The Raytracing thread

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Since raytracing is now becoming a thing for games I thought it would be time to start a thread for it, to just discuss the tech itself and the implementations. Perhaps over time we can look back at how things progress.

[kalniel]

Well, it's been around for donkeys years. I first did stuff with it on SGI machines in the 90s, and they were considered ancient machines by that time. In terms of windows PC stuff, programs like POV-ray have been around since early 90s and it's still fun to play with today. In terms of real-time programs, Wald got 7.7fps out of five pentium 3-800s.

edit: cool - just found some stuff from the amiga!
https://blog.codinghorror.com/real-time-raytracing/

[Jonj1611]

I used pov-ray on my 286. Painfully painfully slow. With no GUI it was an interesting beast

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

A talk from Nvidia about hybrid RT:

http://on-demand.gputechconf.com/sig...y-tracing.html

This pioneering book on physical based rendering won an Academy Award:

https://www.pbrt.org/

[Bagnaj97]

There have been experiments in ray tracing games for years - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_Wars:_Ray_Traced and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpNZt3yDXno for example. The problem is that ray tracing isn't a magic bullet for improving graphics; both those previous examples are realtime ray traced but still look terrible compared to more recent rasterised games. Switching on RTX, even on the new cards, still impacts FPS severely and the games still look great without it.

[Safetytrousers]

Switching on RTX, even on the new cards, still impacts FPS severely and the games still look great without it.

I don't expect to be using ray tracing for the hit it will have, I expect staying at 4k will remain more important to me.
But there isn't any game out yet with ray tracing. Just how impacting ray tracing in something finished is has yet to be seen. We also haven't seen how by how much simultaneous DLSS may be able to offset the hit.
Both ray tracing and DLSS are RTX features, you mean switching on ray tracing.

[outwar6010]

All it is, is gameworks but more hyped imho.

[Corky34]

As they said in a recent Gamer Nexus video if you can't tell the difference without as side-by-side comparison what's the point.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

AdoredTV has made a very good video about raytracing and path tracing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrF4k6wJ-do



This is what the company OTOY is working on with a game engine called Brigade:

https://home.otoy.com/render/brigade/

They are behind the raytracing renderer called Octane which is the first one which was released to the public which ran on GPUs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octane_Render

[PC-LAD]

AMD have their version that uses an open API and Vulcan rather than DXR so I'm looking forward to games that feature it without NV tax

[Joyce36]

Well, Just how impacting ray tracing in something finished is has yet to be seen. We also haven't seen how by how much simultaneous DLSS may be able to offset the hit.?

[AC81]

AMD have their version that uses an open API and Vulcan rather than DXR so I'm looking forward to games that feature it without NV tax

So, would that mean future games will only support one of these card manufacturers and not both for raytracing?

I can't see game devs spending time and money working on 2 competing assests for the same function.

[scaryjim]

AMD have their version that uses an open API and Vulcan rather than DXR so I'm looking forward to games that feature it without NV tax

So, would that mean future games will only support one of these card manufacturers and not both for raytracing?

I can't see game devs spending time and money working on 2 competing assests for the same function.

DXR is an open API - it's *DirectX* Raytracing. NVidia have been trying to hype up that it's some great NVidia feature, but it's actually just their implementation of a new DirectX feature - there's nothing to stop AMD implementing DXR, or nvidia implementing the open-source Vulkan version (whatever it's called). Once games actually start using those features I'm sure we'll see full implementations from both parties (and Intel, if they get their GPU business together).

For now it's little more than an interesting tech demo. In the long run it'll probably just mean game companies spend more time making their games look pretty and less time making them into decent games. There's been a strong tendency that way for years now ...

[Kumagoro]

That adored video is quite interesting.

I wonder what a dedicated path tracing card would put out with currant tech consumer product limits.

[enver33]

Looking forward to the MineCraft ray tracing effects