They do, it’s there. But i’m pretty sure the new 3000 series RTX cards will have 80% more advance Ray tracing TECH than the previous 2000 series, that’s what they are saying on the NVIDIA website.
Pretty sure a 3080 RTX would preform better with Ray tracing than a 2080.
We will see, but anyways the difference are not worth it so far with or without… Hardly you see the difference.
I won’t bother with ray tracing until I can get at least a steady 144 fps+ in even the most intensive games, just seems like fluff otherwise.
It improves lighting and reflection.
It’s a waste, mostly.
This. I mean, yay RTX, but some folks are still wearing pixel textures from 2004… 
Upgrade your old armors, ffs Blizz!
I think Reshade has a shader that’s kinda-sorta fake raytracing if you want to see what WoW might look like with it in its entirety! Not sure how good it is, but hey, it’s something.
So the one that struck me is Ardenweld, there was a fairy and an orb and a light post that should have all cast their own shadows but didn’t for some reason. I think this goes to the fact that blizz hasn’t really designed for lighting in many regards in ages. They seem very dependent on a flat light environment.
Most of the time it usually comes down to two issues 1) Few programs have proper support 2) its in beta and is more or less a hybrid approach not to get sub 10fps… From what I hear next generation cards are 4x faster at ray tracing.
I think it’s one of those things where it’s more evident in some environments vs. others.
picture minecraft in your head, how it looks… the jagged edges of the blocks… the cartoon graphics…
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/hM8J1rldLSg/maxresdefault.jpg
now look at this picture…
this is minecraft with ray tracing
https://cdn.gamer-network.net/2019/screenshots/javaw_2019_04_20_23_52_16_879.png
one is a nicer photo than the other but i legit do not see a difference. its brighter i guess?
The only time I seen it improve wow was this video with the camera angle really low by the ground which I’m sure noone ever plays like that.
Now Nvidia is supposed to have released a driver update that works with WoW. Saw the difference and it still didn’t make me want a over priced RTX card to get that feature.
And it’s only gotten more flat with time. It’s not exactly lighting, but if you fly around the boundary between Arathi Highlands and Hillsbrad Foothills, you can see the new Arathi terrain textures having no specularity map at all sharply contrasting with very visible specularity maps for Hillsbrad’s terrain textures. I don’t know why they did this, spec maps are dirt cheap to render and they add depth.
So for me, I too can’t really notice it on WoW but I had seen a video months ago explaining it with Minecraft. From my understanding (Which, take with a grain of salt) it affects how lighting works in pretty much every aspect from shadows to reflections and so on.
The example I saw was how color traveling through light would be reflected elsewhere so like light bouncing off a green object would reflect that green onto other surfaces and such more similarly to how light actually works.
That was my understanding of it though the video I had watched gave a lot more technical jargon that just flew over my head so I may be entirely off basis.
However, as other’s have mentioned, with all the WoW comparison screenshots its very hard to tell what is different outside “Shadows look blurrier”
It’s almost never worth the performance hit it requires.
Maybe in 10 years it might be considered acceptable and normal but nowdays? Nah. You’re better turning it off and playing with everything else on a better quality, or at a higher framerate, or at a higher resolution
Actually the new 3000 RTX series are better by far+ faster when it comes to Ray tracing. they said that (NVIDIA website.)
3070 or 3080ti etc would be fully optimized for Ray tracing than a 2080 series.
I suspect because it can make things just look “shiny.” but honestly I think it looks fine depending on where you are and what the terrain is. But yeah they seem to be getting flatter and flatter and it makes things so boring. The only exception I’ve seen is the static sun rays in a few indoor environments like the stormwind portal room or the priest class hall. I’m honestly surprised that’s not where they are conditionally enabling ray tracing first. I’d love to see it in Oggrimar as dusty light shafts in the portal room.
Edit: I’ve been doing quite a bit of testing this afternoon. I really should grab screenshots but there are a lot of things that are messed up if you look at shadows. Sun-shadows show up indoors (even in basements) lamps don’t cast any shadows, nor do fires, portals, or just about anything luminous.
Honestly? Without lighting support or sun shafts… we’re missing the most beautiful stuff.
Not too surprising. A lot of that kind of wonkiness existed with stencil shadows when those were first introduced too, and some of it still remains. For example terrain doesn’t cast shadows at all or shadow itself, which causes weirdness like the shadows of Thunder Bluff’s buildings floating by themselves out in the middle of Mulgore.
I submitted a ton of bugs, I stopped before they ban me from the PTR at this point. They probably get that sconce lighting should cast shadows, that sun-shadows shouldn’t be visible indoors etc. And that the torches in Grommash hold are casting light without flames and shadows. I didn’t file one for the sun shades in oggrimar although I thought about it.
The screenshots I’ve seen of WoWs implementation of it just look like the shadows have been blurred a little bit, otherwise they look the same
Given how many bugs I filed for things not casting shadows… yeah it’s bare bones for now.