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.