Published an API "DirectX Raytracing" that allows Microsoft to perform ray tracing in real time, to the age where the game utilizes ray tracing as well as movies

Microsoft is GDC2018, "Raytracing (Ray tracing)API for DirectX 12 that can take advantage of "DirectX Raytracing (DXR)"Has been released. NVIDIA and AMD have already declared DXR support, and it seems that ray tracing, which is used in movie production, will be used in PC games as well.

Announcing Microsoft DirectX Raytracing! - DirectX Developer Blog
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/directx/2018/03/19/announcing-microsoft-directx-raytracing/

Microsoft's DirectX Raytracing paves the way for lifelike gaming, the graphics holy grail | PCWorld
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3263746/components-graphics/microsoft-directx-raytracing-dx12-features-hardware-software.html

Human eyes can detect the light entering through reflection and refraction on the retina, and human beings can draw (recognize) images by combining it with the brain. In ray tracing, light that jumps in from various light sources from such a light source is used as light information to simulate an image. In ray tracing, which can be said as a technique utilizing the mechanism of lighting in the real world, it is possible to obtain an image reflecting information such as the reflectance, transparency, refractive index of the object, so that very high color reproducibility and image quality can be realized However, in order to compute the light path individually, enormous computing performance is required. For this reason, ray tracing seems to have been used only in the scene of movie production which is allowed to spend a long time using a high-performance machine.

For movies that are allowed to take a long time to render, real-time performance is required for PC games. Therefore, in PC games, "Rasterization ((Rasterization (Rasterize) "Is used as the technology. Rasterization can draw much faster than ray tracing, but to simulate visual information caused by the general characteristics of light such as scattering and refraction,Shadow MappingTechniques such as are required. Therefore, drawing made by rasterizing has limitation of "realness".

Microsoft has announced the API "DirectX Raytracing (DXR)" which can utilize ray tracing in real time. DXR is an API for DirectX 12 that uses a generic and flexible "CreateStateObject method", Microsoft says it can respond flexibly to changes in pipeline design.

According to Microsoft, PIX for Windows already supports DXR, and you can understand how DXR and hardware interact with each other.


In addition, Microsoft has announced that DXR is supported by Electronic Arts' Frostbite 'SEED', Epic Games' Unreal Engine ', Futuremark' 3DMark ', Unity' Unity Engine 'etc support DXR.

Electronic Arts released the video of "SEED" game using DXR. If you look at the following movie, you can understand how DXR can draw light in high quality and in real time with light.

SEED - Project PICA PICA - Real-time Raytracing Experiment using DXR (DirectX Raytracing) - YouTube


NVIDIA also has a technology on raytracing "RTX"We plan to support real-time ray tracing through collaboration with DXR. "Most games supporting both NVIDIA RTX and Microsoft's DXR expect to be implemented in hybrids," said Tony Tamasi of NVIDIA. AMD also reveals that it is collaborating with Microsoft on the definition, improvement and support of DirectX 12 and ray tracing, and we plan to support DXR with Radeon graphics.

Of course, there is not enough machine power to draw with ray tracing alone, so it is still a long way to realize complete ray tracing in real time. In the meantime, ray tracing is expected to be applied to drawing PC games in a form that adds a characteristic drawing of light to rasterize.