if ($10,000) Graphics.rtx = true
if ( 2018 && $10,000 II
2019 && $5,000 ||
2020 && $2,500 ||
2021 && $1,250 ||
2022 && $625 ) Graphics.rtx = true;
Assuming that GPU’s follow a yearly doubling in performance per dollar.
So in about 5 years time “affordable” high-end GPUs with real-time Hollywood level ray tracing.
However, if screens keep getting larger and faster it could take a lot longer before GPUs are able to catch up to 8k,16k,32k,64k… screens with 144hz, 240hz, 580hz, 1000hz refresh rates 
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I’m excited. I am planning to order at least one RTX2080 the moment they are available to order.
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Cant wait for the RTX 2080 TI. My 1080 TI feels old now
Yeah, not sure about a 64K screen haha. Can we even see that high quality?
Gonna be a real interesting next 5 years for sure. Wonder who’s gonna be the first to get a game out with realtime ray tracing? Might have to start actually checking minimum specs again 
Remember you’re not always sitting at a “normal” distance from the display. Think VR headsets.
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I think some games have already used limited ray tracing, I think it was CryEngine.
Yeah VR is extrelmy demanding since min framerate is 90 fps, and it will not become less straining when headsets increase resulution. Though foveated rendering powered by tobii eyetracking will solve alot of that.
Definitely. VR could honestly benefit from added resolution. The view in the Oculus Rift always reminds me of a really old screen door. It will be interesting to see what happens with VR headset resolutions once these next gen Nivida cards are readily available.
We also need more perfomance on the CPU side, I really hope Vulkan + gfx jobs soon will perform well. Many have 8 - 16 threads today
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The thing is do we need full raytracing or just boosted raytracing for real-time GI, Ambient Occlusion, Reflections and Refractions/Caustics?
Or will raytracing GPUs be more of a workstation development platform for baking better lighting faster e.g. Unity GI
As most likely we will get games with boosted graphics settings, just like we have quality settings today and games that can take advantage of hardware features e.g. Nvidia’s Apex which boosts particles systems and cloth physics.
As a steam publisher I can take part in those statistics, and there is not even 1 procent of my customers that have participated so I think those statistics say very little. Here in sweden ryzen is on a march for example. They did a survey on the most popular gaming and over clocking site and Zen plus Zen+ got 16 procent. 8600k and 8700k from Intel grabbed 11 procent.
Edit: also I said 8 to 16 threads, check your statics again 4 cores with HT makes 8 threads
I don’t know. I vaguely remember the last time they provided the number of people using the platform and one percent of those with eight or more cores isn’t too far away from the number of people in /r/pcmasterrace. 
How many peasants people with 4C/8T are there in your player base?
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Personally I see these new GPU’s being used as workstation boosters for now, especially for film/tv. I was pretty blown away to see how many GPU’s are used in render farms these days (1:11:20 in the video)
I think within 1-2 years they’ll enable enhanced features of rendering in games where supported. Long term… the holy grail of graphics is full realtime ray tracing. I doubt we’ll see real time photo realism for a very long time. But maybe 10 years there will be a few games running a full ray traced scene.
Do we need ray tracing? Technically no, but just imagine the workflow and visual improvements. No more light baking!
4C/4T and to a lesser extent 4C/8T is still very much the norm. If you think even 10% have more than that you’re either super subject to confirmation bias or just lying to yourself. The people buying the new hot cpu are the vocal minority
I can check the hardware survey tomorrow and report back, but like I said it’s just a portion of the entire player base. VR has players with more muscles though so it will probably be better hardware in that market than steam over all
There’s nothing to suggest it isn’t a representative sample though which means the numbers wouldn’t change
Granted VR is a subset that you can expect to be positively skewed in specs
6700k was the norm then the 7700k, pretty sure the 8700k with 12 threads will follow. But even with 8 threads toy will see massive gain of multi core rendering
6700k isn’t the norm though. i5’s are the norm, not i7s. We’re talking about pc gamers as a whole and not pc master race elitists
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