Unreal Engine's real-time ray tracing feature was introduced at the GDC conference in March 2018 and has made significant progress over the past 18 months. This article provides an overview of the evolution and future development direction of Unreal Engine's ray tracing feature.
Ray tracing is a general technique in geometric optics that traces the path of light and collects the color information along the way to determine the final color of each pixel in a rendering. It provides more realistic results than traditional rasterization methods, with soft shadows, detailed reflections, and global illumination.
In the past, achieving ray tracing in real time was time-consuming and costly. However, with the introduction of Microsoft's DirectX Raytracing (DXR) framework and NVIDIA's RTX platform, real-time ray tracing became more accessible. Unreal Engine showcased its real-time ray tracing capabilities in collaboration with NVIDIA and Industrial Light & Magic at the GDC 2018. Since then, the technology has made progress and become more affordable, allowing for widespread adoption.
In the latest version of Unreal Engine (4.23), the ray tracing feature has been improved in terms of stability and performance. Epic Games is continuously working to further enhance the implementation and support for various geometry types. However, there is still work to be done before it is considered "production-ready."
Developers can download the latest version of Unreal Engine to try out the ray tracing feature and refer to the real-time ray tracing documentation for more information.
