Ray tracing so far is all about making things looking fancier and shinier. Just look at Quake II RTX, which is made to specifically showcase ray tracing in action.
But there’s also a crop of games that are now working on ray tracing as a game mechanic. Stay In The Light, an indie horror game by one-man developer Sunside Games, is one of these. The game has procedural generation dungeons where you are hunted by “Him” and will appear in the shadows or reflections.
Nvidia is highlighting this indie game for various reasons. One is that ray tracing can be integral to gameplay. The other is that ray tracing is easy to implement. The one developer, Richard Cowgill, is a veteran developer, sure, but the fact that a one-man developer using a GTX 1080Ti can implement ray tracing is a big deal. Also, the fact that the game uses procedural dungeons shows how flexible ray tracing tech can be.No need to manually bake the lighting.
Stay In The Light is out now on Steam Early Access for RM28.20. As mentioned, ray-tracing is mandatory so a modern Nvidia GTX or RTX graphics card is required.