The winners of the latest DXR Spotlight contest have been selected. The contest invited game developers and content creators to build tech demos in Unreal Engine 4.23, featuring Microsoft DirectX 12 and DirectX Raytracing. Dozens of participants submitted entries for a shot at the grand prize: an NVIDIA RTX GPU.

Ray Tracing: the Future of Real-time Rendering

Real-time ray tracing has ignited the imaginations of 3D artists worldwide. Development groups of all sizes – from AAA game teams to one-man art studios – have achieved beautiful results on NVIDIA RTX GPUs. Games like Control, Synced: Off Planet and JX3 Online show how real-time ray tracing can make game worlds look grounded and life-like. Professional visualization artists like Christian Hecht (Attack from Outer Space) and Opus Visual (LP Trailer) have built projects that demonstrate how ray tracing can be used to modernize art pipelines for industrial modeling teams.

More is coming, thanks to a thriving ecosystem for ray tracing that includes industry-standard APIs, support in a ton of game engines and NVIDIA developer tools.

There’s no better proof of the importance of ray tracing than the four winners of the New DXR Spotlight Contest:

Loong Force with Convallaria

Convallaria is a fast-paced battle royale game developed by indie team Loong Force. 100+ players compete on a large, dream-like open-world map. In the video, take note of the impressive ground reflections. RTX features are toggled on and off throughout to make the impact of the technique clear.

RT features: Shadows, Reflections, Ambient Occlusion

Watch the video here.

FYQD-Studio with Bright Memory: Infinite

Bright Memory is a lightning-fast first-person shooter, created by one-man development studio FQYD. On the battlefield, players can combine a wide variety of skills and abilities to unleash dazzling combo attacks on foes.

This demo offers a sneak peek Bright Memory with RTX On, and it delivers a level of photo-realism that wasn’t possible on consumer hardware two years ago.

RT features: Shadows, Reflections, Ambient Occlusion

Watch the video here.

Surgical Scalpels with Boundary

Boundary is a zero-gravity shooting game coming out next year. Realistic space environments provide players with an unprecedented omnidirectional shooting experience.

To light the game’s spacecraft, the developers harnessed the power of real-time ray tracing. In the video, note the subtle application of reflections and global illumination. Capturing a sense of realism was critical for this project; the team leaned into complex physics and lighting effects to make players feel as if they’ve left planet Earth.

RT features: Reflections, Ambient Occlusion, Global Illumination, Refractions

Watch the video here.

Tencent NExT Studios with Matt

Matt’s goal is to create a digital double for a real teenager named Matt. The developer scanned Matt with the help of 3Lateral in Serbia in 2017, and then generated a digital double in Unreal Engine. They produced a live demo for the digital human, set against the backdrop of a recording studio. RT Reflections were used for the knobs on the guitar to reflect the off-screen area, and RT Shadows enabled natural shadow effects.

RT features: Reflections, Shadows, Refractions

Watch the video here.

Congratulations to our four winners! With the talent and innovation they displayed in the DXR Spotlight entries, we know they’ll be putting their new NVIDIA RTX GPUs to good use!

