Video games are becoming more realistic. The graphics and technology improve and playing certain titles has become an incredible experience that allows us to fully immerse ourselves in the plot. Thanks, in part, to techniques such as Ray Tracing or ray tracing that has been incorporated into some NVIDIA graphics cards for years and is already in next-generation consoles like the PS5.
Ray tracing allows for more realism in different scenes thanks to improved lighting in titles. How do you get it? We explain it in the next paragraphs if you want to know if it is worth it or what the technique contributes.
What is Ray Tracing and what is it for?
Ray tracing is a rendering technique or technology that calculates the bounces of rays from different forms of light and achieves dynamic shadows on 3D objects. It is a technique that requires powerful hardware and has many advantages in the end result, but one main drawback: it consumes a lot of resources.
What Ray Tracing achieves is not new or exclusive but a new way of achieving reflections and shadows in video games, something that was already done. But Ray Tracing makes it better. Until now, it worked as follows: the console or the computer “sees” a 3D scene and by calculating the distance to the objects, it knows or chooses where the light is coming from or which ones are ahead. Thanks to this information, the scene is drawn as a 2D image. But with Ray Tracing more realism is achieved in all the scenes and a better and more dynamic result. Of course, for this you need to have compatible hardware and not all graphics cards are compatible with this ray tracing technology.
Ray Tracing technology, as we have explained in previous paragraphs, has the main mission of improving the lighting, shadows and reflections of the video games we play. Although it is not an exclusive technology for gaming, it is being exploited mainly developed in this area. It is especially interesting if we are going to play action games since it will improve the experience in all the scenes in which explosions appear, for example, or if we are going to play a shooting title.
Where is it used
This method or technology is used in many of the big movies released every year but there is no need to use professional cinema equipment because ray tracing already works on some consoles and with some graphics cards today that allow us to enjoy its advantages in some video games.
In the future, it is expected to reach more and that we find that the new generations of consoles incorporate it, but currently we only see it in the Xbox Series X and Series S and in the PlayStation 5. In addition, the graphics cards that support it according to data from end of the year 2021 are the NVIDIA RTX 2000 and RTX 3000 series graphics cards and the entire RX 6000 family or range of the AMD brand.
