The shader system that Asobo has implemented for FS2020 is borderline hard to distinguish from actual ray tracing, and even other developers of 3rd party addons for the sim have openly stated that they find it hard to believe that itâs not already being raytraced, thatâs how good it is. Anyone who has spent more than 15 minutes in the sim can see this is true, so I really donât see how actual ray traced GI, no matter how efficient, is going to make any noticeable visual impact when you consider the scale of the environment.
Ray traced GI is much better suited to smaller scale environments like shooters because you can immediately see right in front of you how it affects surfaces in close proximity, like walls, floors, vehicles, furniture, trees, glass, etc. In a flight simulator, those close surfaces arenât really experienced in the same way because of the massive scale and how far away you normally are. (Surfaces in the cockpit would be the exception, of course.) But again, the shaders that are already present are very impressive, and after 300+ hours in the sim Iâm still amazed by the little details, like how the orange displays on the 152âs radio panel casts a soft orange light on the back of the yoke and other nearby surfaces. Sure, thatâs just direct lighting and not global illumination, but the illusion is pretty slick.
I suppose, if youâre close to an airport, like at a gate for example, you could see small global illumination effects, like a red fire truck sitting in bright sunlight next to a building might cast off a bit of a red shading onto the building. But again, those kinds of things are so subtle and uncommon, you likely wonât really notice.
If I were going to rally for any ray tracing (assuming it could be done without impacting frame rate⊠lol) it would be for the reflections⊠water, glass, instruments, fuselages, etc., but the existing shaders are still doing a pretty good job of faking that too.