Last night was a riot of a night at Gamescom 2018, as NVIDIA announced its RTX series of consumer-level GPUs. These Turing-based GPUs are heralded by the company as the next big step in computer graphics. With mastery over real-time ray-tracing, the bouncing of photons around an environment can now be simulated both accurately and efficiently, producing more realistic lighting in real-time.
And what better way to show this off than with some video games? NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang invited three companies to show off the significance of real-time ray tracing, using NVIDIA’s RTX technology. First up, Eidos Montreal and Crystal Dynamics came forward with a beautiful trailer of their upcoming Shadow of the Tomb Raider, followed by 4A Games with Metro Exodus, and DICE with Battlefield V.
Eidos Montreal and Crystal Dynamics have made good use of NVIDIA’s real-time ray tracing to produce realistic shadows. The mix of silhouettes and HDR lighting shown are simply a few of the many improvements made with the RTX.
Metro Exodus doesn’t linger too much on its effects, and instead focuses on atmosphere. As mentioned in the presentation, the existence of real-time ray tracing will allow developers to easily hide things in dark spaces instead of having to play around with hidden light sources, which will be particularly effective for horror.
As DICE describes, NVIDIA RTX allows developers to imitate the way light is reflected in the real world to enhance the fidelity of reflective surfaces in every level, map, and locale in the game. This ensures a lifelike and dynamic experience to help players immerse in the unfolding chaos through a 360-degree space.
These three games will the first of many games to feature real-time ray tracing rendering techniques. Shadow of the Tomb Raider launches on 14th September 2018, Metro Exodus on 22nd February 2019, and Battlefield V on 19th October 2018. With the RTX Turing video cards launching as early as next month on 20th September 2018, many enthusiasts won’t have to wait long to start seeing real-time ray tracing first-hand.
