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Ray Tracing To Debut in DirectX 11
crazyeyes writes "This is breaking news. Microsoft has not only decided to support ray tracing in DirectX 11, but they will also be basing it on Intel's x86 ray-tracing technology and get this ... it will be out by the end of the year!
In this article, we will examine what ray tracing is all about and why it would be superior to the current raster-based technology. As for performance, well, let Intel dazzle you with some numbers. Here's a quote from the article: 'You need not worry about your old raster-based DirectX 10 or older games or graphics cards. DirectX 11 will continue to support rasterization. It just includes support for ray-tracing as well. There will be two DirectX 11 modes, based on support by the application and the hardware.'"
Wasn't DirectX meant to be a generic middleman to allow developers to abstract away from the specific implementations?
What part of EXTINGUISH don't you understand? This is Microsoft standard procedure. You will ALL be assimilated.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I take that as less than an educated guess, in fact, gameplay quality can only improve when using raytracing. Less effort has to be spent on the rendering engine, no more hacks to make it look good, less chances to screw up on complexity and bugs and more chances of using the same 3d world and engine on multiple platforms from workstations to handhelds.
This increases the market window for quality games while also increasing the budget percentage that can be spent on level design and storyboard. I'm pretty optimistic about this one, as I hope that a rendering engine using raytracing can be a generic commodity so any independent game studio can easily get in the market and "hit the ground running" if you excuse this bad marketing metaphor. So I hope we see independent and less overused games and maybe even some new genres in the near future. New technologies always allow for that and I certainly remember when Wolfenstein 3d and others opened the door to the entire FPS genre we have today. I admit that while we have pixel-perfect glory by now, we're still stuck at shooting Nazis, but the same technology led to the development of modern 3d engines and hardware used for almost all games by now.
And even if raytracing doesn't bring any more diversity into the market, I am absolutely, positively sure we will have an in-game rendering of Omaha Beach in perfect 1080p HD, so *maybe* some game developers get the clue that players do not want to virtually land on Normandy beaches ever again.
Unfortunately: yes. But DX got more complicated with each generation, decreasing versatility. *Maybe* this isn't the case with ray-traced rendering - I certainly hope so.