Exactly how all of this ties into Intel's graphics isn't clear. Do they reflect

Path tracing can add remarkable realism to old games like Quake II. (Image credit: Nvidia)
The idea is that most material surfaces are made up of a large number of microfacets, each with its own particular slope or angle to the viewer or camera. These slopes can modelled en masse via a facet slope distribution function POE currency trade .

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The second paper provides a faster and more stable method to render glinty surfaces, which tend to be avoided especially in game engines due to the high computational cost of simulating them.

Exactly how all of this ties into Intel's graphics isn't clear. Do they reflect, no pun intended, upcoming hardware features that will be exclusive to Intel GPUs? Or will the learnings of these initiatives be something that the entire graphics industry can benefit from?

Whatever, the general tone of Intel's blog post implies that these are more long-term aspirations than firm targets for the near terms. We're not expecting Intel integrated GPUs to be running Cyberpunk with full path tracing at 4K next year, in other words.

But the basic ambition to achieve real-time path tracing on its integrated GPUs and Intel's emphasis on "affordability" are still very welcome. It's certainly a more democratic take on high fidelity graphics than Nvidia and AMD are currently pursuing in which $300 buys you a low-spec graphics card.

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By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.You can already hack Ray Reconstruction into Cyberpunk 2077 without the path tracing limitation, but Nvidia promises to open it up officially soon

Ray Reconstruction is the latest shiny ray tracing feature Nvidia, it's come along as part of DLSS 3.5 and it's made the Cyperpunk 2077 2.0 update look absolutely gorgeous. On Nvidia graphics cards only, of course. And only for Nvidia graphics cards that are capable of delivering a decent frame rate in the incredibly demanding path-traced RT Overdrive mode POE orbs .