From The Verge: Nvidia has released a new driver that allows ray tracing effects to be switched on in GeForce GTX 10- and 16-series graphics cards, such as the GTX 1080 and the GTX 1660. Ray tracing is a resource-intensive feature that makes rendering lighting, shadows, and reflections in real time look more realistic — and thanks to new DirectX Raytracing (DXR) support, you’ll be able to test it out with the painfully small batch of games that have actually adopted ray tracing. That currently includes Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Battlefield V, and Metro: Exodus (we’re eagerly awaiting more).
If you don’t have those games — or hey, if they’re old news for you and you’d rather not reinstall them — Nvidia is also offering a few new tech demos that you can download for free from its website.
By expanding compatibility for ray tracing to Nvidia’s older cards, more people can test out global illumination in Metro: Exodus, or see the reflective puddles in Battlefield V without having to buy new hardware. That’s cool, but don’t expect great, or even good, performance. If RTX-series cards were built to display how good ray tracing can look in motion, its purpose on lesser GPUs in the GTX 10-series seems geared to show how it looks frame by frame. We’re headed into choppy waters here.
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