A few years ago, before the introduction of the Maxwell architecture, NVIDIA prepared a demonstration of Apollo 11 based on VXGI technology (Voxel Global Illumination). The green company wanted to rebuild this demonstration, now using ray tracing technology.
With the introduction of real-time ray tracing based on the new GeForce RTX cards, NVIDIA decided to reconstruct the Apollo 11 lunar scene and prove that it was not a hoax. The new demo was presented earlier this week by Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, during his presentation at GTC Europe in Munich, Germany, where Huang said:
“This is the advantage of NVIDIA RTX. With this kind of rendering technology, we can simulate the physics of light and things will look the way they should.”
You can watch the full presentation video on YouTube. It would certainly be great if NVIDIA would release some demonstrations of RTX technology while we wait for the games that are compatible with the technology so we can test them first hand.
“To update our original demonstration, NVIDIA engineers reconstructed the Apollo 11 lunar scene in Unreal Engine 4, a game engine developed by Epic Games. They simulated the sun’s rays bouncing off the moon’s surface from behind the lander, and Armstrong’s suit throwing light on Aldrin as he stepped out of the lander.” Commented by Nvidia.
Nvidia’s RTX technology is clearly very impressive. This latest technological demonstration also shows the potential it can have, not only in games, but also in the video as a general. It is clear that RTX is currently limited to 1080p resolutions and is not suitable for higher resolutions (e.g. 4k).
The GeForce RTX 2070 will be launched on October 17 and will also enable real-time ray tracing.