Ray tracing, or raytracing, is a buzzword that’s been thrown around the gaming and tech worlds for a while now. Many people have touted it as the next great advancement in graphical development, and that might not be an overstatement.

Just this week, Epic Games showed off their latest lifelike and real-time capture technology that’s based around the concept of ray tracing. But before we get ahead of ourselves, what is ray tracing?

According to the University of North Carolina’s Paul Rademacher, “Ray tracing is a technique for rendering three-dimensional graphics with very complex light interactions. This means you can create pictures full of mirrors, transparent surfaces, and shadows, with stunning results. […]  It is based on the idea that you can model reflection and refraction by recursively following the path that light takes as it bounces through an environment.”

What’s that all mean for gaming? It means incredibly lifelike graphics in everything from sports games to shooters. Realistic lighting and reflections in particular are two things that ray tracing will revolutionize in the coming years. 

For evidence of just how much of a difference can be made to lighting and reflections using ray tracing, look no further that the video above. Epic worked with Nvidia and others to create the video that they hope will act as a showcase for their new tech.

The ray tracing tech that Epic showed off at GDC wasn’t just about reflections and lighting, though. They also placed a big focus on character creation. While basic ray tracing technology isn’t too rare, Epic’s new tech is ground-breaking in one very important way. It’s real-time.

Real-time ray tracing is something pretty unheard of in the tech space and Epic’s reveal has sent ripples throughout the gaming and tech communities.

The video above used Unreal Engine’s real-time rendering combined with 3Lateral’s Meta Human Framework to transform Andy Serkis’ MacBeth performance into a digital representation of itself. The video is only a proof-of-concept for now, but mass implmentation of Epic’s technology will no doubt have an incredible impact on the future of graphics. 

In and interview with GamesIndustry.biz earlier this week, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney claimed that his company’s latest tech is “a breakthrough that we’ve been waiting on for 20 years now.” A particular bold statement coming from a company who’s known for always being on the cutting-edge.

One of the biggest barriers to ray tracing is the fact that most hardware isn’t quite ready for it, both from a consumer and developer hardware standpoint. However, ray tracing is no longer some pie in the sky technology. It’s real, it’s produced actual content and it isn’t far from being ready for the masses.

In fact, Nividia announced just this week that the all new Nvidia RTX. According to the hardware company, the RTX is “a ray-tracing technology that brings real-time, cinematic-quality rendering to content creators and game developers.” On top of that, Nvidia also announced that they’d “partnered closely with Microsoft to enable full RTX support for applications that use Microsoft’s new DirectX® Raytracing (DXR) API.”

All this is to say that ray tracing has arrived in a big way and it’s gearing up to change the future of gaming.