NVIDIA Previews Real-Time Ray Tracing with Vulkan

cageymaru

cageymaru

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NVIDIA has released early work into implementing real-time ray tracing into Vulkan. The 411.63 driver enables an experimental Vulkan extension that exposes NVIDIA’s RTX technology for real-time ray tracing through the Vulkan API. The VK_NVX_raytracing extension is a preview of an upcoming vendor extension for ray tracing on Vulkan. The VKRay extension is hardware agnostic and can be implemented on top of existing Vulkan compute functionality. NVIDIA has ensured that it complies with existing core Vulkan API concepts.

We've released VK_NVX_raytracing as a developer preview to enable developers to acquaint themselves with RTX-based ray tracing in Vulkan. This can be used together with the latest Vulkan SDK from LunarG, which features support for all of our Turing extensions, to develop ray tracing applications using Vulkan. We strongly believe in Vulkan's core goal of providing a vendor- and hardware-agnostic API. NVIDIA remains committed to working within Khronos on multi-vendor standardization efforts for ray tracing functionality in Vulkan, and we've offered our extension as one starting point for discussion.
 
Creig said:
And since then they have given us open vendor and hardware agnostic API's such as G-Sync, PhysX, GameWorks...



oh, wait
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In the world of tech, many companies produce proprietary technologies. I don't take offense to it as my company does it. That is what capitalism is all about. More competition would change that.
 
Creig said:
And since then they have given us open vendor and hardware agnostic API's such as G-Sync, PhysX, GameWorks...



oh, wait
Click to expand...

Ha!!! PhysX? That was Ageia's proprietary tech. NV just bought them. If memory serves they also offered some portion of it to ATI, but ATI turned it down. (Admittedly my memory's a bit hazy on that though...)

Gameworks is debatable. It's software tools. Devs can take them or leave them. They don't prevent anyone from making a game.

G-Sync is decent tech, but I agree on that one. Some middle ground should be chosen there, but... ...that's not how it works these days.
 
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Weird to see nvidia embracing something that was based on an api that was originally amd's.
 
Chris_B said:
Weird to see nvidia embracing something that was based on an api that was originally amd's.
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It's too big for them to ignore I think. All kinds of game developers, hardware and software vendors etc. were a part of the initial push. I don't know that all of them are still on board, but that list was pretty impressive. I think it would have been a bad move for NV to ignore it, and they probably knew that. There's still not much out there in the PC space using it (at least not too many big studios / games). id being the most prominent in my opinion. Nintendo was on that list too, but I'm not sure if they're using it on the Switch or not. I would hope so, but totally not sure there.
 
*Looks around sheepishly*

Is there a demo or video we can download? (Oh, right, nevermind.)

But yes, this is good news. The cynicism comes from not being able to get a good look at what it can do on our own cards.

Could they at least release the Project SOL piece or something?
 
TAP said:
In the world of tech, many companies produce proprietary technologies. I don't take offense to it as my company does it. That is what capitalism is all about. More competition would change that.
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That is why AMD gave The Khronos group the source for Mantle to base Vulkan on.
 
Pieter3dnow said:
That is why AMD gave The Khronos group the source for Mantle to base Vulkan on.
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AMD is viewed as the underdog and they like that approach. They're fighting for market share and don't honestly have the leverage to take the same positions as Nvidia does. I applaud them for it but it won't affect my buying decisions.
 
Chris_B said:
Weird to see nvidia embracing something that was based on an api that was originally amd's.
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With Vulkan they see the writing on the wall. It's gained acceptance so rather than fight it they're jumping on board. Would be a giant waste of resources to try to push developers and the industry away from it. If you can't beat it join it.
 
And I bet that the hardware design for enabling efficient RTX style rendering is patented to hell and back!

This, and the fact that AMD and Intel would have to make a functionally identical hardware engine that’s just as efficient as nGreedias, while navigating a patent mine field would end up costing potentially hundreds of millions of dollars, making this extension nothing more than an empty handed positive PR trick from nGreedia.
 
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TAP said:
Opengl was around before Nvidia so any insinuation that Nvidia "sabotaged" it for AMD is probably false. Both ATI/AMD and Nvidia were members of the group and had equal opportunity to contribute to it's growth.
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Just like when AMD joined BapCo? Yeah, that really worked out for them...
 
Stimpy88 said:
And I bet that the hardware design for enabling efficient RTX rendering is patented to hell and back, making this extension nothing more than a positive PR trick from nGreedia.
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Stimpy88 said:
Just like when AMD joined BapCo? Yeah, that really worked out for them...
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I don't think you understand what opengl is. It's not a benchmarking company. Note the Khronos group's stance on extensions. https://www.khronos.org/opengl/wiki/OpenGL_Extension

I hope that helps.
 
J3RK said:
Ha!!! PhysX? That was Ageia's proprietary tech. NV just bought them. If memory serves they also offered some portion of it to ATI, but ATI turned it down. (Admittedly my memory's a bit hazy on that though...)

Gameworks is debatable. It's software tools. Devs can take them or leave them. They don't prevent anyone from making a game.

G-Sync is decent tech, but I agree on that one. Some middle ground should be chosen there, but... ...that's not how it works these days.
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They offered to license it to ATI, for an undisclosed amount. Intel countered the offer with Havoc at something far lower so they went that route.
 
Don't quote me on this, but I think nvidia offered AMD the physx license for free but they passed. BTW AMD was supposed to have GPU accelaration for havoc before nvidia even got Ageia, then bullet but that never happened.
 
TAP said:
With Vulkan they see the writing on the wall. It's gained acceptance so rather than fight it they're jumping on board. Would be a giant waste of resources to try to push developers and the industry away from it. If you can't beat it join it.
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The new RTX series absolutely loves Vulkan. NVIDIA isn't stupid and will support what it needs to support.
 
TAP said:
With Vulkan they see the writing on the wall. It's gained acceptance so rather than fight it they're jumping on board. Would be a giant waste of resources to try to push developers and the industry away from it. If you can't beat it join it.
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Fighting it? What are you even talking about? You're not keyed in to the history here. Nvidia is not Microsoft - they aren't interested in pushing a API like DX12 to force OS lock-in. They don't care which API uses their cards.

Once again, Nvidia has been all over Vulkan from DAY ONE. Even before day one while it was still in development they had engineers dedicated to it.
 
DPI said:
No, Nvidia has been supporting Vulkan from day one since it's the future - not DX12 which only works with one version of one file-deleting operating system.
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Nvidia has NOT supported Vulkan from day 1, the answer to that is "simple" Vulkan is AMD "baby" and Nv is unable to get the same "sweetheart" tricks/hax that MSFT has allowed them to do in DX for many many years.

they were ADAMANT against Vulkan in any way shape or form especially the "multi gpu" that could allow a Radeon to work with a Geforce (or lower end stuff to link up with higher end) among other things.

I remember reading along the lines of Nv not wanting to support Vulkan because they feared AMD leveraged something in the code that could hurt Nv products (even though Nv does this crap all the time, and has for a number of years)

Maybe Khronos told Nv along the lines of "well, you may not want to use Vulkan, but, we are done with OpenGL as of X date so you might as well jump on board"

Anyways.....if Nv will "properly" support Vulkan and not fk anyone else in the process. sweet deal, it might mean eventually more and more support for Linux "PC" gaming computers in a more user friendly way without the crapware/actions MSFT has been doing with Windows the last couple of years.

The more the merrier when they "play nice" in my books ^.^
 
dragonstongue said:
Nvidia has NOT supported Vulkan from day 1, the answer to that is "simple" Vulkan is AMD "baby" and Nv is unable to get the same "sweetheart" tricks/hax that MSFT has allowed them to do in DX for many many years.

they were ADAMANT against Vulkan in any way shape or form especially the "multi gpu" that could allow a Radeon to work with a Geforce (or lower end stuff to link up with higher end) among other things.

I remember reading along the lines of Nv not wanting to support Vulkan because they feared AMD leveraged something in the code that could hurt Nv products (even though Nv does this crap all the time, and has for a number of years)

Maybe Khronos told Nv along the lines of "well, you may not want to use Vulkan, but, we are done with OpenGL as of X date so you might as well jump on board"

Anyways.....if Nv will "properly" support Vulkan and not fk anyone else in the process. sweet deal, it might mean eventually more and more support for Linux "PC" gaming computers in a more user friendly way without the crapware/actions MSFT has been doing with Windows the last couple of years.

The more the merrier when they "play nice" in my books ^.^
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fwiw, they're (khronos) still working on opengl, but I think they're shifting back toward a more professional use focus. Of course, they're implementing comparable features to vulkan where possible/feasible.
 
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