If you look at the typical RT applications like translucency, reflections, shadows, GI or diffuse illumination, are there some rules of thumb one should follow when starting off adding these to games? Specifically wrt performance, known pitfalls or typical errors one can do etc. And ideally some guidance on how to balance visual effects and RT versus Performance?
Thanks for joining the AMA - and great question - its been queued up for the experts to look at - thanks !
Excellent question - there are many things to take into consideration when adding ray traced effects to a game’s renderer. The main consideration to keep top of mind is for the ray traced effects to work hand-in-hand with the goals of your game’s art direction. This will change what performance costs are reasonable for any given effect. For example, if shadows are an important game mechanic (think of Splinter Cell) then a higher cost for extra nice ray traced shadows makes sense, but spending extra performance on RT translucency probably doesn’t make as much sense. For guidance on how to balance ray tracing and performance, we have a variety of webinars and other content that you can learn from. In fact, there’s a event coming up in August about RTX in Unreal Engine 5.
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