Ray tracing is an ace within the gap for next-gen video games consoles, however Sony isn’t about to relaxation on its laurels with one of many PS5 console’s most spectacular graphical options.
Sony has been granted a patent for accelerated ray tracing, which is able to take away some stress from the graphics chip, whereas decreasing the rendering time on shaded visuals. If you happen to’re unfamiliar, ray tracing affords a extra practical copy of the way in which gentle behaves by way of reflections and shadows in video video games.
This patent in query might ultimately permit the ray tracing to be switched on with out compromising body fee and prime decision, and allow extra prime PS5 video games to utilise the standout characteristic all through the sport.
The patent (through The Gamer), awarded to PS5 architect Mark Cerny is named “System and Methodology For Accelerated Ray Tracing and System And Methodology For Accelerated Ray Tracing With Asynchronous Operation And Ray Transformation.” It means that the burden at the moment dealt with by the GPU may very well be offset by devoted ray tracing unit (RTU) {hardware}, thus dashing issues up.
In usually obtrusive language, the patent explains: “The RTU implements traversal logic to traverse the acceleration construction together with transformation of rays as wanted to account for variations in coordinate area between ranges, stack administration, and different duties to alleviate burden on the shader, speaking intersections to the shader which then calculates whether or not the intersection hit a clear or opaque portion of the item intersected.
“Thus, a number of processing cores throughout the GPU carry out accelerated ray tracing by offloading elements of processing to the RTU, which traverses the acceleration construction inside which the 3D surroundings is represented.”
Whether or not this may require a slight redesign of the PS5’s {hardware} with a purpose to obtain the objectives of the patent stays to be seen. It might be that we see this patent delivered to life if and when Sony decides to launch a PS5 Professional within the years to return.
