[jdw64]

You're not wrong, but if you consider the fundamental principles of ray tracing, Hocking's point makes perfect sense. I get that 'realistic ray tracing' is a major marketing buzzword and crucial for competitive advantage.

The core issue, however, is that what the player sees on screen must align with the UI. Baked lighting created hard, discrete boundaries, but modern ray tracing outputs a continuous gradient of scattered light. This inherently creates systemic confusion between the visual feedback and the UI.

The only workaround is to design areas of absolute, pitch-black darkness. But doing so severely restricts level design, not to mention that 'realistic' absolute darkness practically doesn't exist in the real world anyway.

I find myself agreeing much more with the game designer's perspective on this one