Ray tracing is a computer-simulated rendering technique that uses algorithms to generate realistic lighting effects in the virtual world of games. In simple terms, it enhances the lighting effects in the game to the extent in the real physical world. It was first introduced by Nvidia’s RTX graphics cards but has already existed in other previous graphics cards. They could also produce realistic light rays effects in-game.
But the major thing that distinguishes the RTX graphics cards from some others is that they can render graphics of games in real-time based on ray tracing, also known as “Hardware-accelerated ray tracing”. Hardware for rendering that completely was first introduced by Nvidia RTX graphics cards.
What makes it possible?
· The architecture design
RTX graphics cards have a next-generation Turing architecture that contains ray-tracing cores which accelerate ray tracing in real-time.
· Acceleration structures
RTX graphics cards use acceleration structures containing organized data geometry that are used by ray-tracing cores for accelerating ray tracing.
· Advanced hardware
To process the photo-realistic light rays effects – as well as casting the rays for every pixel, they require much graphics processing power and require more tensor cores. RTX GPUs have DLSS 2.0 powered by tensor cores (Deep Learning Super Sampling) which is a newer and advanced version of previous DLSS that can sustain the FPS, high quality, and graphics settings at max level.
How does ray tracing work?
It involves the following processes.
· Ray Casting
Before we get into it, let’s first consider an example.
Suppose a light falls on the surface of a shiny green ball from a source. The surface of the ball in front of the source will be illuminated the most, and this brightness on the surface of the ball would decrease towards the far side. The side of the ball opposite to the source would not be illuminated, and thus a shadow will form on that side of the ball.
Since the ball is shiny, it can also catch reflections of its surroundings, such as the formation of slight images of other objects nearby on the ball's surface (not actually shown in the diagram).
The whole scene is recorded on camera with a screen. In RTX ray tracing, such photo-realistic images are generated by algorithms and acceleration structures based on the physics of light.
In the virtual world of games, rays of light are cast from the source. As the light rays hit an object, divide into many other Emissive rays, and create illumination, the resultant image is rendered and visualized by combining the properties of light and object, refraction, etc. using an algorithmic model.
· Processing the image
The image is processed by a graphics processing unit in RTX graphics card; ray tracing cores which have very high performance to render a photo-realistic scene in-game by ray casting while sustaining a good fps.
In depth, this process involves calculating the number of rays and intersections cast on each pixel by the graphics hardware.
· RTX Denoising
It is an essential process in RTX ray tracing as it limits the number of rays casted to remove any unwanted spots or lights. As well as, Nvidia uses this to increase fps.
Denoising involves filtering, spatio-temporal acquisition, AI, and sampling schemes to increase the uniformity of light rays and their edges.
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