Quick Note: AMD Shows Off Raytracing on RDNA2
by Ryan Smith on March 19, 2020 5:30 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- DirectX 12
- DirectX Raytracing
- RDNA2
With today’s announcement from Microsoft of DirectX 12 Ultimate, both NVIDIA and AMD are also chiming in to reiterate their support for the new feature set, and to note their involvement in the process. For AMD, DirectX 12 Ultimate goes hand-in-hand with their forthcoming RDNA2 architecture, which will be at the heart of the Xbox Series X console, and will be AMD’s first architecture to support DirectX 12 Ultimate’s new features, such as ray tracing and variable rate shading.
To that end, as part of Microsoft’s overall DirectX Developer Day presentation, AMD is showing off raytracing running on an RDNA2 for the first time in public. Running an AMD-built demo they call “Futuristic City”, the demo incorporates DXR 1.0 and 1.1 features, to produce what can only be described as a very shiny demo.
It should be noted that this demo was a recording – as all of the Microsoft dev day presentations were – though there is little reason to doubt its authenticity. AMD also showed off an RT recording a couple of weeks back for Financial Analyst day, and presumably this is the same trailer.
Source: AMD
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mode_13h - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link
Errr... no.First, I don't know why you think the number of surface types matters so much, but I don't.
Second, there are plenty of surfaces with diffuse reflections and even some with ripples. They're not all super-shiny, nor are they all flat. Curved, reflective surfaces are harder to ray trace well, due to the increased demand they place on anti-aliasing (which requires multiple rays per pixel).
Third, super shiny surfaces aren't easiest to ray-trace, because you have to worry about lots of secondary reflections. Non-reflective surfaces are easiest to ray trace.
mode_13h - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link
In that last sentence, I should've also stipulated non-refractive.And this presumes we're not talking about global illumination, where all surfaces are effectively reflective, to some degree.
Sefem - Saturday, March 21, 2020 - link
It matter anyway but it matter more because of the implementation (inline rt), the problem is tread divergence which kill performance on GPUs, dynamic-shading ray tracing gets away with a shader table and a different execution model but inline ray tracing is really sensible to that, that's why generally speaking it is better suited for situation were less or simpler shader are used while in other cases the former perform better.yes, curved surface are a bit harder than a flat one but it's anywhere near diffusive surface and do have they secondary reflection though? and how deep they go? are rt reflection applied to diffusive surfaces? I don't think the inline approach love much diffusive materials
watzupken - Thursday, March 19, 2020 - link
Its a demo for RT, so shiny is a "in your face" way to showcase this technology. If you look for RT in games, you may have to look around to spot the RT taking place.Samus - Thursday, March 19, 2020 - link
AMD used to have all the best demo's.Not sure what happened :P
mode_13h - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link
Granted, Nvidia's RTX demos were better. However, ask yourself whether you'd rather AMD put its resources into the underlying tech or fancy demos (assuming you can't have both).Dizoja86 - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link
The cost for a tech demo is not remotely comparable to the cost of developing hardware. If AMD only has a few thousand dollars to develop their next GPU, then they're in serious trouble.mode_13h - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link
Don't think hardware, but rather software. Their software development resources are clearly stretched. They probably don't have software development resources to spare on better-quality demos.That said, you make a good point about budgets, and I suppose they could've hired some outside firm to make a nicer demo.
yeeeeman - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link
It is not like AMD made an amazing RT hardware because they cheaped out on the tech demo...Dizoja86 - Thursday, March 19, 2020 - link
Good lord that was hideous.I know there's raytracing going on, but this just reminds me of how games looked in the early 2000's.