It’s not really about detail, it’s about basic lighting especially in dynamic situations
(Sometimes it is used to provide more detail in shadows I guess, but that is also usually a pretty big visual improvement)
I think there’s currently a single popular game where rt is required? And I honestly doubt a card old enough to not support ray tracing would be fast enough for any alternate minimum setting it would have had instead. Maybe the people with 1080 ti-s are missing out, but there’s not that many of them honestly. I haven’t played that game and don’t know all that much about it, it might be a pointless requirement for all I know.
Nowadays budget cards support rt, even integrated gpus do (at probably unusable levels of speed, but still)
I don’t think every game needs rt or that rt should be required, but it’s currently the only way to get the best graphics, and it has the potential to completely change what is possible with the visual style of games in the future.
Edit: also the vast majority of new solid gpus started supporting rt 6 years ago, with the 20 series from nvidia
That’s my point though, the minimums are jacked up well beyond where they need to be in order to cram new tech in and get 1 percent better graphics even without RT. There’s not been any significant upgrade to graphics in the last 5 years, but try playing a 2025 AAA with a 2020 graphics card. It might work, but it’s certainly not supported and some games are actually locking out old GPUs.
Often the lighting systems used require some minimum amount of processing power, and to create a lower graphics setting you would need a whole separate lighting technique
It’s not really about detail, it’s about basic lighting especially in dynamic situations
(Sometimes it is used to provide more detail in shadows I guess, but that is also usually a pretty big visual improvement)
I think there’s currently a single popular game where rt is required? And I honestly doubt a card old enough to not support ray tracing would be fast enough for any alternate minimum setting it would have had instead. Maybe the people with 1080 ti-s are missing out, but there’s not that many of them honestly. I haven’t played that game and don’t know all that much about it, it might be a pointless requirement for all I know.
Nowadays budget cards support rt, even integrated gpus do (at probably unusable levels of speed, but still)
I don’t think every game needs rt or that rt should be required, but it’s currently the only way to get the best graphics, and it has the potential to completely change what is possible with the visual style of games in the future.
Edit: also the vast majority of new solid gpus started supporting rt 6 years ago, with the 20 series from nvidia
That’s my point though, the minimums are jacked up well beyond where they need to be in order to cram new tech in and get 1 percent better graphics even without RT. There’s not been any significant upgrade to graphics in the last 5 years, but try playing a 2025 AAA with a 2020 graphics card. It might work, but it’s certainly not supported and some games are actually locking out old GPUs.
Often the lighting systems used require some minimum amount of processing power, and to create a lower graphics setting you would need a whole separate lighting technique