There is a new trend becoming popular in video game graphics and is called ray tracing. One of the largest video game publishing businesses, Sony, just announced recently that PlayStation 5 will be capable of it. It was PlayStation 4’s lead architect Mark Cerny who mentioned recently that ray tracing is going to be an important part of next generation console. It wouldn’t surprise us if this technique is going to be applied even to older games.
Ray tracing is a rendering technique that is enhancing the visual of a video game by generating an image by tracing the path of light as pixels in an image plane and simulating the effects of its encounters with virtual objects. It basically allows for light to coat surfaces and realistically fill space.
A modder has recently taken the ray tracing mod and applied it to Grand Theft Auto V. The mod name is ReShade and was made by Marty McFly (aka Pascal Glicher), a specialist in creating graphics mods and shaders who has been funding its development on Patreon. One of his Patreon’ supporters used still-in-development ReShade’s alpha version and applied it to Grand Theft Auto V. His YouTube video shows different vistas and areas in Los Santos world before and after the application of the ray tracing mod. There are actual photorealistic graphics at first glance and at a closer inspection and the results are simply astonishing.
Below is a showcase of Alpha Screen Space Ray tracing reshade shader created by Marty McFly
Grand Theft Auto V Ray tracing Global Illumination Demo
Ray tracing is not something new though, Battlefield 5 has it already integrated and is one of the selling points for NVidia’s new graphic cards line 2080.
Hopefully, we are going to see more similar tech demos for next-gen consoles especially as we get closer to PS5’s release.
Nora Reynolds is a major in biology and a minor in Biological Basis of Behavior, writing about science in general. She also likes to try new gadgets and sports about the AI new era.
