Nvidias Next Lighting Tech Could Stop Ray Tracing From The Water
Ray tracing has been the most popular technology used in game graphics for the past few years. It's incredibly impressive however, it's also extremely taxing on hardware. Even the most powerful gaming PC typically takes up to a 50 % increase in framerates with ray tracing enabled, forcing gamers to apply tech such as super sampling to make up some of the difference. Nvidia isn't satisfied with status as it is. Real-time path tracking is the next step in game lighting and it's looking incredibly promising.
Path tracing is a more subtle improvement of Ray Tracing. It replaces separate, intricate lighting algorithms for various effects with a single, unifying algorithm, which boils down the lighting of an entire 3D scene into a single vast equation that is stuffed with rays. It is a holistic approach that contrasts with conventional Ray Tracing, which follows the light path of various sources and points for reflection or reflection. Then, it blends those results into more traditional "faked", rasterized lighting techniques like shadow mapping reflections on screens, and so on.
To boil it down to the simplest of terms possible that is: If ray-tracing a scene is done with an array of sophisticated geometry equations the path tracing method does the same thing using one massive physical equation. Priority game The video below shows the more in-depth breakdown of the technology, which combines both path tracing as well as ray tracing. Priority game
Path tracing is similar to ray tracer and has been utilized in pre-recorded 3D animations for a long time. It is now being made available to use in real-time 3D animation. Nvidia will use the lessons learned from the former to apply them to the latter and will showcase the results at GTC last Wednesday. HotHardware breaks it down, but you can still see the advantages of natural light of full-blown path tracking in the Mogawai Tiger demonstration.
The technology is a long way from ready for full integration into real-time graphics and even further away from being ready for games. While developers are able to play with path tracing using Nvidia SDKs, it's too taxing on hardware for anything but the demo stage or for the inclusion of older games with low resolution like Minecraft and Quake II. Priority game Framerate and resolution issues are aplenty and so does a "noise" issue with the graphics, similar to high ISO settings on still cameras. The algorithms that govern the light simply need to improve. But when and if the technology improves it has the potential for life-like lighting that beats anything available in the marketplace currently, with performance that isn't as demanding like ray tracing and similar technology.
