Have you ever stopped to admire the shadows and reflections in a game and wondered how developers make them look so real? That realism comes from ray tracing.
Ray tracing technology plays a huge role in immersing us in modern games by shaping lighting, time of day, and atmospheric effects. If you want to learn more about this exciting, revolutionary technology, we’ve got the goods below!
What Is Ray Tracing?
Ray tracing is a rendering technology that casts a light ray out from the camera’s POV, then traces its path as it interacts with different objects in-game, all feeding back to a light source.
Are the shadows of your avatar perfectly mimicking your in-game movement? That’s ray tracing. Are you able to look at in-game mirrored surfaces and see the game world reflected in vivid detail? That, too, is ray tracing! Is light bouncing off objects as it would IRL? Well, by now you can guess what’s responsible!
In a line? Ray tracing helps to make your modern games look real!
Want to know which games make the most of ray tracing? Read on for more!
How Does Ray Tracing Work?
Ray tracing can be summed up as a series of rendering algorithms. It has worked in a variety of ways since its inception, starting with huge quantities of dedicated processors that would take whole days to render scenes for movies!
However, NVIDIA changed the game in 2018 with the release of their Turing-based GPUs. Since this breakthrough, graphics cards boast advanced Ray Tracing cores and accelerators to render real-time ray tracing in your games. These cards are equipped with many functions and capabilities, such as ray casting, Bounding Volume Hierarchy (BVH), Ray-Traced Ambient Occlusions, and more.
Ray Casting Foundations
Ray casting is the foundational algorithm in the ray tracing family. The sampling of a scene starts here.
Ray casting establishes the rays from the point of view camera across each pixel on-screen. Then, this algorithm detects what they hit and what colour and lighting data can be extrapolated from those objects.
Acceleration with the Bounding Volume Hierarchy (BVH)
Creating a scene is a highly complex task. To reduce the number of calculations required for each ray, acceleration techniques are introduced to trim the fat.
BVH is one such ray tracing acceleration technique. It’s a data structure that helps the engine identify more quickly which objects a ray interacts with. Even if that object has millions of polygons, BVH shortens the processing time and gets the lighting effects rendered!
Ray-Traced Ambient Occlusion Techniques
Lighting isn’t just about focusing on the illuminated objects. It must also authentically create any subsequent shadows and determine how they play off the surrounding environment.
Ray-traced ambient occlusion is the algorithm responsible for rendering shadows in areas blocked by ambient lighting. These could be the corners of rooms or even in the folds of wrinkled skin. The level of detail it can simulate is meticulous.
Real-Time Global Illumination
Day-to-night cycles in games have never been more immersive! We have real-time global illumination to thank for that.
Global illumination used to be precomputed, monitoring how indirect light bounces and diffuses when it comes in contact with a surface. Today, it’s yet another algorithm that’s been enhanced for real-time results.
Denoising Finishing Touches
Post-processing techniques are just as essential for rendering realistic digital environments. This is where the fine-tuning comes into play.
Denoising is a further set of algorithms that scrub out blocky, grainy resolutions and unsightly discolouring. These anomalies aren’t part of the original image, and their removal results in a more photorealistic finish!
Is Path Tracing Different to Ray Tracing?
Path tracing and ray tracing shouldn’t be referenced interchangeably. They are separate technologies.
However, ray tracing is often associated with path tracing. Because they are sometimes confused for one another, it’s worth distinguishing them.
Path tracing is an enhanced form of ray tracing that tracks hundreds of thousands of rays ricocheting off objects or coming from the light source. It used to produce better results than standard ray tracing at the expense of speed, and so was reserved for long pre-rendering projects.
Today, path tracing has been developed to such a degree that its processes have sped up considerably. It’s now fit for producing real-time results in gaming, but it does require a lot more computing power and DLSS 4 support to get up and running.
What Hardware do I Need for Ray Tracing?
While fancy lighting, reflections, and shadows aren’t strictly new to gaming, they’ve never been as frequently or sharply displayed as they are today. So long as you have the right hardware, you can enjoy these immersive visuals!
Here’s a quick table highlighting the minimum hardware requirements that will enable ray tracing:
| Minimum Hardware Requirements |
|---|
| Dedicated GPU with ray tracing hardware – NVIDIA RTX 20 Series or higher / AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series or higher |
| At least 8GB RAM |
| Intel Core i5 CPU or equivalent |
Ray tracing is quite an intensive task. Should your components not be quite up to the task, you might experience a drop in performance. So, we recommend using powerful hardware that meets the recommended gaming specifications for CPU, GPU, and RAM before enabling ray tracing.
Ray Tracing FAQ
What is Ray Tracing?
Ray tracing is an advanced rendering technology. Through a series of algorithms, it projects a light ray from the POV of the camera. After that, ray tracing traces the path while it interacts with different objects in-game. Rich shadows and photo-realistic reflections in water and surfaces can all be attribute to ray tracing.
What is Ray Casting?
Ray casting is the initial algorithm in ray tracing that simulates how light interacts with objects in the real world.
What is Bounding Volume Hierarchy (BVH)?
BVH is a ray tracing acceleration technique and data structure that speeds up how quickly each ray identifies and interacts with in-game objects.
What is Ray-Traced Ambient Occlusion?
Ray-traced ambient occlusion makes shadows in in-game crevices and corners more realistic.
What is Real-Time Global Illumination?
Global illumination simulates how light reflects and bounces off surfaces for realistic shading.
What is Denoising?
Denoising erases grainy resolutions and visual noise for a more smooth and realistic image quality.
In Need of an Upgrade?
If you want to enable ray tracing, but your PC doesn’t have the sauce yet, don’t worry! Here at Overclockers UK, we’ve got everything you need to make the upgrade!
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ADD TO BASKETMore Ray Tracing Content
Do You Have Ray Tracing Enabled?
Do you enjoy all the perks ray tracing affords? Or do you need to make a strategic upgrade to confidently enable it? Whatever your situation, we’d love to hear all about it in the comments!
- 7 min read
George Moss
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George has long enjoyed writing and PC gaming, so working for Overclockers is very exciting! When he's not at the computer, he can be found adventuring with his apricot cockapoo, reading books on seabirds, or being a liability for his Dungeons and Dragons party.
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