Polyphony, the guys behind the Gran Turismo series, recently took to the stage at the SIGGRAPH Asia 2018 industry event (which showcases the latest in computer graphics and techniques) to reveal that they have been secretly working on their own version of real-time ray tracing.
Real-time ray tracing (which has been the stuff of dreams until the release of NVIDIA’s RTX 20-series) provides authentic looking shadows and reflections courtesy of the game engine tracing the rays of light as it bounces off the many different objects in a scene.
The (admittedly poor quality) video below, via wccftech, demonstrates the advanced lighting and reflections in what we can only assume to be a Gran Turismo Sport build of some sort, see for yourself below (starting at 7:25).
It’s certainly a big step up from Gran Turismo Sport‘s current and somewhat rudimentary reflections system. Whether or not we’ll see this real-time ray tracing technology in the next generation of Gran Turismo titles on the PlayStation 5 remains to be seen. One thing is certain though: Polyphony will continue to drop our jaws in the visuals department when it comes to Gran Turismo.
Great to see progress in the tech. Especially as lighting in games is already pretty darn decent.
Although I’m more interested in how it affect gameplay.
Its one thing to make cars more shiny more accurately, with better shadows. But I’m not paying too much attention to that when racing.
I want to see how it can affect low-light/night races. How will it impact visually with headlights, taillights, floodlights. Things that you depend on.
I thought especially the cockpit’s lighting in GTS looks extremely “off”. If they could use ray tracing to get the contrast, brightness and at least some indirect diffuse stuff going for the cockpit, that would be amazing for ME… but I assume most GT player don’t play from the cockpit. I even know a really fast guy who went from GT5-6 with a pad to PC-sims with a wheel, but still has to drive from the behind car camera… he can’t get used to interior or hood cameras.
As a CGI artist and GT player, I must say this is BS. The cant even put dynamic wheater in the game and we are still waiting for gt 6 track “creator” ahahahha.
They are very good with the lighting but this developer missed the target long time ago and now they are losing time.
It is or will be truly an amazing achievement to render all those cars with ray tracing in real-time on any normal console or pc! I’m not sure it will be possible without some false reflections… Be good to know more