If you’re a gamer who strives for the best graphics and realism in virtual worlds, you’ve probably already heard of the mysterious RTX acronym.
But what exactly is it, and why does it cause so much excitement among players around the world?
Let’s try to solve this mystery together in today’s article!
RTX is not just a set of letters, but a real revolution in the world of computer graphics.
The abbreviation Ray Tracing Texel eXtreme stands for real-time ray tracing technology.
Does it sound complicated?
Don’t worry, we’ll explain everything!
Imagine that you are watching a beautiful sunset.
The rays of light scatter across the sky, reflect off the clouds, creating an incredible play of colors and shadows.
This is exactly how RTX works, it simulates the behavior of light in the virtual world, taking into account all its reflections, refractions, and scattering.
This makes the graphics so realistic that it is hard to distinguish them from a real photo.
Ray tracing is the process of simulating how light rays interact with objects in a virtual environment.
Conventional rendering methods use various simplifications to create images that may look nice, but are not always realistic.
Ray tracing, on the other hand, simulates the behavior of light more accurately, allowing you to achieve incredible image realism.
This technology has long been used in the film industry to create special effects, but due to its high computational complexity, it was not available in games until recently. How exactly does RTX work? NVIDIA first introduced its technology in 2018 with the release of the GeForce RTX 20 series of graphics cards.
This was a major achievement that brought ray tracing to a wide audience of gamers and graphics professionals.
RTX requires a special hardware component – RT cores, which are part of NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX series of graphics processing units (GPUs).
These RT cores are specialized for processing ray tracing in real time, which significantly speeds up the process compared to conventional methods.
In addition to RT cores, RTX GPUs also have tensor cores that are used for artificial intelligence.
They help to process various effects, including DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling).
We will talk about this technology a little later. How does RTX differ from conventional graphics? Before RTX, games used older rendering technologies that did not take into account all the nuances of light behavior.
This resulted in fuzzy shadows, unnatural highlights, and flat and indistinct reflections.
RTX changes all of this radically.
Thanks to ray tracing, light in the virtual world behaves exactly as it does in the real world.
This means that: Shadows become softer and more realistic. They change their shape and intensity depending on the light source and the objects that block them. The glare gets a natural glow. They shimmer in different colors, creating the impression of real metal or glass shine. The displays become three-dimensional and detailed. You can actually see every detail of the world around you in the reflection, as if you were looking in a mirror. Global lighting creates an atmosphere. Light is reflected from all surfaces to create realistic lighting.
Now, let’s talk a little bit about DLSS, which is directly related to RTX Deep Learning Super Sampling, an innovative NVIDIA technology that uses artificial intelligence to improve the resolution of images in real time.
Simply put, DLSS allows your computer to create higher quality images than would be possible with conventional rendering.
This is achieved through the use of tensor kernels that perform complex calculations to improve image quality.
DLSS works as follows:Resolution. The game is rendered in a lower resolution, which reduces the load on the GPU. Artificial intelligence. Tensor kernels use pre-trained neural networks to increase the image resolution to the target resolution (e.g., 4K) while maintaining or even improving the image quality. Productivity. Allows for higher frame rates and improved performance because the GPU does less work rendering each frame.
Where can I see RTX in action? RTX is already actively used in many modern games, for example, Cyberpunk 2077 (there is already an article on this game, so you can read it), Control, Minecraft, Alan Wake 2, and many others. But RTX is not just about gaming. This technology is also used in the film industry to create special effects, in architecture to visualize projects, and in many other areas. Currently, NVIDIA’s latest and most powerful RTX-enabled graphics cards are the recently unveiled GeForce RTX 40 SUPER series at CES 2024. The series includes the GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER, RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, and RTX 4070 SUPER models. And this year, if the rumors are true, the RTX 5080 will be released, followed by the RTX 5090. Both graphics cards are likely to be introduced in the fourth quarter of 2024, which is roughly between October and December. Do you need RTX? If you want to get the most out of your games and enjoy the best graphics, then RTX is what you need. Of course, this requires a powerful graphics card with support, but believe me, the result is worth it! We can definitely say that RTX is not just another marketing ploy, but a real breakthrough in the world of computer graphics. It opens up much wider opportunities for game developers and allows us to enjoy virtual worlds that look as if they were real. So, if you want to keep up with the latest technology and get the most out of your games, don’t hesitate – choose RTX!