NVIDIA releases RTX technology showcases

NVIDIA has released a trio of RTX technology showcase demos that give gamers a taste of immersive real-time ray-traced visuals and the improved performance that developers are bringing to games.

The three demos, which are available for free to all GeForce gamers, are:

- The Atomic Heart tech demo from Mundfish features ray-traced reflections and shadows, as well as NVIDIA deep learning super sampling (DLSS) technology. According to NVIDIA, DLSS is an NVIDIA RTX technology that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to boost frame rates in games with graphically-intensive workloads. With DLSS, gamers can use higher resolutions and settings while still maintaining excellent frame rates.

- The Justice tech demo is from China. It also features ray-traced reflections, shadows, and NVIDIA DLSS technology. It is the first time that real time ray tracing has been used for caustics. Caustics are patterns that result from light reflecting or refracting off a surface. 

Source: Unreal Engine blog. The Reflections tech demo is set in the Star Wars universe.

 
– The Reflections tech demo was created by Epic Games in collaboration with ILMxLAB and NVIDIA. Reflections offers a sneak peek at gaming’s cinematic future with a demo that showcases ray-traced reflections, ray-traced area light shadows, ray-traced ambient occlusion for characters and NVIDIA DLSS technology.

NVIDIA also released a new Game Ready Driver that enables millions more gamers with GeForce GTX GPUs to experience ray tracing for the first time. With dedicated RT cores, GeForce RTX GPUs provide up to 2-3x faster performance in ray-traced games, enabling more effects, higher ray counts, and higher resolutions for the best experience.

With this new driver however, GeForce GTX 1060 6GB and higher GPUs can execute ray-tracing instructions on traditional shader cores, giving gamers a taste, albeit at lower RT quality settings and resolutions, of how ray tracing will dramatically change the way games are experienced.

The following GeForce GPUs are now DXR-capable:

• GeForce GTX 1660 Ti
• GeForce GTX 1660
• NVIDIA TITAN Xp (2017)
• NVIDIA TITAN X (2016)
• GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
• GeForce GTX 1080
• GeForce GTX 1070 Ti
• GeForce GTX 1070
• GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB
• And laptops with equivalent Pascal and Turing-architecture GPUs

Explore:

View the new technology showcase demos

Watch the new video in NVIDIA's Explainer Series on how ray tracing works and is being implemented in games.

Download the Game Ready driver