Ray tracing is one of the most exciting developments in PC gaming in recent years, allowing studios to create much more vibrant and realistic game environments. While it is not yet widely used in the industry, ray tracing capability is being added to an increasing number of top PC games.
So, what exactly is ray tracing, why is it not supported in more games, and what does it require to function properly? We’ll answer all of these questions in the explainer below. We’ll also tell you which graphics cards perform the best at ray tracing, which is essential if you want to maximize ray tracing speed.
RAY TRACING EXPLAINED
1.What is Ray Tracing?
Ray tracing is a rendering technique that can provide extremely realistic lighting effects. It is simply an improved and realistic method of simulating light and shadows in a scene.
An algorithm tracks the course of a light source and simulates how it interacts with various things it encounters, including the formation of shadows and reflections. It also supports more realistic translucence and scattering effects.
2.Why is ray tracing important?
Ray tracing support is relatively new and not widely available due to the computing resources required to simulate realistic lighting, as the algorithm must calculate where light interacts with virtual objects and calculate the interactions and interplay in the same way that the human eye processes light, shadows, and reflections in real life.
Before ray tracing was employed in games, a technique called as rasterization was common. This converts 3D visuals to 2D pixels for display on your screen and using shaders to provide realistic lighting.
3.Why isn’t ray tracing more popular?
Ray tracing is widely utilized in CGI-based films and television shows because production firms can leverage entire server farms or cloud computing to do the computations required to create computer graphics imagery.
However, video games have only lately been able to take advantage of it thanks to developments in PC gaming; and even now, there are certain restrictions, as it is far too demanding for current graphics cards to pull off a fully ray-traced game in the same vein as movie and TV program CGI.
However, graphics cards, particularly Nvidia’s GeForce RTX line, have advanced at a rapid pace and can execute more calculations.
4.What graphics cards enable ray tracing?
In general, if you want a graphics card that supports ray tracing while also providing a solid frame rate and well-rounded performance, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti and AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT and higher will deliver, with at least 40fps depending on the game.
However, if you want better ray-tracing performance, investing in the current-generation RTX 4000- or RX 7000-series is a wise decision. This guarantees that the graphics card is capable of handling the algorithms required to provide stunning lighting effects while maintaining a high frame rate.
Final Thoughts
While ray tracing is a remarkable technology in and of itself, various tools can help it function smoothly. Nvidia’s GPUs support Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS), while AMD offers FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR).
When comparing the two, DLSS performs better, but it is only compatible with Nvidia cards. Meanwhile, FSR has improved significantly but still lags behind DLSS, despite being compatible with both Nvidia and AMD graphics cards.
Some argue that DLSS is a superior technology to ray tracing because the latter is significantly less taxing on your gaming system while improving overall performance. Regardless, it will be interesting to observe how ray tracing develops in the next years.
