When this generation of consoles was first unveiled to us all, years ago at this point, one of the big selling points for the upgrade was that it would be the first to bring ray tracing to the masses. What had, until that point, been reserved for those with high-end gaming PCs and top gaming laptops would finally be achievable for mainstream gamers without too much extra expenditure.
As it turns out, though, it feels like we spent a few years chasing the wrong part of ray tracing, since it was a little more obvious and eye-catching. I'd happily admit that for a good few years, I basically treated "ray-tracing" as something that meant flashy and accurate reflections in glass and water, since that was how it was mostly shown off.
