Home EnterpriseAccessories Unity Technologies & NVIDIA Bring Real-Time Ray Tracing To Automotive, M&E, & Gaming

Unity Technologies & NVIDIA Bring Real-Time Ray Tracing To Automotive, M&E, & Gaming

by Adam Armstrong

At GTC 2019, Unity Technologies announced that it is working with NVIDIA to offer production-focused early-access for real-time ray tracing in the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP). Ray-tracing mimics the physical properties of light; seeing it in real-time allows creators to alter their creation in real-time, a big advantage over those that can’t. Unity says that it will blur the difference between real-time and reality.


At GTC 2019, Unity Technologies announced that it is working with NVIDIA to offer production-focused early-access for real-time ray tracing in the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP). Ray-tracing mimics the physical properties of light; seeing it in real-time allows creators to alter their creation in real-time, a big advantage over those that can’t. Unity says that it will blur the difference between real-time and reality.

Leveraging the NVIDIA RTX platform, Unity is able to achieve, performant real-time ray tracing. This can deliver photorealistic image quality and lighting used in fields such as design, engineering, and marketing. Real-time ray tracing can speed up the completion of projects saving time and money versus rendering offline. According to Unity these industries can see the following benefits:

  • The automotive industry can include the power to create and rapidly iterate on lifelike marketing stills and videos that are near-film quality
  • In engineering and design, real-time ray tracing’s ability to faithfully recreate real-world materials and lighting scenarios unlocks the capabilities to identify design flaws, such as dangerous reflections or blind spots in a car’s design, and address them before going into production

Unity and NVIDIA are working with the BMW Group to showcase what is possible with real-time ray tracing. In a demo called “Reality vs Illusion: Unity Real-time Ray Tracing.” Rendered in real-time in Unity, viewers are shown a real car and a version of the car powered by Unity and NVIDIA. The challenge to viewers is to choose which car is real and which is rendered.

In the second half of 2019 an optimized preview solution available for customers.

Unity Real-Time Ray-Tracing

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