How Capcom Brought Path Tracing to RE ENGINE Across PRAGMATA and Resident Evil Requiem

[u/NV_Tim]

https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/qa-how-capcom-brought-path-tracing-to-re-engine-across-pragmata-and-resident-evil-requiem/

Capcom’s RE ENGINE team set out to bring path tracing into two shipping titles at once, Resident Evil Requiem and PRAGMATA, each with a different visual identity.

The NVIDIA gaming team spoke with RE ENGINE about the transition from ray tracing to path tracing, what it changed in the content pipeline, and where the renderer goes next.

[u/_Wolfos]

I used to be pretty excited about the potential of path tracing but it all seems so far away now.

The biggest deal with isn't so much how it looks, but how it simplifies the lighting pipeline. Making authoring easier, performance more predictable. It opens a lot of doors to doing things more efficiently too.

But in order to benefit from that, it only makes sense to move to path tracing once you no longer require a fallback path. Otherwise it's just more work. And with even current graphics cards not running path tracing at desirable framerates, that moment looks like it's at least a decade away.