Raytracing: What Is It, How Does It Work - Which Games Support Graphics Technology?

2023 Author: Sheila Hailey | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-08-25 04:29

Everyone has been talking about ray tracing since the release of Nvidia's GeForce RTX graphics cards. But what is ray tracing anyway? How exactly does it work and which games are already supported? GIGA tells you this and more.

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That's what raytracing graphics technology is all about
Raytracing: Which games support the technology?
With which graphics cards can I use ray tracing?
What are the disadvantages of the new graphics technology?
Xbox Series X and PS5: do the new consoles also support ray tracing?

Raytracing: It's all about graphics technology

At the latest since the launch of Nvidia's RTX graphics cards in 2018, raytracing should be known to many players. But what is graphics technology all about? Ray tracing basically describes an algorithm for masking the environment, which is based on the emission of rays. This enables the visibility of objects from a point in three-dimensional space to be calculated.

In video games, ray tracing is mainly used to produce realistic reflections, shadows and lighting. To ensure this, the path of light rays in a scene is simulated in order to be able to calculate the light distribution.

Especially graphically demanding games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider currently rely on ray tracing - and draw real added value, as this video proves:

Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Official launch of ray tracing

In general, a distinction is made between different ray tracing methods by the complexity of the image calculation:

Only masking calculation: With this method, neither shadows nor lighting are included in the calculations - a plan-like image is created.
Shadow simulation (with only one shadow beam ): There is only direct lighting and hard shadows, light reflections are still not taken into account.
Recursive ray tracing: hard shadow boundaries continue to be used, but now the light reflection in reflective lenses is also taken into account.
Diffuse ray tracing: For the first time there are shadows that lose hardness at the edge, but illuminated lenses still do not act as their own light source.
Path Tracing: Everything comes together here. Shadow casts become soft towards the edge, illuminated objects act as their own light source.

Path tracing is not that easy. Finally, one has to take into account that this light beam can not only track a straight line, but can be mirrored or redirected by different objects within the game world.

In addition, every object that is illuminated by a light beam automatically becomes a light source itself and thus generates its own light beams, which must also be calculated from now on. But that is exactly what makes rendering graphics that are calculated via ray tracing look so credible:

Raytracing: Which games support the technology?

Thanks to DirectX Raytracing, or DXR for short, software developers in Microsoft's DirectX 12 graphics interface have the option of using hardware-accelerated raytracing. Since summer 2018, Nvidia in particular has been trying to showcase the added value of ray tracing - and for good reason. Finally, with their RTX-2000 graphics cards, they offer special graphics chips that have been optimized primarily for real-time ray tracing calculation - thanks in part to specially designed hardware.

But although Nvidia's ray tracing graphics cards have been on the market for more than 1.5 years, the list of games that already use the technology still looks pretty clear:

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
Control
Deliver us the moon
Metro Exodus
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
Battlefield 5
Quake II RTX
Stay in the light
Wolfenstein: Youngblood

Watch Shadow of the Tomb Raider (PC) on Amazon

Most ray tracing games do not use the full range of graphics technology, but only partially use it. In Battlefield 5, ray tracing is only used to calculate reflections in reflective surfaces, in Shadow of the Tomb Raider for realistic representation of shadows.

With Control, on the other hand, several functions are used at once. Reflections as well as shadows and indirect diffuse lighting are calculated via ray tracing.

Ray tracing from Nvidia: How it works - and this is how the developers use the feature

And what about the future? Raytracing will also be used in some upcoming games. Here is the list:

Minecraft
Cyberpunk 2077
Synced: off-planet
Dying Light 2
Watch Dogs: Legion
Vampires: Bloodlines 2
Sword and Fairy 7

Raytracing: Which graphics cards can I use the technology with?

Real hardware accelerated ray tracing in current games currently only supports Nvidia graphics cards - above all the RTX-2000 graphics cards. These have additional ray tracing cores that are used solely for such calculations.

However, since a driver update in April 2019, owners of GTX graphics cards with Pascal and Turing architecture can also use ray tracing - the results in the frame rate achieved, however, are far behind those of the RTX cards. Below is an overview of all supported ray tracing graphics cards from Nvidia:

Raytracing support: Overview of Nvidia RTX graphics cards

Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060
Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER
Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070
Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER
Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080
Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER
Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

Raytracing support: Overview of Nvidia GTX graphics cards with Turing architecture

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti

Further to the topic: Which graphics card do I have? How to find out!

Raytracing support: Overview of Nvidia GTX graphics cards with Pascal architecture

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 (6 GB)
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Ti
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti

Raytracing support: Overview of Nvidia Titan graphics cards

Nvidia Titan X
Nvidia Titan XP
Nvidia Titan V

Check out popular RTX graphics cards at Mindfactory

In addition, it should not go unmentioned that other graphics cards are also capable of performing ray tracing calculations - as demonstrated by Crytek's neon noir benchmark. The developers of World of Tanks are also working on an implementation that should allow all owners of a DirectX 11-capable graphics card to activate the feature.

Ray tracing without DXR - the "Neon Noir" benchmark shows how good this can look:

Ray tracing without RTX: The free "Neon Noir" benchmark shows how it works

Raytracing: what are the disadvantages of the new graphics technology?

But ray tracing takes its toll. Anyone who uses the new graphics technology should not be surprised if the frame rate goes down. The calculations are so complex that they negatively affect the performance of the game. Depending on the type and scope of the ray tracing implementation, the loss of FPS is sometimes stronger and weaker.

Especially the frame rate in Control, which uses a variety of different ray tracing options, suffers from the feature. Depending on the selected quality level, you can expect a drop of around 35-40 percent.

To counteract this phenomenon, it is recommended for many to activate Nvidia's DLSS option at the same time. In this way, the image loses detail and sharpness in most cases, but it may benefit from a powerful boost in terms of performance.

How high the performance gain can be by activating DLSS can be seen in the third-person shooter Anthem:

Anthem: NVIDIA DLSS provides a decent performance boost

Xbox Series X and PS5: do the new consoles also support ray tracing?

Ray tracing has become an issue not only in the field of PC hardware. The new Sony and Microsoft consoles, the Xbox Series X and the PS5, will most likely support the new graphics technology.

This should lead to more and more games relying on ray tracing in the future. And the future graphics cards from AMD will most likely support the new graphics function - not to mention the next Nvidia GPUs. Ray tracing will therefore continue to play an important role in the coming years.