The_Liquid_Laser said:

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.

My response will seem purely argumentative, but I won't be able to help it lol

A few things that you have to consider: 3D is NOT a math concept, it is ALSO a physics concept.  Math is able to calculate in an infinite number of dimensions which is why physics exists: physics is the resultant of tangible math in our reality.  In our reality, we only operate in four dimensions, and three of them are visually perceptible (the fourth is time).  Thus, since we can ONLY see in 3D, this is a physics concept of dimensional perception, not math.

THUS, back when "full 3D roaming" was the hype, it was the same thing: neither technology nor marketing.  It was having the power to render in THREE dimensions which allowed us to perceive a digital world the SAME way we perceive our real one.  When people were saying "3D", they were NOT talking about the different graphics, but the FREEDOM OF MOTION/PERCEPTION.  Technology POWERS this concept, but the technology is NOT the concept itself.  Marketing latches onto this "new" thing and turns it into a hype machine.

Now if you're talking 3D MOVIES using ANAGLYPH 3D, or POLARIZED 3D, then THAT is technology.  Anaglyph and Polarized 3D are technologies that make 3D possible on a 2D screen.  Each of these technologies don't involve physics, but instead physiology and psychology (tricking the brain into perceive depth where there is none).  There is NO real world application to either of these except the mimicry of depth (and thus no involved physics), and not that accurately at that (obviously!) even though I personally enjoyed many polarized 3D movies at the theatres when it was available.  Marketing turns this into "Dolby 3D" or whatever, and THAT is the marketing part.

In summary, you're reaching a bit to downplay ray tracing more as marketing new graphics tech, but instead it's conceptually a lot like the move to 3D environments as you've chosen for an example.  It's not just some marketing term, it's an actual physics concept that's been used in calculations for the digital world for decades, now.  We're just NOW starting to have enough power to do it in real time, so it's getting marketed as the new cool thing.  The same thing happened when we moved to 3D, since as you can see it was NOT simply marketing hype and is now the defacto standard for modern games, even MANY of the 2D ones! Granted, the move from 2D to 3D is MUCH larger than the move to ray tracing, but ray tracing will permeate everything until it's the standard in all graphics engines as the decades roll on.

Heh, I am not going to touch most of that post, because it is getting off topic, and we'd end up arguing about nearly everything.

Instead I am going to clarify that I am not downplaying ray tracing.  I am comparing it to Gen 5 when 3D graphics were the new thing.  What you don't realize is that expensive graphics are always about marketing.  It isn't just a marketing buzzword.  I'm saying that huge budgets are spent on graphics for the sake of marketing.  The easiest part of the game to advertise is the graphics.  Anything new technology that improves the graphics of big budget games is about marketing.  When games spend most of their budget on graphics, they are really spending it on marketing.