Archive notice: This article was originally published on July 30, 2012. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Anyone who thinks they are looking at a rendered animation when seeing the video is not entirely correct. In fact, it is real-tme raytracing with DirectX 11. The only information given about the hardware used is that it is an i7 processor together with an ATI Radeon 5870 graphics card. These few details in particular make experts sit up and take notice, because until now real-time raytracing is said to have been manageable only with great computing power. The following demo, however, shows a completely different picture if the information about the technology is to be believed – and causes amazement. It remains to be seen, however, exactly when this potential will be used in so-called state-of-the-art video games.
New DirectX tech demo:
3D real-time raytracing is also very close to the hearts of graphics-card manufacturers, as the following video from Nvidia shows:
