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The brighter the light, the more virtual photons the GPU must calculate, and the more surfaces it will reflect, refract, and scatter off and from. It traces the path of simulated light by tracking millions of virtual photons. Ray tracing in games attempts to emulate the way light works in the real world. Refraction occurs when photons - which travel in a straight line - pass through a transparent substance and the line is redirected, or “bent.” Destroyed photons can be perceived as “absorbed.” Reflection occurs when photons bounce off a surface. The more photons you have, the brighter the perceived light. That said, light could be identified as a stream of photons. Photons have no real size or shape - they can only be created or destroyed. It contains photons that behave both as a particle and as a wave. In the real world, visible light is a small part of the electromagnetic radiation family perceived by the human eye. To accomplish this, the GPU needs the ability to trace virtual rays of light. Overall, the GPU’s evolution has helped this process become more realistic in appearance over the years, but games still aren’t photorealistic in terms of real-world reflections, refractions, and general illumination. Take the comparison of reflections in GTA V below as an example. Surface textures can reflect light to mimic shininess, but only light emitted from a static source. Moreover, virtual models like NPCs and objects don’t contain any information about any other model, requiring the GPU to calculate light behavior during the rendering process. Developers place light sources within an environment that emit light evenly across any given view. Games without ray tracing rely on static “baked in” lighting. To understand just how ray tracing’s revolutionary lighting system works, we need to step back and understand how games previously rendered light and what needs to be emulated for a photorealistic experience. Read on to decide if ray tracing is essential to your gaming experience and if it justifies spending hundreds on an upgraded GPU. But what is ray tracing, exactly? And more importantly, how does it work?Ī good graphics card can use ray tracing to enhance immersion, but not all GPUs can handle this technique. It emulates the way light reflects and refracts in the real world, providing a more believable environment than what’s typically seen using the static lighting in more traditional games. Ray tracing is a lighting technique that brings an extra level of realism to games.