How many games are supporting the technology? and when will ray tracing become mandatory?
That depends on the graphics driver and API:
- On NVIDIA it works pretty much seamlessly, though there might be some caveats with vkd3d games. It (nvapi) is now enabled by default in Proton/Wine I think? (someone please correct me if not true)
- On AMD it works with both radv and amdvlk drivers, though radv is still a little slower than amdvlk/the Windows driver.
and when will ray tracing become mandatory?
Apparently, the new Indiana Jones game has RT as a requirement even at minimum.
It even works on the Steam Deck in games like Doom Eternal. Overall support should be the same as on Windows.
Though my personal opinion is that it’s not worth the performance hit. It looks just a little tiny bit better at the cost of massive performance.
And it will probably be a long while until it’s mandatory. Especially with the current GPU prices.
Yeah, in general it’s the same support as on Windows.
I think it depends a lot on the game. Early RTX games have basically no difference, but RTGI in modern games can have a huge effect. I would argue it’s already pretty much manditory in The Finals, for example.
There are several games already that have some amount of mandatory ray tracing (with no other lighting technology to fall back to to replace it).
IMO the comment above yours is kinda like being in 1996, looking at Quake, and going “it doesn’t even look that much better than Duke3D for the massive performance hit polygonal rendering incurs, and you can do room-over-room in Duke’s engine anyway, I don’t see us switching away from 2.5D games any time in the near future”.
I can tell you right now developers are not going to keep doing all the crazy bullshit they need to do to fake light bouncing around now that we can just simulate it. Just like how devs in the 90s didn’t want to keep doing all the crazy bullshit they needed to fake the space being 3D when they could work with an actual 3D engine.
Developers are especially not going to want to keep working with two versions of lightning that work completely differently from each other.
I use it on Cyberpunk without issues. But regardless of platform, it needs to be paired with DLSS or FSR to mitigate the huge performance hit. I think it will still take 5+ years for it to become the expected way to run a new photo-realistic game.
Many newer games require it and run great, Star Wars Outlaws is the first one that comes to mind.
