When Nvidia presented the Turing graphics cards in 2018, everyone had to take a closer look: Did they commit themselves, or is it really there RTX
instead of GTX
? Almost five years later, RTX is the new GTX – but has the technology behind it also prevailed in the form of ray tracing?
This is exactly what we want to know from you in a current survey, which follows under the next paragraph. More precisely, it’s about ubiquitous ray tracing
by 2023, as Nvidia predicted a few months after the release of the RTX 2000 generation at the Siggraph technology event:
Our corresponding article from back then can be found under this link: Forecast: The first game with mandatory ray tracing will appear in 2023
One could debate at length what exactly it means that something ubiquitous
is – but after all, what is the comment section under our articles for? At this point we will therefore break it down to the essentials in the form of this survey in a very simplified way:
We look forward to a lively participation and a factual discussion in the comments! But we will give you a few rough facts and figures in advance.
Ray tracing in numbers and data
According to Nvidia’s own statements, there are now over 400 RTX title
. However, this also includes games that do not have ray tracing, but instead have Nvidia’s AI upscaling process DLSS. When it comes only to games that offer ray tracing, the number is loud PC gaming wiki currently at 165 titles.
For what purpose the technology is usedcan differ greatly. It is most commonly used for global lighting, reflections, shadows and ambient occlusion, but sometimes only for one of these areas or for combinations of them.
So-called path tracing goes more than one step furtherin which, to put it simply, all calculations are based on ray tracing. However, this is still very rare, as it places particularly high demands on the hardware. Cyberpunk 2077 will soon be the first current title with a glossy look and path tracing.
Matching hardware with ray tracing support (or hardware-side ray tracing acceleration) have all three current graphics card manufacturers in their range at the same time, i.e. in addition to Nvidia also AMD (since the RX 6000 generation) and Intel (with the new/first Arc generation).
How well ray tracing can be calculated with a specific graphics cardbut depends on several factors, including the number of suitable special computing units. Unsurprisingly, the trend is: the faster and more expensive a graphics card, the better ray tracing runs on it.
We took a closer look at what ray tracing actually is when the RTX 2000 generation was released. Feel free to read our short explanatory article with all the important information:
Now your opinion is asked for in the form of appropriate comments: What exactly would it mean for you that ray tracing ubiquitous
is? How far do you think Nvidia has gotten so far on the way there? And how do you feel about ray tracing in games in general? Unnecessary visual frills, the future/present of graphics, or something in between? Please let us know!
