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Interviews

NVIDIA Big Interview – Ray Tracing, DLSS, RTX Remix & More

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A few weeks ago, we had the pleasure of interviewing Luke Spring, NVIDIA’s EMEA GeForce Communications Lead. In this Q&A interview, we talk about Ray Tracing, RTX Remix, DLSS and more. So, without further ado, here’s our big NVIDIA interview.

DSOGaming: Can you explain in layman’s terms Ray Tracing and Path Tracing?

Luke Spring: Ray Tracing is a way of creating computer-generated images that makes them look incredibly lifelike, especially when it comes to lighting effects.

Instead of just adding light to a scene, ray tracing mimics how real light interacts with objects. It follows the path of light rays, simulating how they bounce off virtual objects and create shadows, reflections, and realistic colors, similar to how our eyes perceive light in the real world. If you trace enough rays of light in a scene (like all of them) you can accurately simulate the physics of light sources reacting with an entire scene – this is Full ray tracing, also known as Path Tracing.

DSOG: Right now, most games use a rasterized/Ray Tracing hybrid solution for their rendering. We’ve also seen a few games using Path Tracing. How far away do you think we are until full ray tracing rendering solutions become the norm?

LS: In the past five years we’ve already seen a huge movement away from fully rasterized games to the rasterized / Ray Tracing hybrid solution you describe. Nearly every title now features some form of ray tracing, from console all the way through to PC, it’s become a crucial tool for developers to create beautiful worlds. At the end of last year, we saw both Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty and Alan Wake 2 showcase how stunning full ray tracing can look. Ray tracing is a standard feature in hundreds of titles today and many developers are excited about the future.

Even modders are creating amazing experiences that feature full ray tracing, thanks to RTX Remix. Portal With RTX and Half Life 2: An RTX Remix Project show how good classic game remasters can look when given the full ray tracing and RTX make over. Currently, there are over 11,000 members of the RTX Remix Discord working on path-traced remasters of classic games.

The technology is here and we feel confident that we will see more and more titles in the not too distant future from modders and developers.

DSOG: What’s your favorite Ray Tracing effect/feature and why?

LS: We had a lot of success with Tomb Raider, Battlefield V and Metro Exodus in the early days of ray tracing.  I will never forget the first time I saw real-time ray traced reflections in Battlefield V. At that point real time ray tracing was considered a pipe dream.  I still find myself watching that trailer and appreciating what we, and DICE, achieved back then – At the time I don’t think many people realized the impact RT and DLSS would have on the industry, now we have over 500 games and apps supporting RTX technologies.

But Metro Exodus was super impactful for helping people ‘get it’ as far as the impact ray tracing would have on the gaming experience. It had ray traced global illumination. Most of the talk until then centered around the increase in image quality.

Metro Exodus: GeForce RTX Real-Time Ray Traced Global Illumination Demo

The Metro Exodus segment NVIDIA demoed at PAX Australia started with ray tracing off. In the demo the player awakens by the sea and follows a path to a shack on the shore. As you walk up to the shack, you see a skeleton before you enter. Everything in the shack is covered with a gray hue, so you know it’s supposed to be dark inside. But the lighting is just not realistic, so the spookiness is lost. Your brain is telling you ‘it’s supposed to be dark in there, there is a skeleton, this is supposed to be spooky’. But, because you can see everything, there’s no mystery.

Then we restart the demo with ray tracing on. Again, standing outside the shack, but this time the shack is dark. Not a gray hue, but dark.  You see something, but can’t make it out.  As you approach you can make out more elements. At the door, you can barely make out the skeleton as you approach the interior of shack. Its interior is nearly pitch black. It’s more an unsettling hint than stark reality. Once inside, you’re jolted by the skeleton hanging on the wall. Then you break out your lighter and you can see more stuff.  And the light from the fire looks like it was made by a real candle. It was crazy.

The result of turning ray tracing on in Metro Exodus changed the gameplay experience from ‘this is supposed to be scary’ to actually being scary.   It was very impactful.

Then there’s Alan Wake 2, which of course features full ray tracing. The tech completely transforms each scene –  Remedy did an amazing job. Their work on Control was highlighted by the community as one of the best RT implementations out there, and they took it to another level with Alan Wake 2.

DSOG: We’ve seen some developers implementing in their games software-based Ray Tracing solutions that run on all GPUs. Crysis Remastered and Avatar are two of them. Then we have UE5’s software-based Lumen. What’s your opinion on these RT solutions?

LS: It’s great to see RT being adopted by more systems and platforms, we’ve been a firm believer in the technology for a long time. Ultimately, we at NVIDIA are always pushing for the very best visuals possible, and we look to achieve that via a combination of hardware advances and AI solutions.

Our RT cores allow games to run incredibly intensive RT visuals, while DLSS Super Resolution and Frame Generation utilize AI to improve performance. On top of that you have DLSS Ray Reconstruction running an AI denoiser to improve image quality and RT effects even further. We feel this solution will continue to raise the bar when it comes to lifelike PC visuals.

DSOG: In the 20s, NVIDIA shared a lot of tech demos for its GPUs. From the Medusa to The Isle and the Chameleon, all of them gave PC gamers a glimpse at the future of PC graphics. Nowadays though, you haven’t released your Ray Tracing Tech Demos to the public. These tech demos could make more PC gamers understand the benefits of Ray Tracing/Path Tracing, so why aren’t they available for download?

LS: Ultimately our focus is on bringing these technologies to the games that people are playing.

We are no longer waiting years for new technologies to find their feet, we saw RT and DLSS implemented in games very shortly after their initial announcements and the cadence has only increased. The same can be said for DLSS 3.5 where we demonstrated the technology in both Alan Wake 2 and Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty on the same day we announced the feature. Gamers then got their chance to experience the new tech a few weeks later when the game’s released. I think this is a testament to how we work with developers and provide them with the tools to implement our technologies early-on.

Cyberpunk 2077 | Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode - 4K Technology Preview Reveal

As for being able to try out these features for free, our RTX technologies are included in some of the biggest AAA free to play titles out there including Fortnite (RT/DLSS/Reflex), CS2 (Reflex) and Apex Legends (Reflex). On top of that, RTX Remix gives modders a chance to integrate our newest RTX technologies in their mods, and give gamers an avenue to try free upgrades of classic games that show off the graphical cutting edge. For example, Portal with RTX (PT/DLSS/Reflex) was the first fully ray traced game with DLSS 3, and was a free upgrade for those that already own Portal, and surely Portal is in everyone’s Steam library?!

DSOG: Let’s talk a bit about RTX Remix. You released its Runtime in April 2023 but the Creator Tool is still not available. When can we expect the RTX Remix Creator Tool to come out?

LS: We are excited to say that the RTX Remix Open Beta is available to download now! Built on NVIDIA Omniverse, NVIDIA RTX Remix allows modders to create stunning RTX remasters of classic games with full ray tracing, NVIDIA DLSS, NVIDIA Reflex, modern assets with physically-based rendering, and generative AI texture tools.

We are already seeing some fantastic work-in-progress remasters from the community that people can check out on ModDB.

DSOG: Quake 2 RTX was one of the biggest surprises of 2019. We also know that Half-Life 2 RTX is in development. Are there any plans for RTX remasters of older games? Doom 3, Unreal, Deus Ex, Duke Nukem 3D and other classic FPS games would greatly benefit from Path Tracing.

LS: Other than Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project, which is being made by the Half-Life 2 modding community, we have no other titles to announce. But we are always keeping an eye out for suggestions! Additionally, with the launch of the RTX Remix Open Beta, many more of these types of ‘remasters’ are being developed by the community.

Half-Life 2 RTX, An RTX Remix Project - Announce Trailer

We really encourage anyone interested in RTX Remix mods to join the Discord group where a community of 11,000 modders are utilizing RTX Remix to turn RTX On in over 80 games. It will take time for many of these projects to be completed but the future of path-traced RTX modding is bright. We can’t wait to play them!

DSOG: DLSS introduced Super Resolution. DLSS 3 added Frame Generation and DLSS 3.5 brought Ray Reconstruction. What’s the next step for DLSS?

LS: We’ve continued to improve and update DLSS since its introduction in 2019 so it’s safe to say we have more to come. We’re always working to give gamers better performance and the best graphical experience possible, and that’s what we’ll continue to do in future iterations of DLSS.

DSOG: Are there any plans to enable DLSS 3 FG for the older RTX GPUs? We know that due to the lack of the Optical Flow Accelerator, DLSS 3 FG won’t be as good on these GPUs as on the RTX40 series. Still, a lot of RTX owners could be interested in enabling it, especially since FSR 3.0 now works on all GPUs.

LS: We built DLSS Frame Generation to deliver the best possible experience including FPS, frame pacing, image quality, and latency across V-SYNC/VRR display modes. Achieving this uncompromised experience requires use of dedicated hardware available on RTX 40 Series GPUs.

DSOG: AMD recently launched AFMF, via which you can enable frame generation in all DX11/DX12 games. Is NVIDIA looking into adding a similar driver-based frame generation feature for its GPUs?

LS: Without proper frame pacing and latency reduction technology natively integrated into the game, driver-based frame generation will likely struggle to generate good image quality and effectively manage latency, resulting in visual artifacts and laggy experience.

DSOG: Thank you very much for the interview, any last words you want to share with our fans?

LS: Thank you all for your support over the years. We love PC gaming and will continue to do our best to bring the best experiences and technologies to the space.