v.1.3.0

HIGHLIGHTS

• Environment map refactor: dynamic procedural skies, higher resolutions, runtime texture compression and baking of directional lights now supported.
• SDK updates bringing feature, image quality improvements and bug fixes.
• Various smaller path tracer updates and features.

DETAILS

Features and changes

• Grand environment map refactor:
  • Switched to cubemaps as the backing & sampling format (was previously equirectangular 2D texture).
  • Added support for dynamic update and added a procedural environment example based on https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX sky & clouds.
  • Upgraded importance sampling and RTXDI bridge code to support cubemaps and dynamic environments.
  • Support for importing high res pre-baked .dds cubemap environments (in addition to equirectangular).
  • Support for dynamic GPU-based BC6U compression.
  • All positionless directional-only analytical lights are now automatically baked into environment map, simplifying the lighting code.
  • Added variants of existing scenes with enabled procedural sky.
  • Added a large number of high resolution example environment maps in cubemap format (4096 x 4096 x 6, BC6U) to the media repository.
• Shader compiler now using ShaderMake.
• Updated to DXC HLSL compiler v1.7.2308 and fixed & switched all shaders to HLSL 2021.
• Updated to Streamline v2.2.1 with various performance optimizations and bug fixes.
• Updated to latest RTXDI sdk-only branch which includes various fixes and refactoring from v2.1.0.
• Updated to newer NRD version v4.3.6 with a number of image quality upgrades and fixes.
• Added optional shadow rays NoL fadeout (exposed as part of material options) useful in hiding self-shadowing artifacts with low-poly geometry.
• Added support for the new Bounded VNDF sampling.
• Added ability to boost NEE light sampling for primary surface (exposed as UI option).
• Experimental automated image based regression testing.
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Bug fixes

• Vulkan stability fixes.
• OMM memory leak and stability fixes.
• Various UI and other smaller fixes.
• Fixed tangent space being wrong with normalmaps in certain cases, causing incorrect lighting.
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Known issues

• Vulkan port has some missing features such as SER and BC6U runtime compression for environment maps

v.1.2.0

HIGHLIGHTS

• Significant core path tracer light sampling improvements - reduced noise and artifacts.
• Various features, bug fixes, improvements and SDK updates.
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DETAILS

Features and changes

• NEE (Next Event Estimation) light importance sampling was refactored and support was added for local light importance sampling (uniform, power, ReGIR). NEE in general is now better separated from the rest of the codebase and supports adjustable number of light samples for distant and local lights. This provides much higher core path tracer lighting quality at the expense of some added cost.
• ReGIR (world space grid mode) now works in both NEE and RTXDI ReSTIR DI modes.
• Added ability to do per-pixel supersampling in realtime mode for higher quality & better reference output.
• Added low discrepancy sampling (only on path BSDF for now), based on Practical Hash-based Owen Scrambling.
• Upgraded to NRD 4.2.2 (see https://github.com/NVIDIAGameWorks/RayTracingDenoiser) and improved denoising default settings.
• General code cleanup & refactoring.
• Upgraded Streamline and OMM submodules.
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Optimizations

• Environment map presampling implemented for NEE importance sampling - it saves enough compute to allow for doing 2 samples instead of one!
• Various other minor upgrades.
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Bug fixes

• Fix for NEE and RTXDI lighting bugs with diffuse or rough transparent surfaces.
• Analytic spotlight light type now works.
• Various UI fixes.
• Various smaller fixes.
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Known issues

• Distant analytic lights are non-functional in some cases.

v1.1.0

HIGHLIGHTS

• Significant baseline performance (~30%) improvements
• Added DLSS Super Resolution, DLSS Frame Generation and Reflex
• Various bug fixes, Vulkan improvements and SDK updates

DETAILS

Optimizations

• Path tracer performance pass: better RR, removing redundant BSDF math, removing SER from non-random (stable) path decomposition pre-pass, etc.
• Texture MIP computation is now precomputed
• RTXDI now uses compressed GBuffer to significantly reduce memory bandwidth required as well as the size
• RTXDI now uses fused ReSTIR DI and ReSTIR GI apply pass to reduce unnecessary loading & processing
• Using tiled-swizzled packing for GBuffer and stable planes for more cache-friendly access patterns
• various other shader optimizations

Bug fixes

• fix for autoexposure bug causing overdarkening at certain resolutions
• fix for RTXDI bug causing blocky artifacts from low probability samples in disoccluded areas (i.e. when quickly turning camera)
• fix for RTXDI bug causing incorrect light resampling resulting in overly sharp shadows
• various Vulkan-related fixes
• various denoising (NRD) fixes
• various path decomposition fixes
• fix for random number generator seed being same on vertex 0 and 1 in some cases
• OMM fix for crash/hang when loading Sponza (#6)

Features and changes

• Streamline 2.1.0 integration (DLSS SR, DLSS FG, Reflex)
• Upgrade to NRD 4.2.1 (see https://github.com/NVIDIAGameWorks/RayTracingDenoiser)
• Various other RTXDI fixes & optimizations including upgrade to latest RTXDI sdk-only branch (https://github.com/NVIDIAGameWorks/RTXDI/commits/sdk-only)
• Path decomposition debug view (requires setting ENABLE_DEBUG_DELTA_TREE_VIZUALISATION to 1)
• Update to latest DXC compiler (https://github.com/microsoft/DirectXShaderCompiler/releases/tag/v1.7.2212.1)
• General code cleanup, dropping unused codepaths and etc.