Cross-platform graphics API Vulkan is now ‘ray-tracing ready’

The Khronos Group has announced that Vulkan’s SDK, tools, and drivers are now “ray-tracing ready” for developers.

Vulkan is an open-source and interoperable alternative to graphics APIs like DirectX, OpenGL, and Metal. Ray-tracing, meanwhile, is touted as the next big advancement in the visual fidelity of graphics, especially for games.

“4A Games was one of the earliest adopters of hardware-level ray-tracing by developing the first real-time raytraced global...

16 December 2020 | API

Unreal Engine 5 PS5 demo was just 1440p, 30 FPS, and lacked ray-tracing

A demo of Unreal Engine 5 running on the upcoming PS5 was running at just 1440p resolution, 30 FPS, and lacked ray-tracing.

The video is a decent graphical showcase of what the next Unreal Engine can do but is relatively disappointing on a technical level. Many gamers are expecting up to 8K games, 120 FPS, and jaw-dropping ray-tracing from the next-gen consoles, but the current demo is more along the lines of the performance from the current PS4 Pro and Xbox One...

14 May 2020 | Gaming

Xbox chief Phil Spencer expects next-gen games to be like ‘2D to 3D’

Xbox chief Phil Spencer is expecting a truly generational leap in games will occur later this year, likened to the jump from 2D to 3D.

We know from the specs that both the Xbox Series X and the PS5 are monsters that finally compete with even high-end PCs. However, there were some pretty photorealistic games available on the One X and PS4 Pro – so can we really expect that much of a jump? Spencer believes so.

Anyone who's been around games for multiple generations knows...

28 April 2020 | Gaming