NVIDIA has revealed substantial enhancements to its NVIDIA RTX™ neural rendering technologies, showcased ahead of the Game Developers Conference (GDC). The advancements promise to revolutionize graphics programming, offering developers powerful new tools to create more immersive and visually stunning gaming experiences.
Microsoft has partnered with NVIDIA to integrate neural shading support into the DirectX preview, scheduled for release in April. This collaboration will grant developers access to AI Tensor Cores within NVIDIA GeForce RTX™ GPUs, enabling them to accelerate neural networks directly within a game’s graphics pipeline. This marks a significant step forward, blending AI with traditional rendering techniques to significantly boost frame rates, improve image quality, and reduce system resource demands. “Microsoft is adding cooperative vector support to DirectX and HLS, starting with a preview this April,” stated Shawn Hargreaves, Direct3D development manager at Microsoft. “This will advance the future of graphics programming by enabling neural rendering across the gaming industry. Unlocking Tensor Cores on NVIDIA RTX will allow developers to fully leverage RTX Neural Shaders for richer, more immersive experiences within Windows.”
RTX Kit Arrives in Unreal Engine 5
NVIDIA’s RTX Kit, a collection of neural rendering technologies designed for game developers, is also receiving major updates with the addition of Unreal Engine 5 support for RTX Mega Geometry and RTX Hair features. In parallel, the NVIDIA RTX Remix open-source platform, which allows modders to create impressive remasters of classic games, officially launched today. To further demonstrate the capabilities of these advancements, a new, playable Half-Life 2 RTX demo is set to be released on Tuesday, March 18. This demo will highlight the latest neural rendering enhancements, including full ray tracing, NVIDIA DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation, RTX Neural Radiance Cache, and RTX Skin, among others.
Furthermore, NVIDIA is celebrating the milestone of having over 100 games and applications now supporting DLSS 4.
The complexity of game geometry has grown exponentially over the past three decades. Leveraging the Nanite geometry system in Unreal Engine 5 empowers developers to construct expansive open worlds filled with hundreds of millions of triangles. However, as ray-traced game scenes increase in geometric complexity, the cost of ray tracing also grows, making it challenging to achieve real-time frame rates. RTX Mega Geometry addresses this challenge by accelerating the ray tracing of highly complex scenes, enabling developers to use up to 100 times more triangles than is currently standard. RTX Mega Geometry is coming to developers via the NVIDIA RTX (NvRTX) branch of Unreal Engine 5.
Introduced with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs, RTX Hair is a linear swept sphere primitive that provides a major advancement in accelerating the ray tracing of hair and fur. By replacing typical triangle primitives, linear swept spheres more accurately depict individual strands of hair, leading to improved image quality and performance in rendering realistic digital humans. RTX Hair will also be available in the NvRTX branch of Unreal Engine 5.
Return to ‘Half-Life 2’ With RTX Demo
At the CES trade show, NVIDIA demonstrated its neural rendering capabilities through a technology demo called “Zorah.” An updated “Zorah” demo, built in Unreal Engine 5, will be showcased at GDC, featuring the latest advancements in neural rendering, including RTX Mega Geometry, RTX Hair, ReSTIR Path Tracing and ReSTIR Direct Illumination.
The recent official release of RTX Remix offers modders the tools to deliver stunning RTX remasters with enhanced image quality and higher frame rates. Packed with DLSS 4, Multi Frame Generation, and community-requested upgrades, the platform allows modders to create visually impressive upgrades. A year ago, NVIDIA released RTX Remix in beta, enabling the creation of remasters with fully ray-traced lighting and enhanced materials. Over 30,000 modders have used the platform to mod hundreds of titles, and over 1 million gamers have enjoyed RTX Remix mods like Portal with RTX, created by NVIDIA Lightspeed Studios, and the modder-made Portal: Prelude RTX.
Half-Life 2 owners will soon be able to experience the capabilities of RTX Remix across the environments of Ravenholm and Nova Prospekt by downloading a free Half-Life 2 RTX demo from Steam, starting March 18. The remaster is being developed by Orbifold Studios, a collaboration of four of Half-Life 2’s top mod teams. The Half-Life 2 RTX demo features full ray tracing, remastered assets, DLSS 4, NVIDIA Reflex, RTX Neural Radiance Cache, RTX Skin and RTX Volumetrics.
Over 100 DLSS 4 Games and Apps Out Now
Introducing the world to DLSS 4 with the release of GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs, gamers and developers have responded overwhelmingly. Supported by over 100 games and apps, DLSS 4 achieves this milestone in two years less time compared to DLSS 3, making it the most quickly adopted NVIDIA game technology. DLSS 4 also introduced Multi Frame Generation, which uses AI to generate up to three additional frames per conventionally rendered frame, working together with the full suite of DLSS technologies to multiply frame rates by up to 8x over traditional rendering. These performance improvements on GeForce RTX 50 Series graphics cards and laptops allow gamers to maximize visual settings at the highest resolutions and play at exceptionally high frame rates.
Additionally, several upcoming games, including Lost Soul Aside, Mecha BREAK, Phantom Blade Zero, Stellar Blade, Tides of Annihilation, and Wild Assault, will launch with DLSS 4 implemented, enhancing PC gaming experiences for GeForce RTX gamers.
