Exploring the Use of Ray Tracing for Future Games

Rasterization hardware and computer games have always been tightly connected: The hardware implementation of rasterization has made complex interactive 3D games possible while requirements for future games drive the development of increasingly parallel GPUs and CPUs. Interestingly, this development -- together with important algorithmic improvements -- also enabled \emph{ray tracing\/} to achieve realtime performance recently. In this paper we explore the opportunities offered by ray tracing based game technology in the context of current and expected future performance levels. In particular, we are interested in simulation-based graphics that avoids pre-computations and thus enables the interactive production of advanced visual effects and increased realism necessary for future games. In this context we analyze the advantages of ray tracing and demonstrate first results from several ray tracing based game projects. We also discuss ray tracing API issues and present recent developments that support interactions and dynamic scene content. We end with an outlook on the different options for hardware acceleration of ray tracing