“Earn even on the GTX 470”: World of Tanks developers introducing Ray Tracing into the game

At the September “Tankman Day” event, Wargaming announced its appearance in World of Tanks for the first time

Ray Tracing technology, which should improvequality of shadows in the popular tank action game. Then the journalists were rather teased, since extremely little information was provided. Especially many questions were raised by the news that, unlike the already familiar implementation of this technology in games, Wargaming’s solution does not require a video card with hardware support for ray tracing. We contacted World of Tanks Encore RT product manager Alexander Shemetov and World of Tanks graphics programmer Denis Ishmukhametov and asked them a few questions. About optimization, how the technology works without RT cores, what computer configurations it is designed for, and approximate release dates.

gagadget:As I understand it, your technology is different from what users usually mean by Ray Tracing in games. At a minimum, it does not require an Nvidia Geforce 2060 video card. What else are the differences?

Denis Ishmukhametov:RTX is a proprietary Nvidia technology and weWe don't use it. World of Tanks uses the ray tracing (RT) algorithm itself, which has been used since the 80s. Our implementation uses DirectX 11, Compute shaders and the Intel Embree library. Thus, the calculations fall on the GPU and CPU. Typically, ray tracing works in three stages. The first stage is the construction of a data structure (BVH), where polygons are combined into boxes to speed up work. The second stage is where the tracing itself takes place—this stage can be used to draw shadows, global illumination, and more. Then comes the third stage, in which noise and grain are removed. On video cards with hardware tracing support, only the second stage is accelerated.

If we compare with Nvidia technology, our picture quality will not be different, the only difference is that we do not need the RT cores of the video card

Note:Due to the fact that in World of Tanks ray tracing uses DirectX 11, the function can be launched on Windows 7 and higher.

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gagadget: How are things going with optimization on multi-core processors? How efficiently will all cores be used?

Alexander Shemetov:In February of this year, World of Tanks releasedAn update that provides support for multi-core processors. With this update, it became possible to fully load all processor cores, including virtual ones. The technology introduced at that time made it possible to speed up the stage of building a data structure (BVH). So we prepared in advance. In terms of optimization and loading of all cores, everything works well. Along with the game client, support for multi-core and ray tracing was introduced into the World of Tanks Encore RT demo program. So you can already test the new technology in dynamics and evaluate the optimization yourself.

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gagadget:What exactly will ray tracing affect in World of Tanks? Shadows, reflections or lighting in general? For example, in Battlefiled V, reflections of fire and tracers from tank shells can be seen on puddles or car bodies. Will anything similar be implemented in your project?

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Denis Ishmukhametov:Now the power of video cards, even if theyThey use hardware ray tracing acceleration, which is only enough to implement one of the possible effects. There are games where shadows are worked out, and there are games where tracing is used to improve reflections or global illumination. It’s impossible to implement everything at once—the video cards won’t handle it. We decided to focus on shadows since in World of Tanks it is the most prominent part of the visuals.

Alexander Shemetov:It is worth clarifying that the shadows will go ontanks and from tanks. Due to this, we were able to achieve good performance, even in comparison with games that use hardware acceleration of ray tracing.

Unlike the shadow map, which is currently inmainly used in the gaming industry, the tracing is more accurate and realistic…Shadows from small details have become clearer and have lost the “ladder” effect, at the same time, new blurry shadows have appeared in the penumbra (penumbra), the space between the areas of full shadow and full light

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gagadget: As I understand it, it will be possible to enable tracing, both in HD and in the SD client of the game?

Denis Ishmukhametov:Yes, however, for the option to work, it will be necessaryenable "improved graphics" in the game settings. Setting is optional, if the computer does not "pull" - the player can turn it off. In addition, there are three RT operation modes: low, medium and high quality.

gagadget: What computer configurations is the new technology designed for? How much will performance drop?

Denis Ishmukhametov: To start shadow tracing it is enough to havea video card that supports DirectX 11 (Nvidia GTX 470 or higher or a similar AMD card). But with such hardware, the player will probably not get comfortable performance.

We counted on top-end video cards of five years ago - Nvidia GeForce 970, similar solutions from AMD and other manufacturers

Alexander Shemetov: Of course, we carried out testing, we approximatelyWe know what configurations our players play on. However, everything was carried out in greenhouse conditions on stable systems. In fact, it all depends on the user’s settings, the situation in battle, the map, personal preferences, the programs turned on in the background and many other little things. It's hard to say exactly. Especially for this purpose, we are releasing our demo application World of Tanks Encore RT, which will allow any player to try out the technology on his car and in his conditions and select a comfortable settings configuration in advance. The technology is optimized for AMD, Nvidia video cards and integrated Intel graphics, so there should be no problems on high-end laptops.

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