Since Nvidia Turing's announcement at Gamescom 2018, there has been talk of ray tracing. This rendering method has long been the problem in graphics technology, but finally, with graphics cards like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080, you can see this technology in the latest and greatest PC games.
So ray tracing may be one of the most significant graphical enhancements we've seen on the gaming landscape in recent years, or at least that will be the case once we see it implemented in more games. PC.
So what is the ray tracing? Well, it is an advanced and realistic way to restore light and shadows in a scene. That's what movies and TV shows use to create and integrate incredible works of synthesis with real-life scenes. However, since ray tracing simulates and tracks every ray of light produced by a light source, it takes a lot of power to render. This is the main reason we haven't seen ray tracing implemented in real games, until now.
Today ray tracing is really achievable in their games, but the larger titles to implement this technology only use it to a limited extent, such as rendering realistic reflections or shadows. We haven't seen an entirely ray-drawn game yet.
So now that ray tracing is the new technology behind the biggest PC games, we thought it was time to dive into what it is, how to do it, and what the goals are. The best ray tracing games. And as we hear more and more about this technology every day, we will keep this guide up to date with the latest news on ray tracing. So be sure to bookmark this page.
What is ray tracing?
Ray tracing is a rendering technique that can produce incredibly realistic light effects. Essentially, an algorithm can trace the path of light and then simulate how light interacts with virtual objects it encounters in the computer-generated world.
We have found that the effects of light in the game become more and more realistic over the years, but the benefits of ray tracing affect the light itself less than its interaction with the world.
Ray tracing provides much more realistic reflections and shadows, as well as greatly improved translucency and diffusion. The algorithm takes into account the point where the light falls and calculates the interaction and interactions, how the human eye would process real light, shadows and reflections, for example. The way light hits objects in the world also affects the colors you see.
With enough computing power available, it is possible to produce incredibly realistic computer generated images that are almost impossible to distinguish from real life. But that's the problem: even a well-equipped gaming PC has only graphics processor power, not to mention a modern gaming console.
Ray tracing is widely used when developing computer graphics images for movies and TV shows, but studios can harness the full power of a server (or computing) farm. In cloud) to get your work done. And even then, the process can be long and laborious. Doing it on the go was too stressful for existing gaming teams.
Traditionally, video games use pixilation instead. This is a faster way to render computer graphics. Converts 3D graphics to 2D pixels to display on your screen, but rasterization requires shaders to render realistic lighting. Fortunately, we are starting to see that many PC games are taking advantage of the specialized hardware of the latest Nvidia graphics cards to use ray tracing in real time, although rasterization is still necessary in most games, at least until the end. of the game. To make it possible for Ray to draw lighting engines in games.
So even though the results are not great at the moment, we are looking at some preparatory work that should have incredible effects. We could witness a total revolution in the way PC games are played, and right now we are on the ground floor.
(Image credit: EA)
Ray Tracing Games
Right now, there are only 5 games that use Nvidia ray tracing technology, and only a few big names at AAA. However, as this is new graphics technology in full swing, you can expect many more ray tracing games to appear in the coming year. And, if the PS5 project and Xbox Scarlett have large libraries of tracked games on the shelves, you can bet your bottom dollar will get to the PC. Here are all the ray tracing games you can currently play, as well as a taste of the RTX effects they use.
- Battlefield V - Striped Stripes
- Metro Exodus - Radius Traced Global Illumination
- Shadow of the Tomb Raider - Shadows drawn by Ray
- Stay in the light - global illumination reflected by rays
- Quake II RTX - Ray traced global illumination
While there aren't many games that feature advanced Nvidia technology, don't worry, there are plenty of other games that will soon use ray tracing. For example, Remedy Control will fully utilize Nvidia's RTX technology, with lightning reflections, shadows, and general lighting. You can expect this game to be beautiful and it can even melt your computer (in a good way). So here are all the upcoming ray tracing games announced.
Anyway, we are sure that many more developers are ready to follow the bandwagon and we will update this page as soon as we find out.
(Image credit: Future)
Ray-traced graphics cards.
In 2019, the only graphics cards that support real-time ray tracing come from Nvidia. AMD said it wants to launch ray tracing in the future. Although it will technically work on AMD graphics cards, it will turn every game you activate into a real slideshow.
That said, we recommend using at least an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 if you want to live your life in tracking mode. However, if you manage to buy something like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, your experience will be much better, which could make up for the abyss in your wallet.
So we have collected all the graphics cards that officially support real-time ray tracing. Spoilers: they all have the name "RTX".
(Image credit: LaComparacion)
Ray tracing performance
Without going into specific diagrams and numbers, although we are updating this article for the near future, it is easy to see that allowing these sticky effects will have a huge impact on the performance of your games. It is not weird. See huge drops of images when activating these effects.
For example, on Metro Exodus at 3,440 x 1,440 with the "Extreme" preset, we get roughly 41 fps with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. However, once we've enabled ray tracing with the Ultra settings, the performance drops are around 23fps on average. It is still playable, but you can feel the frame rate drop. Fortunately, this game uses DLSS technology, which basically uses AI to switch from one lower resolution to another. And if you activate this option, you will get more ips: for example, in the same Metro Exodus test with extreme quality settings and ray tracing at Ultra, we get up to 44 fps with DLSS Technology enabled.
In short, if you want to activate ray tracing, you will need to be careful in its resolution. If you want to play 4K ray tracing games, you will definitely need a 2080 Ti on your computer. However, if all you can justify is an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060, you should have no problem getting playable 1080p performance with ray tracing enabled.