eli5: Could someone tell me what the big deal about RTX technology is?
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RTX is nvidia’s name for hardware support for ray tracing. AMD and Intel also have their own versions.
Ray tracing, as the name suggests, actually simulates light by tracing individual light rays.
Every game before RTX, and still most games now, don’t realistically simulate light. They use a technique called rasterization, which is a bunch of shortcuts that looks mostly accurate. But it has it’s drawbacks. Most infamously, rasterization cannot really do reflections. Game devs have had to implement workarounds for any kind of mirror or reflective surface.
While ray tracing is *way* more accurate, it traditionally took too much time to calculate. That’s why it wasn’t used in games, where things have to be calculated in real time. But it’s been used in animation for a long time.
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