Ray Tracing: delivering immersive gaming experiences on Arm GPUs

Ray Tracing is an exciting and fast-moving technology that enables realistic and physically accurate 3D graphics in many fields, notably in films and animation, and more recently in console games. With the latest Arm GPUs, Ray Tracing will be accelerated in mobile devices and used by developers to take their applications to the next level. By simulating light as rays that interact with different surfaces in a scene, we can produce more accurate and stunning looking images in real time, immersing the users into the experience.

This talk will introduce Ray Tracing with examples developed in-house, demonstrating different effects that can be achieved with the new Ray Tracing APIs offered by Vulkan on Android: realistic soft-shadows, mirror and translucent reflections, ambient occlusion, and light refraction through glass surfaces. It will explore some of the best practices that will help developers integrate Ray Tracing in their applications. We will also share some performance results and optimization guidelines. Finally, we will discuss the tools and resources available to date for the Ecosystem.