DEVLOG JULY ’23
Something is coming…
As you might have noticed, I have a tendency to surprise you with sudden releases, without teasing for too long. However, this time, I believe it’s fitting to offer a small preview. This project has demanded a significant amount of my time already, and it will continue to do so.
RTGI 2: Electric Boogaloo
RTGI (Ray Traced Global Illumination) has now been available for over 3 years, garnering attention from gaming magazines, YouTube channels, and popular streamers. Its popularity even led to its inclusion in NVIDIA FreeStyle and inspired numerous clickbaity videos. One particular article that caught my eye was titled “Top 5 Ray Tracing Mods,” which featured RTGI, along with three misleadingly advertised presets of RTGI, and another mod that merely added “RTX” to its title.
It’s time for something better.
Something Better
I proudly present a highly scalable (world space) path tracing solution designed for virtually every video game (TM). Unlike standard ReShade effects, my solution requires deeper engine integration to effectively navigate the game world and access data normally not available through ReShade. Let’s delve into the details below.
My solution has the capability to store an extensive scene around the player, catering to nearly all use cases. The method used to store geometry is akin to spatial hashing and loosely based on voxels, but without the high memory consumption associated with traditional voxel approaches. A dense voxel representation of what it can hold would demand more than 40 GB of VRAM. Notably, in Skyrim SE, it efficiently handles the entire city of Whiterun at once. The process is dynamic, and upon cell change, stale data is automatically removed. Additionally, I’ve recently integrated ReSTIR GI, elevating the lighting quality.
I’m currently not able to handle dynamic light sources and do diffuse indirect global illumination only but this is only a matter of time and will require more game-specific work. Remember, this thing is portable to most games.
But how?
This is achieved by means of the ReShade addon API to interact seamlessly with the CPU-to-GPU data stream during rendering, akin to RTX Remix. This highly scalable addon integrates effortlessly into any game, forwarding essential data to shaders. My path tracing solution, though an experiment, delivers remarkable results even in Skyrim SE, with some missing buffers.
Compatible with nearly every game, it adapts to DX9, 10, 11, 12, OpenGL, or Vulkan, supporting 32-bit and 64-bit systems via ReShade’s universal interface. Think ENBSeries, except parametrizable in a matter of hours.
I want it now!
Development is still ongoing, and I plan to allocate more resources to this project while managing other effects. Consequently, there won’t be a shader release this month. The primary focus has been on Fulcrum, the addon that powers it all. Ensuring compatibility with the diverse ways games render their effects proves challenging.
You can get exclusive behind-the-scenes content about Fulcrum and the world space path tracing solution (still searching for a name…) on my Discord, which is a perfect opportunity to join my Patreon community. So, don’t miss out—subscribe now and stay in the loop! Follow all the things, click all the things.
Thank you! 🙂