How does GPU ray tracing work? Are there algorithms using wave model?
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The simple explanation is that you simulate rays of light by randomly “emitting” rays from the camera. These rays are then followed until they hit an object, at which point they are bounced (aka. scattered) from the point of impact into another (sometimes random) direction, then follow that new ray and repeat.
This process continues until a maximum depth (max number of impacts/scatters) is reached. Along the way the resulting color (which is what the camera will see) is computed based on the properties, colors and materials assigned to each object as they are encountered by a ray.
High quality ray tracing takes *a* *lot* of rays to produce a smooth clear image. It is a very expensive process.
Modern GPUs can speed up the process significantly, they have hardware specifically designed for ray tracing but they still take a lot of shortcuts to be able to render in real-time, they don’t emit nearly enough rays to produce a realistic image. This is where other technology comes in. A raw ray traced image from a game will appear very speckled and noisy. Modern GPUs can use AI technology to process this noise over time into a much more life-like and smoother image without having to do additional ray tracing. In essence, they do a little bit of real ray tracing then fill in the missing gaps later.
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