Eyes-on: Nvidia's RTX demo shows the eye-popping potential of real-time ray tracing
(PCWorld)

When it comes to gaming, real-time ray tracing has been the proverbial Holy Grail for decades. The technology mimics how lighting works in the real world. Objects are illuminated by 3D light sources, with rays bouncing around before reaching your eyes (read: the camera). Ray tracing is what makes CG movies look so lifelike, but the computing power required to generate ray tracing in real-time has largely prevented the technology from taking root in PC games.No more.Graphics cards and processors are staggeringly more powerful (and efficient) than yesteryear´s hardware, and close-to-the-metal APIs lets developers tap into them more directly. At GDC in March, Microsoft announced a `DirectX Raytracing` (DXR) feature for Windows 10´s DirectX 12 graphics API. At E3 2018, Nvidia showed off the power of the `RTX` technology coming in next-gen GeForce graphics cards to allow them to process real-time ray tracing much better than today´s GPUs do.To read this article in full, please click here