Mirrors and reflective surfaces really seem to be a struggle in modern-day games unless you are using RT, and of course, that has a huge performance penalty so I am quite curious why these techniques that were used in the 90s have fallen out of favour for other techniques that produce significantly worse results visually.
In: Technology
It’s a few things, I think.
1. Models and textures are a lot higher resolution now, and player characters get more resources budgeted toward them than other models sometimes. It’s not quite as trivial to just render them twice (this is not really a huge issue, but is a factor). It’s especially true for models that have a lot of physics in them, if the physics aren’t exactly mirrored, you’ll notice. Add in more than just the player character, like reflecting a whole action scene, and at some point you’re rendering every frame essentially twice and each extra thing requires extra care to look correct.
2. Raytracing is more accurate. It avoids any issues with physics or anything that faking it has because it more directly simulates how light bounces off of surfaces and into the camera. The way angled surfaces can skew the image, the way a surface like brushed aluminum can reflect the scene in a very diffuse way, these are a lot more difficult to take accurately that raytracing can handle with ease.
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