Briefly on Ray Tracing and Real-Time Rendering

Ever since I wanted to create my own video game engine, I've always been keeping my eye on any sort of new gaming discoveries that have been made. I continually look at past articles on certain game engine techniques.

Lately, I've been studying some really complex mathematics behind Ray Tracing, which is a rendering technique that uses rays of light to determine object interactions and realistic reflections within the gaming world. It is STUNNING how realistic this rendering technique is! However, the only problem with Ray Tracing is that it requires a LOT of processor power to the point where it currently is not able to render in Real-Time on almost all computers. Movies are able to utilize this rendering technique because there are "rendering farms" that can render different scenes for hours and hours. However, video games update every fraction of a second, and thus cannot rely on mastering real-time rendering for all sorts of gaming computers anytime soon. 

Yet, I've read that Nvidia, a leading computing company that manufactures GPUs and specializes in graphics for gaming, has come out with a Ray Tracing library called RTX way back in March. Nvidia seems to be striving for real-time rendering in the distant future using this library! They also announced their largest GPU called the "Quadro GV100", which is supposedly $9,000!

There is so much to explain, and I will do my best to elaborate as I am learning this amazing topic! 

Here is a link to "How Nvidia’s RTX Real-Time Ray Tracing Works", which provides a really cool demo video for the upcoming game Metro: Exodus in 2019. I'll post the Metro video and a couple of video demos below too! 

 

How Nvidia's RTX Real-Time Ray Tracing Works

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/266600-nvidias-rtx-promises-real-time-ray-tracing