This article is part of the Electronics History series: The Graphics Chip Chronicles. In early 2018, NVIDIA showcased hardware-accelerated real-time ray tracing using its DGX system and the DXR API.

Since it was invented decades ago, ray tracing has been the holy grail for rendering computer graphics realistically. By tracing individual light rays as they bounce off multiple surfaces, it can ...

Real-time ray tracing has been one of the biggest advances in GPU rendering and PC gaming in the past decade. Due to the sheer hardware grunt required to achieve it, it kickstarted the push into the ...

Unless you're a physicist, you probably don't pay too much mind to the function of light in your daily life. Light is light, right? When there is light, we see, and when there isn't, we don't. But ...

Ray tracing is often hailed as the apex of gaming graphics, cited as the reason behind peak immersion and realism. Nvidia brought real-time ray tracing to consumer GPUs in 2018 and pushed the ...

Daniel writes guides on how to use the internet, explainers on how modern technology works, and the occasional smartwatch or e-reader review. He especially likes deep diving into niche topics that ...

Ray tracing and path tracing are two of the most exciting and demanding dynamic lighting techniques available to gamers and game developers in 2024. They both represent a massive leap in realism over ...

The gaming industry has been a forefront for technology since its early days, pushing the expectations of things like handheld computing, online communication, and of course, graphics. For the last ...

In brief: Compared to traditional rendering methods, real-time path tracing is often less labor-intensive and can help produce more realistic lighting and shadows in 3D graphics. However, due to its ...

WTF?! Real-time ray tracing is one of the most computationally demanding features in modern video games, significantly impacting frame rates on the latest consoles and most PC graphics cards. However, ...