Games With Ray Tracing – What Can You Play?
Mike Sanders / 5 years ago
With the release of the Nvidia 20XX RTX graphics cards last year, Team Green launched what was (arguably) one of the biggest innovations in GPU technology for quite some time. Namely, ray tracing and DLSS.
Admittedly, there has been some (quite fair) criticism that despite the introduction of DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) and ray tracing, the gaming industry has been a little slow in adopting the new features offered.
If you are, however, a proud owner of an Nvidia 20XX graphics card and want to see what all the fuss is about, then the following games or applications are a great place to start!
Nvidia 20XX RTX – What is DLSS and Ray Tracing?
So, you might be wondering exactly what this technology does. Well, before we get into the games and applications that support the RTX features, we can give you a brief description of what both DLSS and ray tracing is and does.
DLSS
DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) is an Nvidia RTX technology that uses AI to boost a games framerate within graphically-intensive workloads. The main perk of it is that, in theory, higher resolutions can be used without any notable impact on a game’s performance.
Ray Tracing
Ray Tracing is a little bit more complicated than DLSS. In it’s simplest terms, however, the ray-tracing offered via the hardware in Nvidia 20XX graphics cards effectively allows for light and shadow to be realistically rendered in real-time.
So, what difference does this offer? Well, to date, games have had to manually insert lighting effects, reflections, and shadows graphically. In other words, if a lighting effect is shown, it had to manually be inserted there. With this new technology, however, it can be done automatically and to a much higher standard of realism.
It should be noted, for the sake of clarity, that Nvidia didn’t ‘invent’ this technology. It has, actually, been around for quite some time. The release of the Nvidia RTX graphics cards, however, provided the first modern and hardware dedicated solution for desktop users.
What Currently Supports the Technology?
Despite the popularity of the Nvidia 20XX graphics cards since their launch, to date, there aren’t exactly masses of games and applications that support the RTX features on offer. The good news is that the list is currently growing and, if you are in the market for something to stretch the legs of your brand new Nvidia card, then the following will be perfect for you.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare
Check out the official website here!
Control
Check out the Steam store page here!
Wolfenstein: Youngblood
Check out the Steam store page here!
Quake II RTX
Check out the Steam store page here!
Justice Online
Check out the Nvidia Justice Online website via the link here!
Stay In the Light
The first game released with RTX support built-in directly from the ground up. In other words, not ‘retro-fit’ into the overall release.
Check out the Steam store page here!
Battlefield V
Check out the Origin website via the link here!
Metro Exodus
Check out the Epic Games Store website via the link here!
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
Check out the Steam store page here!
Final Fantasy XV
Check out the Steam store page here!
3DMark Port Royal
This is one of the new synthetic benchmarking applications that offers support for DLSS and ray tracing.
Check out the Steam store page here!
Reflections
Nvidia’s own big demo that, as you might expect, looks to push the boat out with all the big features offered in their RTX cards.
Check out the Nvidia website here!
Upcoming Games That Will Offer Support?
Despite a rather tepid initial adoption rate by game developers, more games are on the way that will look to fully (and arguably, offer better) support for the Nvidia RTX features.
For news on upcoming game releases, check out the link here!
What Do We Think?
It should, of course, be noted that ray tracing compatibility is not (strictly speaking) the sole domain of Nvidia. AMD graphics cards can produce the effects via DirectX 12, however, do not (as of the time of writing) support the technology via separate dedicated hardware. In other words, using it has a significantly greater impact on performance via the current AMD platform. With AMD set to launch more graphics cards in 2020 (as well as Intel already confirmed to be on the hardware dedicated ray-tracing boat) expect things to get a lot more exciting in the very near future!
For more information on Nvidia RTX and graphics cards, check out the link here! As such, the future in this technology while in its infancy is more than a little exciting and will undoubtedly play a major role in the future! What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!
