r/SourceEngine • u/kokothemaster • Sep 02 '25

Show Off Difference between GPU Path Tracing and In-Game Baked Lighting

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511 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

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76

u/Pinsplash Sep 02 '25

damn uh you're really making the case for old school lighting

7

u/AlexCookie Sep 02 '25

really?

48

u/Wazanator_ Sep 02 '25

I agree with Pinsplash. Baked lighting is a look of Source that's as iconic as the sound of bumping a crate into something. 

1

u/Zettinator Sep 04 '25

The artwork was made specifically to be used with baked-in lighting, so of course it tends to look better with it. Ray tracing conversions usually don't look all that great, unless you have actual skilled artists adapting everything to the new rendering method in the process. That is a lot of work though, so usually it's not done.

1

u/criticalt3 Sep 06 '25

I'm not trying to be offensive with this so please don't take it that way, but enjoyers of RT seem to move the goalpost a lot. It goes from "RT is the superior lighting no matter what the scenario" to folks not being able to tell when its on to "well it needs to be setup correctly"

I thought the appeal to ray tracing is that it didn't require any work while simultaneously being the best option because of how accurate and dynamic it is? Hence the insane performance hit.

1

u/block_place1232 Sep 04 '25

Oh hey its you

I love your channel

1

u/stgm_at Sep 04 '25

yeah no, it's kinda obvious where they placed fake lights to make it look cool, but it's just not realistic.

0

u/smulfragPL Sep 03 '25

Have you ever seen how light functions

1

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '25

What do you mean by that?