Crytek has released a video showcasing the results of developing a new version of its own game engine, CryEngine. The demonstration, titled Neon Noir, displays the function of Total Illumination with real-time ray tracing.
A key feature of real-time ray tracing in CryEngine 5.5 is that it does not require specialized RT cores or similar computing units in the graphics card. All ray processing is carried out by standard computing units that are present in every graphics card, both from AMD and NVIDIA. To confirm this, the video demonstrating Neon Noir was created using the Radeon RX Vega 56 graphics accelerator. Furthermore, ray tracing in CryEngine 5.5 works with any API, whether it's DirectX 12 or Vulkan.
The developers do not reveal all the details; however, they do share some information. It is noted that the demonstration visualized reflections and light refractions using ray tracing, with reflections even being generated for objects not present in the frame. The global illumination of the scene was constructed using the voxel-based SVOGI system. This approach is somewhat reminiscent of the ray tracing implementation in Battlefield V.
Voxel-based ray tracing requires significantly less computational power than the approach NVIDIA offers with its RTX technology. As a result, quality images with ray tracing can be produced by graphics cards not only in the high-end but also in the mid-range price segment. As seen, the Radeon RX Vega 56 provides quite attractive visuals, although it belongs to the mid-range graphics cards, and its price is only 300 euros.
In conclusion, Crytek points out that its experimental ray tracing feature simplifies real-time rendering of scenes and animations with accurate reflections and light refractions at high levels of detail. Unfortunately, the resolution and frame rate of the published demonstration are not specified. However, it looks quite impressive.
Source: 3dnews.ru
