NVidia announced today at the annual Game Developers Conference (GDC) that it will be releasing new technology this year called RTX "real-time ray tracing." What does it do? Well it provides developers the ability to render and illuminate a scene in real time with cinematic-level quality. Which is a pretty big deal to developers! Many consider this a need-to-have, but impossible to lock down tech.
Some companies such as Epic Games and Remedy Entertainment have already been experimenting with the technology. NVidia partnered with Microsoft in the creation of this technology - thus making it fully supported by Microsoft's new DirectX Raytracing, integrated directly into Windows. It also requires that systems run NVidia's new Volta line of GPU's. However there are no consumer versions available yet. There are only a few on the market for developers and businesses. It'll take a while for this content to trickle down to the masses in an affordable means. But it's already being steadily integrated into the Frostbite and Unreal engines for futher testing.
The best way to describe the new tech allows for some of the impossible rendering to become possible. It helps replicate transparency and light refraction. It accounts for light sources within a scene/setting and can develop shades and shadows in a logical way instead of letting developers create it by hand. Not all devs get the class on light theory. The test vids look promising. It doesn't look like the content is being rendered in real time. Not sure if that's good or bad, but the lighting is fairly accurate to how the light should reflect/refract.
This is still a ways off from being in consumers hands, but it will be worth watching to see how developers overcome the processing power to make RTX work in console games.
The best way to describe the new tech allows for some of the impossible rendering to become possible. It helps replicate transparency and light refraction. It accounts for light sources within a scene/setting and can develop shades and shadows in a logical way instead of letting developers create it by hand. Not all devs get the class on light theory. The test vids look promising. It doesn't look like the content is being rendered in real time. Not sure if that's good or bad, but the lighting is fairly accurate to how the light should reflect/refract.
This is still a ways off from being in consumers hands, but it will be worth watching to see how developers overcome the processing power to make RTX work in console games.
\