Ray Tracing Explained: What It Is, And How It Works – SlashGear

Odds are good that you haven’t heard of ray tracing unless you’re in the modern gaming scene, where it’s become a prominent selling point for graphics card manufacturers like NVIDIA. That’s what the “RT” in “RTX” stands for.

Indeed, with the power of a high-end graphics card, you can experience your games with both the highest possible frame rate and ray tracing enabled, creating quite possibly the most true-to-life visual experience currently available. Of course, not all rigs can handle that kind of strenuous load- if you’ve noticed distinctive slowdown and frame-dropping while ray tracing is enabled on your games, it’s because your computer isn’t powerful enough to handle the necessary calculations and rendering.

Ray tracing has also become a standard in the theatrical animation industry. If recent 3D animated films have appeared more vibrant and expressive, that’s thanks to ray tracing. Even if the characters look cartoony, the world around them can still look similar to our own, thanks to the simulated behavior of light.

Ray tracing-enabled hardware is still on the pricey side, but as graphics card manufacturers continue to refine the process of simulating light, expediting it with algorithms and rendering tricks, it could become more affordable. As ray tracing proliferates, we’ll only become closer to our digital worlds.