Control - Ray Tracing On / Off Comparison

Control Ray tracing on / off comparison This was recorded at 1440p with ray tracing set to high. This was to keep the frame rate acceptable for the ray tracing 'on' clips. If you are unsure what ray tracing (RTX) is or does, this video should help show you. In the ray tracing 'on' section look out for the following: Realistic and accurate reflections. Reflected light carrying the colour properties of the surface it bounced from. Accurate shadows. Global lighting looking more accurate due to correct light sources with realistic properties. In the ray tracing off sections you can see that most these things still exist in some form. For example shadows look similar if not as good. The lighting still looks great if not as accurate and there are still a lot of reflections. However these are done using screen space reflections which have their issues. They only reflect what is in the screen space (what you can see on the screen). The biggest flaw here is that Jessy herself blocks things in the screen space meaning you get a halo effect appearing round her a lot which can be a bit off putting. Also glass doesn't seem to really reflect anything at all with RTX off. As well as this the reflections that are there are no where near as accurate as what you get with RTX. Just enough to fool you into accepting the game world as is. Control is 'the' game currently with the most obvious boost in graphical fidelity from RTX. This is mainly because there are just so many reflective surfaces in this game and it's the reflections that are the most obvious to notice. With shadows, while RTX shadows are better, I doubt you will really notice when playing the game because you need to be acutely aware of where the light source originates to notice its not 100% accurate. Also the global illumination is harder to notice because you just get used to it as it is pretty quickly. Maybe you can put this down to its art style. Its not photo realistic (no game is yet) so you accept it not looking exactly like real life. However, with the reflections on glass being absent without it, your can't not notice the improvement RTX delivers on this front. However this video should also show you that the game still looks fantastic without RTX. Is RTX a fascinating new technology that can help great a more realistic game world? Absolutely. Will games suddenly look bad without it? no. I look forward to seeing where this tech goes, but they really need to make the huge performance hit it comes with worth it first.