Ray Tracing and DLSS Technology: What They Are and How They Affect Games

Ray Tracing and DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) are two technological innovations that are redefining the standards of graphical fidelity and performance in PC Gaming. While the former focuses on enhancing visual realism, the latter optimizes performance to ensure a fluid experience, especially on Latest Generation Hardware.

1. Ray Tracing: The New Standard for Lighting

Ray Tracing is a rendering technique that simulates the physical behaviour of light. Instead of using approximate calculations (rasterization), it traces light rays through the scene to the virtual camera, resulting in:

Global Illumination (GI): Light reflects and spreads realistically across surfaces.
Perfect Reflections: Reflections on water, glass, or metal are accurate and dynamic, mirroring the environment in real-time.
Soft and Accurate Shadows: Shadows have gradations of softness based on the light source (soft shadows).

This technology demands enormous processing capacity, making it necessary for Graphics Cards to have dedicated cores (such as NVIDIA's RT Cores) to accelerate these calculations.

2. DLSS: The Answer to the Performance Challenge

DLSS is a proprietary technology by NVIDIA (and a competitor to AMD's FSR) that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to increase frame rates (framerate) without significantly compromising image quality.

How It Works: The game is rendered at a lower resolution (e.g., 1080p), and then a deep learning neural network scales the image to the monitor's native resolution (e.g., 4K), filling in the details.
Advantage: It allows the demanding Ray Tracing to be activated while maintaining high framerate rates, drastically improving the gameplay and visual fluidity.

DLSS has various iterations (DLSS 3.0 includes Frame Generation) that not only improve the quality of the scaled image but also create entire frames based on AI, independent of the CPU load.

3. Impact on Games

The combination of Ray Tracing and DLSS defines the graphic experience of the new generation:

Visual Fidelity: Ray Tracing offers photorealistic graphics that were impossible to achieve just a few years ago.
Accessibility and Fluidity: DLSS democratizes high resolution (4K and beyond) and Ray Tracing, making them accessible to a wider range of Graphics Cards.

Players of competitive titles (eSports) may, however, prefer to disable Ray Tracing in favour of the maximum possible framerate, as this is a key factor for fast-paced gameplay (Gaming Monitors).