NVIDIA RTX Technology To Usher In Real-Time Ray Tracing Holy Grail of Gaming Graphics (hothardware.com)

HotHardware writes: NVIDIA has been dabbling in real-time ray tracing for over a decade. However, the company just introduced NVIDIA RTX, which is its latest effort to deliver real-time ray tracing to game developers and content creators for implementation in actual game engines. Historically, the computational horsepower to perform real-time ray tracing has been too great to be practical in actual games, but NVIDIA hopes to change that with its new Volta GPU architecture and the help of Microsoft's new DirectX Raytracing (DXR) API enhancements. Ray tracing is a method by which images are enhanced by tracing rays or paths of light as they bounce in and around an object (or objects) in a scene. Under optimum conditions, ray tracing delivers photorealistic imagery with shadows that are correctly cast; water effects that show proper reflections and coloring; and scenes that are cast with realistic lighting effects. NVIDIA RTX is a combination of software (the company's Gameworks SDK, now with ray tracing support), and next generation GPU hardware. NVIDIA notes its Volta architecture has specific hardware support for real-time ray tracing, including offload via its Tensor core engines. To show what's possible with the technology, developers including Epic, 4A Games and Remedy Entertainment will be showcasing their own game engine demonstrations this week at the Game Developers Conference. NVIDIA expects the ramp to be slow at first, but believes eventually most game developers will adopt real-time ray tracing in the future.

Comments

Re: No thanks, involves Windows 10

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah definitely we should halt all technological innovation and progress because you're a whiny cunt and Windows 10 exists.

Re:Microsoft, really?

[rgbatduke]

ROTFL. So, Mr. Troll, that means that you were bopping around on multiple desktops, using remote logins and graphical applications on one machine displayed on another, way back there in the late 80's and early 90's (when these were all developed features in Unix-based operating systems and Windows was a thin shell, stupid shell on top of DOS trying to compete with Apple's GUI)? Features that were in Linux almost from day one? I'd go down the list of things that were in the early Linux distros, such as SLS or Slackware, but the list is so long, and almost none of the things on it were available in WINDOWS, and those that were were software packages that you had to buy and pay for from third parties.

The only "advantages" WinXX has ever had are a) an arm-twisted, extortional lock on putting their OS on over the counter hardware -- basically locking down a monopoly via their ability to put any hardware seller out of business if they offered any other operating system on x86 based systems -- forcing all hardware manufacturers to ensure that their hardware worked with Sindoze if they wanted to sell it at all; b) the ability to steal every single valuable piece of software written for DOS or Windooze systems by cloning it with their large stable of programmers and then shifting the operating system beneath the feet of all of their competitors so that their "inferior" software would break while Microsoft's version of the same thing, tested in-house WITH the shifted OS base, did not. Then their team of talented FUD-spreading salesmen would hit up all the big companies that used (say) Word Perfect and point out how only Office was robust.

Microsoft itself hasn't had much in the way of original ideas for decades. They drove off all of the major developers so there isn't even that much software being written for their platform any more -- why write the next killer application for a MS box, in the certain knowledge that if you succeed you'll be forced to either sell out to MS at a fraction of what you might have made, or watch while they perfectly legally clone your idea and play the MS shuffle underfoot until the FUD you to death? About the only thing they have left is games, which have too short a shelf life and too specific a storyline to be worth stealing.

I very much doubt that they will remain "ahead" with this idea very long. Yes, it IS a tool for the only software market they have left alive, game development, but NVIDIA is no longer particularly opposed to open source tool development and will likely work with the various open alternatives to provide similar support that eventually reaches into e.g. Steam, unless MS has tied them up with some sort of nasty contract ensuring exclusivity. Even then, the toolset itself will be reverse engineered and cloned, it will just take longer.

Sadly, even though the US has antitrust laws on the books, they have simply never been enforced where MS is concerned. Oh, well, OK, one time, with a slap on the wrist and a fine that cost them less than what they were spending on legal fees defending their monopoly predator behavior in court. And they aren't going to be enforced now, not with the Oligarch-in-Chief in the WH and pension funds all over America heavily vested in MS stock. But Europe has indicated a lot less tolerance for this sort of thing, and of course China just steals whatever they want and laughs at "IP" protections as the absurdity that they are. Technology doesn't sit still, and this may be the last generation of PC desktops per se produced for the world, with laptops finally completing their takeover of this space. With every such revolution, MS's grip on their former monopoly seems to loosen. Interesting times.