The developers of the popular multiplayer game World of Tanks have promised to implement realistic shadows using ray tracing technology in the next versions of the Core graphics engine they use. After the release of graphics accelerators of the GeForce RTX family, ray tracing support in modern games will not surprise anyone today, but in World of Tanks everything will be done in a completely different way. Developers are going to rely not on the ubiquitous DirectX Raytracing (DXR) framework, but on the Intel oneAPI libraries, which will allow support for ray tracing on graphics cards of any manufacturer compatible with DirectX 11.
True, the use of alternative technology also imposes certain restrictions. Ray tracing in World of Tanks will be visible in a fairly small number of situations: only for military equipment that has not been destroyed and is under direct sunlight. Ray tracing in games that use the capabilities of Microsoft DXR and GeForce RTX changes the gaming world much more significantly, but do not forget that World of Tanks will use an alternative and universal approach that does not have an obvious dependence on the hardware available in the system.
The Intel oneAPI Rendering Toolkit library, which Wargaming developers have chosen to rely on, is a multi-platform rendering solution, originally aimed at professional applications. However, in World of Tanks, this library will be deployed for the benefit of gamers, which, on the one hand, emphasizes its flexibility, and on the other hand, gives a hint of how ray tracing can appear in promising Intel Xe video cards.
There is no further information on what performance impact adding ray tracing will have. However, given that the effects will be added to a fairly small subset of game details, we can expect the impact of tracing on framerate to be minimal. In addition, the developers promise that the effect can be turned on and off in the game settings.
“With the addition of RT shadows to the game, we will be able to recreate the “main characters” of our game in higher quality; the smallest details will cast incredibly realistic shadows when exposed to sunlight. RT shadows will provide even greater immersion in the atmosphere of a tank battle and a more enjoyable gaming experience,” according to the official website of World of Tanks.
You can see how the vehicle models will change after the introduction of ray tracing in the following screenshots.
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In the next updates of the Core graphics core, in addition to supporting ray tracing, the introduction of multi-threaded rendering is also promised, which should increase the performance of the game on systems built on multi-core processors. As the developers promise, new features will be added in the next updates after testing is completed.
Source: 3dnews.ru