I love ray tracing and path tracing when they’re done right. Ik fully ray traced scenes are hardly playable even on high end cards without upscaling but like if one has a powerful enough card, why not utilize its potential? Yet most people don’t seem to care about RT.
When it comes to upscaling though, I hate it, and I’m not even talking about frame gen. It makes things look blurry and causes annoying artifacts. I think playing on lowest settings with clear textures is more enjoyable long term than maxed out in 4k with a consistently blurry image. Also this new technology makes devs care less about optimization (which will backfire btw as we’re approaching the physical limit of transistor size).
Efficient ambient-light ray tracing (like Lumen) is amazing. It contributes massively to making environments feel believable and immersive.
Path traced reflections and shadows are a indefensible waste of processing power (for now).
Upscaling and frame generation are crutches that are actively harming gaming right now. From disocclusion artifacts to unsightly “sharpening” distortions to developers/publishers skipping optimization because they expect DLSS/FSR will pick up the slack, it’s a cool thing that has unfortunately resulted in games being worse all around.