IMAGINATION
RAY TRACING

Explore new frontiers in graphics

What is ray tracing?

Since the early days of 3D, traditional rendering has been performed using rasterization, where the geometry of objects are built up using a mesh of triangles and then ‘shaded’ to create their appearance. However, rasterization is only an approximation to the way the world is lit.

Ray tracing is different.

Ray tracing mimics how light works in the real world, where photons are emitted from a light source and bounced around the scene until they reach the eye of the viewer. Ray tracing sends out rays from the viewer (the screen) into the scene, onto objects, and from there to the light source. As the light interacts with objects it is blocked, reflected, or refracted by the objects along the way, depending on their material properties, creating shadows and reflections, even for objects that are off-screen.

Once the rays are fired into the scene, the lighting process occurs naturally, meaning developers do not have to spend time creating “fake” lighting effects.

This elegant approach to lighting scenes helps delivers graphics with far greater realism, improving games and visual applications while simplifying the lighting process for content creators.

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PowerVR Ray Tracing
SDK

Our PowerVR SDK includes ray tracing samples; practical examples to learn the basics of ray tracing using the Vulkan Khronos ray tracing extensions. 

PVR Ray Tracing
Simulation Layer

PVRRayTracingSimulation is a collection of Vulkan layers that simulate the capabilities and behavior of ray tracing on a PowerVR platform.

Get started

To learn more about the unique features offered by Imagination Ray Tracing,
such as the Coherency Engine, download our white paper.