Unreal Engine 4’s Latest Preview Supports “Real-Time Ray Tracing”

Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 4 will soon receive a major update, one which will integrate real-time ray tracing into the engine, enabling a wider range of developers to utilise Microsoft’s DXR (DirectX Raytracing) API and Nvidia’s RTX hardware. 

Thanks to the powers of early access, developers are now able to start using Unreal Engine’s ray tracing enabled version starting today, with Unreal Engine version 4.22.0 being available from the Epic Games Launcher starting today. Other engine improvements include support for Editor Utility Widgets, Blueprint indexing optimisations, virtual production updates and Oculus Quest support. 

When it comes to Ray Tracing features, this new version of Unreal Engine 4 will support raytraced soft shadows, reflections, ambient occlusion, real-time global illumination, translucency, a Denoiser solution for shadows, reflections and Ambient Occlusion. A full GI path tracer is also available to help developers create ground truth reference images inside Unreal Engine 4. 

This integration is a major step towards further DXR/Ray Tracing adoption, with the final version of Unreal Engine 4.22 enabling a wider range of developers to utilise the ray tracing capabilities of today’s cutting-edge graphics hardware. 

Below is a video which uses Nvidia’s RTX graphics technology and Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 4 to showcase a rendered version of the Apollo 11 moon landing, complete with real-time ray-traced reflections.