A few years ago, we relatively easily measured the performance of video cards during rasterization. However, technology is constantly evolving and recently the GPU market has been revolutionized. The tipping point came in 2018 when Nvidia released the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20 graphics cards, which were the first to support hardware-accelerated ray tracing. This has long been an important topic not only for PC players, but also for console players, because ray tracing is one of the things that we will associate with the word “next-gen” today. But what is ray tracing? And why do developers use it? Find out in today’s special.
What is ray tracing?
If you translate this term literally, then you get “ray tracing”, and this is really appropriate. Ray tracing is a method of tracing a beam of light that travels from a source to a surface where various events can occur to it, usually absorbed or reflected. And this is what ray tracing is by far the most commonly used.
The technology itself is not new and has been used for a long time, for example, in films. But these are pre-rendered scenes, and here comes the problem. In games, the scene must be rendered in real time. This is a relatively difficult task for a graphics card, which is why Nvidia came up with so-called RT cores designed to calculate ray tracing. It first appeared in the already mentioned generation of Turing (NVIDIA Geforce RTX 20), and in the current generation of Ampere (Geforce RTX 30) it has undergone further improvements.
So, that would be a brief explanation of RT technology, but what kind of games can we even find it in?
Battlefield V
Although not well received on the outside, Battlefield 2042 was its number 5 predecessor, which, as the first of the larger games, used hardware accelerated ray tracing and served as a “showcase” for this new video game technology. Degree from the Swedish studio DICE uses it mainly for reflections in puddles and shiny objects.
Control
Remedy developers care a lot about the graphics of their games. The Control title from 2019 looks nice from the ground up, but the ray tracing further enhances the Oldest House building where the game takes place. This technology is used again for reflections, this time mainly for glossy floors, as well as lighting and shadows. Remedy is very popular and we’re sure we’ll see some interesting use of ray tracing in the newly announced Alan Wake 2 title.
Cyberpunk 2077
Sovereignly the most anticipated game of its time, as reported by the non-gaming media. Its release was simply an event that does not repeat itself, and although the result was not very satisfactory, developers cannot be denied the use of ray tracing. After all, the environment of cyberpunk clearly encourages him. Shadows, neon, and reflections from shiny surfaces ensure that ray tracing is out of place here.
Middle
Another game that has received quite a bit of controversy, but if we can appreciate it for anything, it’s for the graphics page. The title stands out mainly because some passages use a double screen, so you see the character in two different environments at the same time. In addition, the developers from the Polish Bloober team also decided to use ray tracing for reflections and ambient shading. The result is really great considering the size of the team.
mine craft
So far, there has been talk of games aiming for realistic graphics, but there is one game that looks completely different in its visuals, but still makes great use of ray tracing. We are talking about Minecraft, which at the end of last year added full support for RT. This technology will be especially appreciated by builders who take on projects with delusions of grandeur, because they will literally excel at ray tracing in a completely different light.
Of course, there are many more RT-enabled games, and many more are in development. A complete list can be found, for example, here.
What is DLSS?
Unfortunately, ray tracing is still a complex technology and not quite ideal if you want to play at high FPS. But Nvidia also has a solution for this because it came up with DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) technology in 2018, which has come a long way since then. It uses special cores (Tensor) and contributes to higher frame rates. How, you ask? Simply put, the image is rendered at a lower resolution, and the rest of the pixels are calculated by trained artificial intelligence. The quality is very similar to the native resolution, in some respects it can even be better. Combined with ray tracing, it’s a very powerful combination that you’ll quickly fall in love with. In addition, the list of supported games is constantly growing.
What video card to buy?
If you want to try ray tracing in games, your best bet is an Nvidia graphics card that offers the highest RT performance. But which model should you choose?
You’ll definitely want to get the latest generation Ampere, and the entry-level card to match is the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060. But if you’re serious about gaming, the sweet spot is definitely the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti or GeForce RTX 3070 if you’re on a higher budget. If you want the best of what’s on offer right now, there’s the GeForce RTX 3090, which offers unmatched ray tracing performance. You can find a wide range of products on Alza.cz.
But if you’re looking for a brand new set, you definitely can’t go wrong with the pre-installed ones these days because it’s by far the best value. For example, an Alza GameBox Core with the already mentioned NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti may be a suitable purchase for you. You can find the entire offer of the Alza.cz store here.
What about ray tracing? Are you using it? Do you see this as the future of the gaming industry, or is there a revolution waiting for us somewhere else?
Source :Indian TV
