Ray tracing support?

[LB777 100]

MSFS is using screenspace reflections like most modern games. Nothing in the trailer or pictures is showing any sign of raytracing.

The best example is the shot in the hangar from trailer:

You can see how the plane geometry cuts of the hangar doors from reflecting into the ground, because as far as the screen is concerned, the doors don't exist.

On the picture of the TBM you also can't see anything else than the blades reflecting on the cone, if it was raytraced you'd see reflections from the world behind the camera.

Does that mean MSFS won't have raytracing at all? I have no idea, but purely from a performance point of view I doubt they'd waste the time needed to implement it in such a massive game when fast and proven tech like SSR does the job extremely well already. Keep in mind that most games which have raytracing are FPS games or 3rd person adventure games, not really the same kind of beast.

 

Edit: Welp MS just announced now that bloody Minecraft is getting ray tracing... so clearly anything is possible 🤣

Edited August 19, 2019 by LB777

[irrics 1,517]

30 minutes ago, LB777 said:

You can see how the plane geometry cuts of the hangar doors from reflecting into the ground, because as far as the screen is concerned, the doors don't exist.

Great catch and analysis!!

[Mengy 814]

28 minutes ago, LB777 said:

 ...purely from a performance point of view I doubt they'd waste the time needed to implement it in such a massive game when fast and proven tech like SSR does the job extremely well already. 

New GPU cards supporting ray tracing at the hardware level changes the ball game.  Microsoft just today announced they'll be incorporating ray tracing at the hardware level for Minecraft.  Sure mods today can do similar effects in Minecraft but not as well as full fledged ray tracing can, and MS has taken the time to bother implementing it.  I feel they'll do the same with FS2020, and likely more of their games going forward.

The old tricks and techniques will no longer be the best option with today's modern GPU hardware, and I think FS2020 will be forward thinking enough to take advantage of that.  The trailer indicates this in my opinion, as what they are showing does not look like the "old tricks" to me.

But you could be right of course, we are all just speculating here until we get confirmation from MS.

[Greazer 1,320]

3 hours ago, ca_metal said:

Everything can be streamed, even graphics effects like RTX, 

Ray Tracing effects are generated Entirely by the GPU. No Exceptions.  Stop polluting the forum with wrong information.

[Superdelphinus 718]

You can surely stream a game using RTX features the same as any other graphics technique 

[snglecoil 1,828]

22 minutes ago, Greazer said:

Stop polluting the forum with wrong information.

How ironic

[Mengy 814]

4 minutes ago, Superdelphinus said:

You can surely stream a game using RTX features the same as any other graphics technique 

Yep, you certainly could have the servers do all the math and graphics processing, render the screen image, and send that to the player for each and every single frame.  The downside is the huge amounts of bandwidth required to do so, plus the input lag and negative latency effects the game will suffer from.  The faster the net connection the less these issues become real problems.

Most gamers don't have a net connection to make this a reality yet.  Some do, but not most.

[Greazer 1,320]

2 minutes ago, Superdelphinus said:

You can surely stream a game using RTX features the same as any other graphics technique 

Ray tracing has nothing to do with data streaming.

Ray tracing is about sophisticated and highly intense light beam calculations to render scenes as a real eye sees it.

Ray tracing requires a special RTX GPU video card, Otherwise Ray Tracing is Not even an option.

Ray tracing is Entirely on the GPU, specifically an RTX GPU Only.

Ray tacing and Data Streaming are completely apples and oranges. Or Boeing's and Airbuses!!

[Paraffin 2,197]

14 minutes ago, Superdelphinus said:

You can surely stream a game using RTX features the same as any other graphics technique 

What's at issue here is how much of the game is being processed locally vs. on the server. We keep mixing those two ideas in this thread, talking past each other.

MS could design the sim as a completely server-side game that streams only video to the client. If that's how they're doing it, then sure, ray-tracing could be done on the server... an expensive server. There is no reason that couldn't be done, other than the increased cost of the server feeding individual ray-traced video streams. It would just require sufficient bandwidth for a 4k image stream, and low enough latency for the user's control inputs and reaction seen in the sim. 

However, if I'm not mistaken, MS has said there would be an offline mode for the sim. I think it's unlikely MS would create two different versions of the sim: one completely client-side and another completely server-side. I would guess streaming may be buffered scenery only, but we'll know before long.

Edited August 19, 2019 by Paraffin

[snglecoil 1,828]

@Paraffin I think you are exactly right. I personally don't think that MFS will be rendered and streamed completely server side. The notion asserted earlier (not by you) that ray tracing couldn't be streamed is simply not accurate. It could be, there just isn't any indication that it will be in this particular case.

[Greazer 1,320]

Please give one example where Ray tracing is generated on a server for a game in real time?

Good luck, because the answer is there are none.

Why are there none? 

Because the computing resources to generate and deliver on the fly 4k RTX for hundreds of thousands of concurrent users is literally off the charts, it would take another century, at least, probably two, for this to be even Remotely possible.

Edited August 19, 2019 by Greazer

[ca_metal 2,015]

4 minutes ago, Greazer said:

Please give one example where Ray tracing is generated on a server for a game in real time?

Good luck, because the answer is there are none.

Why are there none? 

Because the computing resources to generate and deliver on the fly 4k RTX for hundreds of thousands of concurrent users is literally off the charts, it would take another century, at least, probably two, for this to be even Remotely possible.

I already gave an example, run a game with RTX effects on Stadia. Everything will be rendered processed on the google servers. That's how a cloud gaming platform works (PS Plus, Google Stadia, Project XCloud). 

[Paraffin 2,197]

17 minutes ago, ca_metal said:

I already gave an example, run a game with RTX effects on Stadia. Everything will be rendered processed on the google servers. That's how a cloud gaming platform works (PS Plus, Google Stadia, Project XCloud). 

Actually... maybe not. The fact that Stadia will run games like Metro Exodus doesn't mean the ray-tracing options in those games will be supported.

I just did a quick 'n dirty Google search, and couldn't find any solid info indicating that Stadia will support ray-tracing.

Remember, Stadia uses an AMD GPU, and AMD currently doesn't have native ray-tracing support in hardware like the Nvidia RTX cards. So it's far less efficient. I think that makes it very unlikely that Stadia will support ray-tracing at launch, although it might arrive in a year or two with updated AMD graphics support. If ray-tracing takes off big-time as a gaming feature (and I think the jury is still out on that), they'll have to support it eventually.

The upcoming Xbox Scarlett console also uses an AMD GPU, although that's further from launch date than Stadia, so maybe AMD will have support in hardware by then for the new console. 

Considering all that, I think if we see ray-tracing supported at all in the new MSFS, it will only be on the PC version running RTX cards, with the game running locally except for (possibly) streamed scenery. Not a fully streamed game. 

[snglecoil 1,828]

42 minutes ago, Greazer said:

it would take another century, at least, probably two, for this to be even Remotely possible.

Really??? It took around 66 years to go from first powered flight to walking on the moon. But it will take 2 centuries to make streaming an RTX game feasible. I mean...Really???

Edited August 19, 2019 by snglecoil

[ca_metal 2,015]

3 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

Actually... maybe not. The fact that Stadia will run games like Metro Exodus doesn't mean the ray-tracing options in those games will be supported.

I just did a quick 'n dirty Google search, and couldn't find any solid info indicating that Stadia will support ray-tracing.

 Remember, Stadia uses an AMD GPU, and AMD currently doesn't have native ray-tracing support in hardware like the Nvidia RTX cards. So it's far less efficient. I think that makes it very unlikely that Stadia will support ray-tracing at launch, although it might arrive in a year or two with updated AMD graphics support. If ray-tracing takes off big-time as a gaming feature (and I think the jury is still out on that), they'll have to support it eventually.

 The upcoming Xbox Scarlett console also uses an AMD GPU, although that's further from launch date than Stadia, so maybe AMD will have support in hardware by then for the new console. 

Considering all that, I think if we see ray-tracing supported at all in the new MSFS, it will only be on the PC version running RTX cards, with the game running locally except for (possibly) streamed scenery. Not a fully streamed game. 

Actually both the new Xbox and Playstation will support ray-tracing tech, maybe not the RTX (that's how nvidia brand their tech), but they will definitely come with ray-tracing capabilities.

https://www.techpowerup.com/256396/xbox-project-scarlett-to-be-8k-and-ray-tracing-ready-amd-powered-coming-2020

About Stadia, I'm pretty sure Google wouldn't do such investment to buy old tech to their servers. Their servers will have custom AMD Cpus and GPUs, they won't be the same hardware we have available to buy currently. That said, I'm pretty sure AMD offered them hardware with next-gen capabilities (as ray-tracing).