Unreal Engine Gets a Host of Real-Time Raytracing Features

btarunr · Feb 13, 2019

Epic Games wants a slice of next-generation NVIDIA GameWorks titles that are bound to leverage the RTX feature-set of its hardware. The latest version of Unreal Engine 4, released as a preview-build, comes with a host of real-time ray-tracing features. In its change-log for Unreal Engine 4.22 Preview, Epic describes its real-time ray-tracing feature to be a "low level layer on top of UE DirectX 12 that provides support for DXR and allows creating and using ray tracing shaders (ray generation shaders, hit shaders, etc) to add ray tracing effects."

The hardware being reference here are the RT cores found in NVIDIA's "Turing RTX" GPUs. At the high-level, Unreal Engine 4 will support close to two dozen features that leverage DXR, including a denoiser for shadows, reflections, and ambient occlusion; rectangular area lights, soft shadows, ray-traced reflections and AO, real-time global illumination, translucency, triangular meshes, and path-tracing. We could see Unreal Engine 4.22 get "stable" towards the end of 2019, to enable DXR-ready games of 2020.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

xkm1948 · Feb 13, 2019

I want Unreal Tournament 4. UT3 was really awesome.

jabbadap · Feb 13, 2019

xkm1948 said:
I want Unreal Tournament 4. UT3 was really awesome.

Uhm, what is wrong with the current one. Other than that no-one is playing that:

https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/unreal-tournament/home

dj-electric · Feb 13, 2019

jabbadap said:
Uhm, what is wrong with the current one. Other than that no-one is playing that:

https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/unreal-tournament/home

Project was slashed, further development canceled due to success of Fortnite.
Was actually following this one close with dev streams. Shame.

EarthDog · Feb 13, 2019

Cool! More potential for RT!

ArbitraryAffection · Feb 14, 2019

Too late for Gears 5 to get RT? Maybe Gears 6? I think they are still using Unreal for that. I do like Gears of War (one of the best stories in video games i have played).

Dammeron · Feb 14, 2019

dj-electric said:
Project was slashed, further development canceled due to success of Fortnite.
Was actually following this one close with dev streams. Shame.

Only old timers like us still like to play classic shooters.

I also cry at nights cause another UT was canceled, especially since it's gameplay style went back to UT'99.

BorgOvermind · Feb 14, 2019

xkm1948 said:
I want Unreal Tournament 4. UT3 was really awesome.

There is one since a couple of years ago at least.
But UT99 remains my favorite.

FordGT90Concept · Feb 14, 2019

Whoa, whoa, whoa, Unreal Engine may have preliminary support for it but games that actually use it are likely years off. AFAIK, there still isn't any Vulkan nor D3D12 UE4 retail games on PC and that support has been floated for years.

Epic can lead developers to water but it can't make them drink. Most games made on UE4 anymore are indie which are all about gameplay. Most developers won't put in the effort to implement bleeding edge technologies because that translates to money they don't have for the project in the first place. If Epic wants those features to take off, it would have to first push it out in a game like Fortnite and make it easy for developers to use.

TL;DR: Don't get too excited.

phill · Feb 14, 2019

xkm1948 said:
I want Unreal Tournament 4. UT3 was really awesome.

I remember the original, it was amazing

I think one of my favourite FPS games ever

I'd love a newer version of Unreal.... I miss it

xkm1948 · Feb 14, 2019

Im still playing UT3 and even UT2003 with my wife from time to time. Great bonding game from the old days

EarthDog · Feb 14, 2019

My wife and I... Worms.

We used to play against/with each other in college in the late 90s.

phill · Feb 14, 2019

I'll have to train my girl friend up in gaming... Still got her everything but the motherboard so far!!

moproblems99 · Feb 14, 2019

EarthDog said:
My wife and I... Worms.

We used to play against/with each other in college in the late 90s.

As in for the PS2?

Edit: Like this:

EarthDog · Feb 14, 2019

As in the PC...and a version that isnt 16-bit/newer.

moproblems99 · Feb 14, 2019

EarthDog said:
As in the PC...and a version that isnt 16-bit/newer.

Man, used to love that game.

phill · Feb 18, 2019

moproblems99 said:
As in for the PS2?

Edit: Like this:

The Amiga 1200/4000 version was amazing

Mega Drive, not so great....

Have a few of the newer versions in Steam, not yet played on those sadly...

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Unreal Engine Gets a Host of Real-Time Raytracing Features

btarunr

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xkm1948

jabbadap

dj-electric

EarthDog

ArbitraryAffection

Dammeron

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FordGT90Concept

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phill

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xkm1948

EarthDog

phill

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moproblems99

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