The number of games and applications supporting RTX technologies has exceeded 500.
On August 20, 2018, NVIDIA will be able to bring cinema-quality visuals to life in games. Featuring revolutionary hardware and software support announced the first GeForce RTX graphics cards.
The feature that makes this feature possible is real-time graphics cards, which also caused the name of the graphics cards to change from GTX to RTX. It was ray tracing technology and according to NVIDIA CEO Huang, computer graphics had been reinvented.
The journey started hard
It is an undeniable fact that the path to realistic graphics is through the addition of real-time ray tracing technology to games. However, NVIDIA had difficulties convincing its users about this in the early days when RTX was released. Like any technology that advances in age, when RTX graphics cards are released, games that support real-time ray tracing will be the ones NVIDIA showed at the launch event. Battlefield V and Shadow of the Tomb RaiderIt consisted of .
GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, which was expected to exceed the 4K 60FPS limit in that day’s conditions, was released with the ray tracing feature turned on. It could only hit 60FPS at 1080p resolution. Moreover, the ray tracing feature, which was used only in reflections in Battlefield V and only in shadows in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, did not make a serious difference in the images according to most users, but only reduced performance.
NVIDIA’s solution to the performance drop was DLSS technology. DLSS, an artificial intelligence-based upscaling technology According to NVIDIA, it would cover the performance burden created by ray tracing without suffering a major loss in image quality.
However, since the artificial intelligence algorithm used in the first version of DLSS had to be trained separately for each game, the number of games supporting DLSS in the first year following the release of RTX was limited to the fingers of one hand. RTX platform a difficult adaptation process was waiting.
Released in 2019 control game It was the game that used ray tracing in the most detail to date and gave the first clues about what effect ray tracing could have on game graphics.
Compared to previous examples, ray tracing is used to calculate shadows, reflections, and lighting of the game world compared to ray tracing turned off. much more realistic graphics was providing.
Performance problems started to be solved with DLSS 2.0
The biggest development that caused RTX technologies to become so popular among gamers today took place in April 2020 and NVIDIA announced version 2.0 of DLSS. DLSS 2.0, which contains many innovations compared to its first version, has shown an incomparable improvement in image quality and performance increase.
DLSS 2.0, which was released with Control and Wolfenstein: Youngblood, did not deteriorate the image quality at all, unlike the previous version, and increased the visual quality when used in quality mode, but most importantly, it provided an increase in game performance that had never been seen before.
Another development on the DLSS side was how it was integrated into games. With version 2.0, the artificial intelligence algorithm underlying DLSS is now There was no need to train separately for each game and a single artificial intelligence model could be used in all games. In this way, it became much easier to add RTX technologies, whether ray tracing or DLSS, to games.
With the launch of the RTX 30 series, it is in its second generation. RTX technologies have taken off. Many modern games were now being released with ray tracing and DLSS technology.
Hardware accelerated ray tracing support for consoles and AMD graphics cards is once again a step taken by NVIDIA in 2018. What a big role it plays in the field of gaming technologies It showed.
In a short time before the RTX 40 series was announced, NVIDIA announced that the number of games and applications supporting DLSS exceeded 200. The technology, which could not be included in 5 games in the first year, has gained a revolutionary character with its 2nd version. It grew like an avalanche in two years. and was featured in almost all modern games, especially Red Dead Redemption 2 and Cyberpunk 2077.
Performance increase reached record levels with the RTX 40 series
With the RTX 40 series, DLSS has moved up once again and this time from NVIDIA square rendering technology announced. In this way, in addition to the upscaling feature, artificial intelligence also created frames and increased the performance increase from the 1.5 – 2 times we are accustomed to with DLSS 2.0 to 3.5 – 4 times. Moreover, since frame rendering was done only on the graphics card, the processor bottleneck that DLSS sometimes hit was no longer a factor.
As DLSS technology advanced, the level of ray tracing used in games also increased. Released in 2020 Cyberpunk 2077It was one of the games that used ray tracing most effectively to date.
CDProject Red, together with NVIDIA, announced the full ray tracing mode for Cyberpunk 2077, with the update coming in April 2023. Ray Tracing Overdrive met with users under the name. Although it had its minor flaws, a modern AAA game now had a mode that was rendered solely using ray tracing.
- Differences between standard ray tracing and Overdrive mode. On the right, the light emitted from the light source fills the environment in a much more realistic way. Source: Digital Foundry
NVIDIA was not satisfied with the Overdrive mode coming to Cyberpunk and used ray tracing. image problems caused by the difficulty of noise removal algorithms To solve this problem, it introduced DLSS 3.5 and Beam Forming features to users with the Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 update in September 2023.
Completing its evolution, DLSS was no longer merely increasing performance, but also objectively improving image quality. Full ray tracing and DLSS 3.5, which soon appeared in Alan Wake 2, made it known by many users as the best graphics ever in the mysterious world created by Remedy.
- From left to right: DLSS Off / DLSS 2 Super Resolution On / DLSS 3 Super Resolution and Framing On / DLSS 3.5 Super Resolution, Framing and Beaming On
The RTX platform, which could hardly deliver 1080p 60FPS values when it first came to the market, even with simple ray tracing features, is today A visual feast that is truly difficult to distinguish. It can exceed 100 FPS at 4K resolution with graphics that can be described as .
During this 5-year period, we have witnessed the number of games and applications supporting NVIDIA’s RTX technologies increasing day by day. The progress that NVIDIA has made in its mission to bring game graphics to the most realistic and performance level is truly impressive. In 2018 and before real-time ray tracing It was a dream for many.
Today, RTX technologies that play a role in making this dream come true are fully developed. 500 games and applications It is located. At this point, we need to take our hats off to what NVIDIA has done.
We look forward to seeing how ray tracing and DLSS will develop further. At this point, we hope that its competitors will not lag behind and will not allow NVIDIA to have a monopoly on advanced graphics technologies. However, for now, if you really want to experience top-level graphics in the vast majority of games on the market, NVIDIA seems to be the only address.