Crytek has showcased a new real-time raytracing demo which is said to run on most mainstream, contemporary GPUs from NVIDIA and AMD. The minds behind one of the most visually impressive FPS franchise, Crysis, have their new "Noir" demo out which was run on an AMD Radeon RX Vega graphics card which shows that raytracing is possible even without an NVIDIA RTX graphics card.

Crytek Shows Off Noir, A Real-Time Raytracing Demonstration Based on CRYENGINE That Runs on Most AMD and NVIDIA GPUs (No RTX Required)

The Noir demo has various scenes crafted within CRYENGINE and rendered in real-time on an AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 graphics card. This particular demo makes use of the experimental raytracing features which will be implemented in CRYENGINE 5. While Raytracing has been used to enhance reflections and shadow quality, this particular demo focuses on real-time raytraced reflections and looks stunning.

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Crytek states that the experimental ray tracing feature based on CRYENGINE’s Total Illumination used to create the demo is both API and hardware agnostic, enabling ray tracing to run on most mainstream, contemporary AMD and NVIDIA GPUs. However, the future integration of this new CRYENGINE technology will be optimized to benefit from performance enhancements delivered by the latest generation of graphics cards and supported APIs like Vulkan and DX12.

Crytek has released a new video demonstrating the results of a CRYENGINE research and development project. Neon Noir shows how real-time mesh ray-traced reflections and refractions can deliver highly realistic visuals for games. The Neon Noir demo was created with the new advanced version of CRYENGINE’s Total Illumination showcasing real time ray tracing. This feature will be added to CRYENGINE release roadmap in 2019, enabling developers around the world to build more immersive scenes, more easily, with a production-ready version of the feature. Ray tracing is a rendering technique that simulates complex lighting behaviors. Realism is achieved by simulating the propagation of discreet fractions of energy and their interaction with surfaces. With contemporary GPUs, ray tracing has become more widely adopted by real-time applications like video games, in combination with traditionally less resource hungry rendering techniques like cube maps; utilized where applicable. via CryEngine

CRYENGINE NEON Noir Raytracing Demonstration on AMD Radeon RX Vega 56:





















Now we have seen some implementations of real-time raytracing in AAA titles already. Both Metro Exodus and Battlefield V are the flagship carriers of real-time raytracing but these intense graphics features can only be enabled on NVIDIA's RTX graphics cards. Considering that Crytek managed to get their demo run on a Radeon RX Vega 56 graphics card is very impressive indeed but it would be interesting to see if the extra raytracing performance on NVIDIA RTX graphics card can deliver even better performance than equally performing non-RTX parts (e.g. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080).

The new real-time raytracing feature and CRYENGINE 5 would be an interesting talk at GDC which starts next week. Maybe we get to see more details in terms of performance and various hardware support. But it's good news that more developers and a major engine would now allow ray-tracing with a more open-support to modern day graphics cards.