Nvidia wants to remind game developers that ray tracing isn't the end of the world. A new technology in Cyberpunk 2077 called Overdrive Mode supports path tracing, the next step in making games look better and making you buy expensive new GPUs. Nvidia also announced the availability of a developer kit to help pave the way for the next generation of cutting-edge graphics.
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As ray tracing follows a single light beam in a scene, path tracing follows the light as it bounces in the environment, more realistically mimicking how it works in the natural world. It determines how nearby surfaces reflect or absorb light, producing more natural and more accurate soft shadows that more easily convince our brain that we are seeing a natural and real scene. It is a fact that for the gaming industry, having people perceive graphics as more realistic and natural is a progress that will continue without hesitation. Nevertheless, Hollywood has been using path tracing for decades, but it was a slow and costly process that did not work on consumer hardware or anything close to real time.
But you should hold your expectations in check for now because: You'll need the more powerful Nvidia RTX 40 series GPUs to enjoy Cyberpunk 2077's path tracing. Nvidia, however, is poised to push the industry towards what will be increasingly powerful consumer graphics in the coming years.
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The company says two of its technologies played a key role in producing this feat: DLSS 3 and Shader Execution Reordering. “DLSS 3 allows games to render 1/8 of the pixels and then use AI and GeForce RTX Tensor Cores to reconstruct the rest, dramatically increasing frame rates while delivering crisp, high-quality images that rival native resolution,” Nvidia said in its announcement.
While we'll have to wait a while for this technology to become widely available, Nvidia released a new SDK this week to help developers get ready. Owners of the latest and greatest Nvidia GPUs can test out Cyberpunk 2077's Overdrive Mode preview technology on April 11th.
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source of information: engadget.com
