Engineer’s Workshop: Enabling Ray-Traced Shadows in Shadowlands

[Laqweeta]

Doesn't everyone reduce shadow effects anyway since it is a huge hit to performance? I mean.. sounds cool but like.. I bet most people won't even experience this.

There are those of us that have the ability to play the game at ultra lol.

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Only the best graphic cards can enable this setting, and some of them struggle to keep above 60 afterwards. So I don't think anyone will want this enabled while doing anything remotely challenging.

Pretty sure the 3000 series will perform much better, as the 3070 is supposed to be near 2080TI performance for $500~600 (rumored). We’ll know more on Sept. 1st!

[Heladys]

I'm running a single 2080 (non-TI, non-super) at 3440x1440 level 7 overall settings with ray traced shadows jacked to high, and I'm still maintaining 100FPS in stormwind.

I know RTX is known to be a performance killer, but I'm not seeing it here at least so far. I'll have to go check in some other zones.

Now whether it's worth it is totally up to you, but it's not crushing my framerates like I expected. So far, admittedly, only so far.

Update: 69fps in Oribos. Big hit there relative to good old Stormwind.

Update2: that 69fps was on the ground floor where the flight masters are. upper floor where the portals are it's back to 100fps.

Update3: still 100FPS out in the wild in Maldraxxus. Seeing 100 a lot because that's the GSYNC framerate limit imposed by my monitor. Apparently it's ready to go higher.

[Asheeva]

Wow. Lots of comments about people who turn down settings? This is 2020. People still play on toasters? Wow has been on Ultra for me, for years -- even at 2560x1600.

Without all these little nuance improvements over the years, WoW would still look like Classic. I appreciate how each expansion looks better than the last one.

I don't know mate, saying you have a toaster if your PC doesn't have a 500$ graphic card is a little strong. (You pretty much need a 2070 for this to be decent). And if someone only plays WoW like me why would we spend thousands of dollars on high-end hardware? It's basically a waste of money. And we are mostly talking about the fact that this feature eats an insane amount of resources for basically a minimal improvement which is a trade no one would want who does high-end content.

[Yizu]

I think raytracing in wow is acceptable, wow is bottlenecked by only using a couple of cpu cores at most, and there so much idle gpu power, my gpu fans doesnt even spin when raiding on a 1440 144 screen. As long as it doesn't affect minimum fps, i will have it on 100% of the time.

[3nfy]

I said SHADOWlands LOL GET IT?!

[Mirishka]

I've been checking these out on beta (had to force a Windows 10 update to enable them, which was annoying) and I'm really impressed by the character self-shadows. Like wearing a helmet with a brim/cap casts a really realistic shadow over your face, your pauldrons cast shadows on your chest/arms, etc. The other stuff is nice, but mostly subtle.

I suffer no loss of FPS with Fair/Good RT shadows, but at high the FPS does dip down a bit.

[Yizu]

Ray tracing itself is fine if the game is well optimized. It's just WoW that has a history of bad optimization. Running the game currently on an RTX 2080 TI, with 16gb of ram and a ryzen 3900x, I often see the game drop from 100 fps+ to 30 out of nowhere in places like Zuldazar. Not even Witcher 3 with a ton of enemies and effects happening at the same time has a drop in fps like this.

Bad optimization can either be the game is unnecessarily using all your gpu/cpu resources, or not using it at all. Wow is mostly on the latter because its always bottlenecked by not being able to use a lot of cpu cores. There is so much gpu power available for raytracing on rtx gpus, unless you are using an absurd amount of render scaling.

Also frame drops on major cities can be attributed to server phasing im pretty sure, there are invisible borders on major cities where when u fly on it your game will stutter for a second, you can test this by flying on those invisible borders back and forth and see your frametimes up and down.

[Minikin]

SHADOWlands LOL

Out!!! OUT!!!

[bmjclark]

At least we'll have plenty of time to look at the shadows while the game is running like a slideshow

[SinR]

At least people can enable it.

I can't seen to be able to on my 2080

[Jastall]

The fps loss is ray-tracing issues. But that it nearly don't improve the scenery is because everything within wow is created with a certain light cast on them already.

Imagine you have an object made out of wood, that object will light up in the picture differently than your plate armor. In WoW, there is no difference, but in IRL you can tell what objects are made off, just based on how they reflect light that's cast on them. This effect hugely improves the scenery and everything looks 100 times more realistic, this is the main reason everyone is hyped about ray-tracing.

WoW's objects simply are not made with ray-tracing in mind. If they start now with the next expansion, we will have something stunning to look at.

Yeah, but as of now only a small handful of games even feature it, with uneven results, and it requires extremely expensive hardware to enjoy. One day I'm sure it'll be ubiquitous, but for now it's mostly a novelty feature, in WoW especially for the reasons you describe.

[Aerisot]

I'm confused, I have ray tracing set to high on beta and flames are not producing any extra light, and my shadows are not softer, they are highly detailed.

[Kazlehoff]

No word yet regarding artificially limiting cards Nvidia has said can run Raytracing via Emulated functions (higher-end 10 series cards).

(inb4 "waah 10 series cant ray trace" tell Quake2RTX that, was the first game released with a full raytraced engine and it runs on 10 series cards)

(inb4 "it won't run well" ofc not, but that's not the point. if I want to turn it on, reduce myself to 3-5fps, but be able to take awesome as hell screenshots, I should be allowed to. I hope blizzard doesn't say "Nah, you can't, even though the card manufacturer has said you can, because we feel like it")

[Mirishka]

At least people can enable it.

I can't seen to be able to on my 2080

Go into Windows 10 updates and make sure you've completed the 2004 update (number, not the year). I couldn't enable them until I did that.

[cocomen2]

SHADOWlands LOL

This is why we not get new class in SL, all money was wasted on "shadows" and some console features)

[Kazlehoff]

This is why we not get new class in SL, all money was wasted on "shadows" and some console features)

or there's already enough classes and they can barely keep the ones they have balanced

[Heladys]

At least people can enable it.

I can't seen to be able to on my 2080

must have the latest driver and the 2004 update for Win10

[SinR]

nice. time to download more Windows updates.

then fail to install

then download the same windows updates.

then fail to install

[deenman]

Wow. Lots of comments about people who turn down settings? This is 2020. People still play on toasters? Wow has been on Ultra for me, for years -- even at 2560x1600.

Without all these little nuance improvements over the years, WoW would still look like Classic. I appreciate how each expansion looks better than the last one.

the amount of pure delusion in this post is astounding...first off,you need a little more than better than a toaster to run this optimaly and on ultra,in fact you need some of the most top end hardware,meanwile wow itself doesnt need a strong pc to run smoothly,why would anyone who plays wow mostly buy high end rigs?

my most recent pc was made in 2016,for the time it was above averege,could run anything maxed out no issues including wow,but with ray tracing i take a huge hit,your saying that my 2000$ pc,built with performance and a good price in mind...is a toaster?

[Sithalos]

I have my shadows on low, and they're going to stay there. I don't feel like having sub 120 fps in a 15 year old game.