Nvidia RTX ray-tracing and X-Plane (dev blog)

[Paraffin 2,197]

Interesting article on the dev blog about ray-tracing prospects in X-Plane (short answer, very exciting potential but don't look for it soon):

https://developer.x-plane.com/2018/08/nvidia-rtx-ends-with-an-x-x-plane-starts-with-one-perfect-match/#comments

The comments are interesting too. Given the distance of the ray paths and number of objects in the exterior world, I imagine we'll see it first as improved cockpit lighting, smoother shadows, and reflections offloaded to the GPU. Maybe the exterior of the aircraft also, but the cockpit is what could use it the most (IMO).

With the current hardware, we're still only at the level of an overlay effect where needed on a rasterized image, not 100% ray tracing. Much faster cards than the current RTX generation would be needed for that. The fact that realtime ray-tracing is even available at all, is still amazing!

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Paraffin said:

not 100% ray tracing. Much faster cards than the current RTX generation would be needed for that.

And those aren't 100% real ray tracing either ... they're all optimized/compromised because of the definition of what "light" is ... but it's the end result that matters ... sorta like audio compression and sample rates ... we have 192K audio sample sources, but what ends up in an audio file is usually at 44.1 or 48Khz and then compressed down, but very few would be able to distinguish the difference.

I'm far more optimistic that what I've seen of other's posts ... this is a big leap forward for accelerated graphics processing in real time.  It'll be interesting to see which simulator wins the race to ray tracing and which one performs the best with ray tracing.  If I were to hazard a guess I would say XP11, P3D, AF2 will all be supporting ray tracing within the next couple of years.  I mean who doesn't like crepuscular rays?  That would be my first implementation if I were a developer on any of these platforms ... dramatic visual that will be noticed (read will sell).

Cheers, Rob.

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Graphics cards are underutilized, there is more there for programmers to learn and one problem is if you hone in on a specific graphics card you exclude others, like the ATI though I do not hear much about the ATI anymore.  I tried an ATI once but switched back to Nvidia, I've just always been sold on Nvidia's performance and I have other programs, like No Limits Coaster Sim, that really exploit it well.  Xplane11 runs well with my Nvidia card even though it is short on VRAM, only 3GB.  Xplane10 used to complain with low VRAM but Xplane11 hasn't, something must have been fine tuned there.

John

[Paraffin 2,197]

32 minutes ago, Cactus521 said:

Graphics cards are underutilized, there is more there for programmers to learn and one problem is if you hone in on a specific graphics card you exclude others, like the ATI though I do not hear much about the ATI anymore. 

If I understand all this correctly (and I'm no graphics expert), this new ray-tracing stuff doesn't involve targeting one specific graphics card to the exclusion of others. 

As Sidney mentioned in the dev blog, ray-tracing will be an API for Vulkan that's supported across multiple vendors. Nvidia just got there first with the hardware in a consumer-level card (wealthy consumers, anyway). Others will follow. I think Microsoft is also involved in this, although I don't know all the details. It's an industry-wide effort, not just an Nvidia thing.

Edited August 29, 2018 by Paraffin

[saed45 38]

On 8/28/2018 at 4:39 PM, Rob Ainscough said:

And those aren't 100% real ray tracing either ... they're all optimized/compromised because of the definition of what "light" is ... but it's the end result that matters ... sorta like audio compression and sample rates ... we have 192K audio sample sources, but what ends up in an audio file is usually at 44.1 or 48Khz and then compressed down, but very few would be able to distinguish the difference.

I'm far more optimistic that what I've seen of other's posts ... this is a big leap forward for accelerated graphics processing in real time.  It'll be interesting to see which simulator wins the race to ray tracing and which one performs the best with ray tracing.  If I were to hazard a guess I would say XP11, P3D, AF2 will all be supporting ray tracing within the next couple of years.  I mean who doesn't like crepuscular rays?  That would be my first implementation if I were a developer on any of these platforms ... dramatic visual that will be noticed (read will sell).

Cheers, Rob.

Don't worry about the xplane community big guy. Better go fix your P4D . I am sure ray tracing will run great with 2 fps.

[Guest]

haha ... can you feel the love ...

Cheers, Rob.

[tonywob 4,768]

On 8/30/2018 at 1:29 AM, saed45 said:

Don't worry about the xplane community big guy. Better go fix your P4D . I am sure ray tracing will run great with 2 fps.

...and people wonder why the X-Plane community is sometimes given a bad name.