It's all well and good to purport ray tracing for next gen games but bear in mind it requires an RTX 2080Ti to run Control with all ray tracing effects turned on at 60fps with fps dips at 1080p.

FFXV didn't exactly run great on consoles, so i'm not filled with too much confidence in Luminous Productions future engines running on consoles. But i'll probably be playing their game on PC anyways :P

Perhaps we'll be given the choice to run some next gen games on consoles at native 4k without RT or at 1080p checkerboarded to 4k.

got to say, this doesn't impress me that much. i think developers have gotten so good at faking this sort of lighting, and shadows and reflections, that simply seeing a more "accurate" version using new hardware doesn't offer enough wow factor for me. 

+1
The cost in computing power (and money for those cards that offer it) doesn't justify the benefit yet.

I agree with you to a certain point, I can see the problems as well as the solutions. On PC, Control is not a demanding game unless you turn the ray tracing options on. Most graphical settings have very little impact on performance. The problem is that even on Xbox One X, the game only runs at 1440p@30fps without any ray tracing.

Microsoft stated in the Xbox Project Scarlett - E3 2019 Reveal Trailer that: "From a pure processing perspective, this is four times more powerful than the Xbox One X."

https://youtu.be/-ktN4bycj9s?t=82

If Xbox Scarlett and PS5 are four times more powerful than Xbox One X - bearing in mind the word "perspective", it's still hard to imagine a game like Control hitting 2160p at 60fps with light ray tracing or 30fps with the full ray tracing treatment. I use 2160p here as I'm sure Sony, Microsoft and most publishers will want to use the 4K buzzword on marketing, as well as it becoming an industry standard when the next gen consoles arrive - even if some games will be using checkerboard rendering still.

Of course, in the end it will all depend on how powerful the ray tracing accelerated hardware in the next gen consoles are, as well as how graphically realistic, how many demanding visual effects, physics objects and simulations, open world or linear, multiplatform, among other things are in a game.

On the other hand, the fact that ray tracing will be supported on a hardware level on both consoles and all GPUs from now on means that it will become an industry standard and most developers will use it. As time passes and more developers start working with it natively and getting more experienced, the technology will evolve to become more efficient and more techniques will be developed in order to reduce the taxing on the resources. They will either do "the same with less", "more with the same" or "more with less".

For exclusives, small or less demanding games, I can see 2160p@60fps with the full ray tracing treatment being doable in 3-7 years from now, when developers get more experienced with the consoles and the ray tracing technology evolves. In summary, ray tracing is here to stay and what seems impossible today might be possible tomorrow.

there is still no confirmation that ray tracing will be hardware based on next gen machines. people seem doubtful considering the cost of an RTX card. most people seem to think ray tracing will more likely be achieved via software solutions akin to that seen in the crytek tech demo. i'd love for there to be some sort of ray tracing hardware in PS5 and Scarlet, but i'm kinda doubtful. 

@Sdarts and @KORNdog, I agree with both your points, I am hopeful but doubtful. If both consoles do happen to get proper dedicated RT hardware, RT will certainly become more of an industry standard and more efficient techniques will come along mid to later Next Gen Console's cycle. Time will tell. :)

instead of being drawn to the tech, I'm more distracted by the animation acting being off.

I agree. At least when it comes to just conventional gaming. In VR, though, mirrors are something that will have a far more profound impact, and faking them as they currently are is jarring and immersion breaking, because you expect to look at a mirror and have it reflect like it would in real life.  Just mapping a 2d image onto a plane that stays rigid when you move to look at it is weird. In a racing sim, you'd expect to look at the rear view mirror and see the interior back seats and window reflected, but you don't get that. RTX should solve this, and it'll be one of the stand out things for next gen VR.

As for the debate on whether next gen consoles will have hardware based ray tracing, they possibly might, but done on the CPU end, and possibly just a somewhat inferior version and not global. Ray tracing is heavily CPU dependent anyway. 

After what I've seen in Control I think if next gen doesn't have dedicated ray tracing hardware they'll feel obsolete before they even land.

>Raytracing
>4K@60 real time demo
Doubt.jpg

For those wondering, Microsoft confirmed that ray tracing will be supported at hardware level on Xbox Scarlett in their Xbox Project Scarlett - E3 2019 - Reveal Trailer (1:46 timestamp, the link below starts at this time):

"Next gen ray tracing. It's real time because it's hardware accelerated for the first time ever."

https://youtu.be/-ktN4bycj9s?t=106

As for Sony, Mark Cerny only confirmed that the PlayStation 5 will support ray tracing, without saying if it will be at the hardware level or if it will be through software via computer shaders - like with some Windows DXR games running on older Nvidia 10 GPUs.

However, Mark Cerny is a brilliant man and knows where gaming technology is heading. Also, Microsoft confirmed it 1-1.5 year before PlayStation 5 launches, enough time to make alterations to the hardware. Though I really doubt Cerny designed the PlayStation 5 without it.

"The demo was running on PC with an RTX 2080 Ti"

well it's definitely no wonder why they went overboard on the shaders and resolution.
seeing how it's running on this much power, it doesn't leave that much room to gloat about the engine.
I would have been more impressed if this was running on a GTX 1070.Square typically doesn't make consistently smooth FF games.

FF 1-6 ran at 5 fps.
FF 7-9 - 20 fps. (battle mode and world map 15fps)
FF10-12 (first time ever 30fps. occasional dips)
FF13 (some of the worst performance in a FF game to date. DF 20-25 fps)
FF14 (depending on hardware)
FF15 25-30fps. (PS4 pro and XB1X 60 fps mode not consistent. worse dips on Pro)

FFVII Remake (possibly a combo breaker.) 

lmao at the shitty tear. too much uncanny valley, doll?

The Wired magazine about the PS5 GPU:

"The GPU, a custom variant of Radeon’s Navi family, will support ray tracing..."

-> https://www.wired.com/story/exclusive-sony-next-ge...

The other day I found a fix for dx12 and rtx stutters for Control (something to do with windows defender ) that actually fixed the problems of not only Control but also a lot of other older games (FFXV, Divsion 1&2, Witcher 3 and basicly anything game running on dx12)

Interesting, i'll look into that with FFXV and Witcher3. I don't have Control yet.