GameRager: Look, in the end we can argue semantics/technical terms/etc till the cows come home, but we should be able to agree on one thing: It is wrong to push one new tech as another similarly named tech to the gullible masses to sell video cards/anything else. Is that much true?

clarry: Sure. Nobody is doing that though.

What NVidia is doing is they offer an implementation of some APIs backed by hardware, using which you can implement whatever form of ray tracing you fancy. The quality/performance tradeoff is up to the programmer & artist. If you're not satisfied with the tradeoff you have to make, you wait for faster hardware.

Here's a tutorial on how to implement classical rt with shadow rays, using one of these APIs: https://developer.nvidia.com/rtx/raytracing/vkray

Quake II RTX looks better because they implemented a better form of ray tracing.

GameRager: They are in a way, by saying their card does ray tracing/etc and letting n00bz assume they mean the one type film makers use.

GameRager: They are in a way, by saying their card does ray tracing/etc and letting n00bz assume they mean the one type film makers use.

As for looking better, as I said before that's subjective/I prefer the original as this one looks too colorful/"off" to me.

clarry: And you could do exactly that type of ray tracing, but it probably won't be fast enough.

N00bz making assumptions and doing zero research is entirely their own problem, you can't fault NVidia for that.

Was id software lying when they made Wolfenstein 3D? It isn't "true 3D" after all.. and neither is Doom. Unless one wants to argue about definitions.

Maybe some n00b would've assumed 3D in the title meant true 3D. Too bad, they assumed wrong.

hedwards: I fail to see an issue here. As long as what they've shown in the video is accurate, that's really good enough. As has already been stated, most noobz and really people in general do not know about the different types of raytracing that can be done. What they care about is what shows up on their screen.

From where I sit, what I saw in that particular demo is pretty impressive and will likely be even more impressive when combined with higher polygon models.

As I've previously stated, when a technological shift like this comes, it's pretty much always a significant hack over what the purists might want. But, from there the hacks get more subtle and the hardware gets more powerful and before too long the difference becomes moot.

GameRager: If people like the product then fine, but it wouldn't hurt them to slap a small warning/sticker on the box stating what they really meant with their terminology.

GameRager: Still they are deceiving some people that don;t know any better and to me that's somewhat questionable as a business practice.

What if vegan "meat" makers let some actual meat slip in if the regulations allowed a small percentage in vegan food? Would that be ok in your eyes if they deceived people in such a way? To me this is no different in practice, but lesser in "damage" done.

hedwards: Why? Best case scenario the sticker would be ignored as most people won't know what it means. Worst, and more likely, case it will confuse people.

There will be some sort of an indication placed on the software about what hardware is needed to achieve the effect and that's really all the buying public is going to care about. Knowing that it's one sort of raytracing rather than another would require educating the public about the various options in order to then explain which one it is.

I'm sorry, but that seems like an awful lot of work to go through in order to then have to specify which technology is being used. Perhaps in the future, if the same game starts to ship with different types of raytracing this might be relevant, but I just don't see this as being useful information for the buying public.

Especially, given what a mess the hardware naming conventions have gotten. It's incredibly hard to figure out if marginal hardware is going to run the latest games because the hardware companies don't seem to care about maintaining a comprehensible naming schema.

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In what sense of the word are they deceiving people? In order for this to be deceiving, the buyers would have to know a lot more about the technology to even know there are other options. What they're doing isn't deceptive unless what shows up on the box and in the demos isn't what's actually delivered.

EDIT: As far as the meat in the vegan food goes, there probably is. It's not intentional, but I'd be surprised if some rat didn't wind up in there from time to time when dealing with ingredients at an industrial scale.

tomimt: This discussion is pretty amusing, really. GameRager is being obtuse just for the sake of being obtuse, as it is pretty obvious he has a hard time admitting his take on the matter is not the end all discussion opinion. He has now gone from the technical definition of ray tracing to "think of the baffled consumer"-take to hammer in a nail that doesn't really exist.

Personally, I haven't followed the main bulk of the marketing speak for the RTX cards, but of the little what I've seen, it has been made clear, that the devs can control what they use ray tracing features on. There isn't some sort of huge deception going on with the tech and what is capable is in my opinion quite clear. Hell, that is one of the reasons I won't be buying into it until the 2nd or 3rd generation of cards unless my current card dies and I can get ana RTX card cheaply enough.

Really, the only issue here is, that GameRager can't admit that he might be wrong.

GameRager: People already ignore the basic info on the box & some might be confused by what is already written...also if it helps some clarify what is being bought/gotten for their money then why not do it?

Heck, we put warnings on other things irregardless on how many might actually read them because it might help some make better decisions.

I agree the hardware requirements/etc should be on the box(afaik they already do this though).
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Imo(I could be wrong) they are deceiving people by saying just "raytracing" while knowing many will assume it's the best kind available atm.

hedwards: But isn't this the best form available at the moment? Or are there other outfits that are doing better realtime raytracing for use in computer games that I'm not aware of.

The only better raytracing available is prerendered and anybody that knows the difference would know that it's not rendered in real time.

I still don't see how adding that warning would do anything other than confuse potential customers.

GameRager: By better I mean stuff like some stuff used in making some movies/etc as others mentioned ITT(iirc).

As for confusing people, some will be misled/confused already & if they make the wording clear enough it shouldn't be that big of a problem.

hedwards: I'm sorry, I just don't see people being confused by this as it stands. People aren't going to buy a game based purely on the fact that it uses raytracing and not know what raytracing is. If they do, then they'll likely know the difference between the rendering that goes into a movie and one that's done in real time for a game. They'll look at the box art/ store page and watch the clips and decide whether they like what it looks like. They'll also decide whether or not it's a game of the type they like playing.

As long as the hardware they have supports the game, they're not likely to care whether or not the game is using the same rendering process that's used in CG movies.

This just looks like an attempt to stir up controversy where there shouldn't be any. Sometimes, just letting people have their own opinions about what's in a product is the least deceptive way of marketing the contents.

GameRager: I myself am not trying tp stir up any controversy....it's just how I feel on the matter...irregardless of what business or porduct tried it. I am just very vocal/emotional on such things I guess.

hedwards: How many people watching Frozen or whatever the most recent CG movie even know how they're being produced? I just have a hard time buying into the notion that there's a large number of people who know what raytracing is and don't know that there's more than one way of doing it and are going to buy largely on the basis of it being a different kind of raytracing.

Seems rather unlikely to me.