Ray tracing for FFXIV when?

[AbelArchaniEA]

The third party re-shade ray tracing like software has shown the potential on FFXIV. With the rtx 3000 series GPU’s and next gen consoles coming out when can we expect Ray tracing to come like it will with WOW in October.

Thanks

[Arrhin]

I can't see it gaining traction until well after PS5 release as most ppl are still more concerned with rasterized performance (next gen consoles will change this I hope). Also, give a catgirl time to save up fpr a RTX3000 already, sweet Twelve my 1080 jus keeps goin xD

[AbelArchaniEA]

I can't see it gaining traction until well after PS5 release as most ppl are still more concerned with rasterized performance (next gen consoles will change this I hope). Also, give a catgirl time to save up fpr a RTX3000 already, sweet Twelve my 1080 jus keeps goin xD

Well the rasterized performance of the RTX 3080/90 will be more than 120 fps at max settings 4k so ... yeah the time is now

[Arrhin]

Well the rasterized performance of the RTX 3080/90 will be more than 120 fps at max settings 4k so ... yeah the time is now

I'm super excited, but I do need a full system upgrade unfortunately. I'm aiming for the 3070 but we'll see

[Eriane_Elis]

Almost nobody can run raytracing but everyone can experience new content. I'd rather they focus on that instead of a minor graphical improvement for the 500 players who can use raytracing. Maybe by late 6.x but not yet. They are behind schedule, and something like this would be super low on priority. WoW is losing their playerbase very quick and have been for some time. FF14 is only gaining so there's no need for cheap marketing gimmicks. Yoshi P mentioned something about deciding between overhauling the graphics engine or working on a new MMORPG by 6.0 so we'll see by then what he says.

[Packetdancer]

I actually suspect that if we see it, we'll see support for it when the native PS5 version comes out; it would be a sensible path for actual development cost reasons.

Right now, as best I can tell, they have to maintain two rendering pipelines: DX11 for PC, and GNMX for PS4 (or possibly GNM if they're writing down to the bare metal, but I suspect they're not). The Mac build uses the DX11 renderer, translated into Vulkan via DXVK and from Vulkan to Metal via MoltenVK.

I'm fairly sure that the PS5 has a GNMX translation layer that can handle software written to the GNMX API, if only because of their backwards compatibility. However, it would not surprise me if that turns out to be a legacy layer that translates into Vulkan under the hood, thus meaning it would be more effective to just write for Vulkan in the first place.

Because it's worth noting that the PS5 and Xbox One Series X both support Vulkan natively. Windows 10 has surprisingly decent Vulkan support. And while macOS doesn't have native Vulkan support, MoltenVK works quite well to translate to Metal. Moreover, as of this past March, Vulkan finished their ray tracing extension; given the long lead time before the extensions were formally released, that's more than enough time for the PS5 (and new Xbox) to support the ray tracing extensions natively.

So if they want to take advantage of PS5 features—much less if they want to also have an XBox version someday—it would make sense to write a native Vulkan renderer to replace the DX11 one. That way, they'd only have one rendering pipeline shared across every platform; that's more of an up-front investment, yes, but in the long run is a lot less code to maintain. And putting together something that runs on macOS—whether natively on Metal, or Vulkan atop MetalVK—will be a crucial step if they want a native macOS client. Which itself is likely to become a necessity as Apple moves to ARM-based silicon instead of Intel chips. (Unless they just end-of-life macOS support.)

So switching to Vulkan, which is the one thing that'll run literally everywhere they might want to be? It would be the rational choice.

And if you're going to change the lighting system to support ray-tracing, doing it when you're forced to rewrite the rendering pipeline to support new platforms anyway—especially if you're targeting an API that has a standardized extension for raytracing—would probably be the time to do it.

[Amnmaat]

I mean, the standard for mmo is fps over anything. I'm not sure that people would prefer raytracing over DX12 or textures upgrade, or even nvidia DLSS support.

Getting a hold of a raytracing card is a $800-$2000 commitment. Even RTX 2080s are not that cheap to come buy, much less RTX 3080s. Even when they're not a rarity they're still $500+. I myself will try to get a 3080 next year, but I truly see raytracing being the same fad 4K has been, a pipedream that will take a decade to be realized.