Nvidia introduces RTX technology for hardware-accelerated ray tracing in games

Ray tracing, or beam tracking as it is called in Swedish, is a common technique for creating realistic computer-generated images, where mainly accurate representations of shadows, reflections and light scattering can give the method a clear visual advantage over traditional rasterization.

As the technology is extremely computationally intensive, it has been difficult to use it in real-time applications such as games, where high frame rates and low delays are critical. Instead, it is primarily used for pre-rendered applications such as special effects in film, where each frame can be drawn by rendering farms without any direct deadline.

In this year’s edition of the Game Developer Conference, however, Nvidia wants to change this with the help of its new technology RTX, which together with a graphics card from the company’s Volta family will enable hardware-accelerated ray tracing in real time for games. According to the company, the technology is the result of ten years of research, where, among other things, ray tracing pioneer Turner Whitted is said to have worked on the project.

RTX will primarily work together with Microsoft’s newly introduced graphics interface DirectX Raytracing and Nvidia’s software framework Gameworks, where the latter is updated with functions for ray tracing of shadows, reflections and later also ambient occlusion. At the time of writing, developers such as 4A Games, Remedy Entertainment and Epic Games will be working on implementing ray tracing in future titles.

Nvidia RTX and the updated version of Gameworks are available for select developers now. The technology requires a graphics card with the Volta architecture, but according to the company will also work on future graphics generations from Nvidia.