Today is a great day for the gamer community, shortly after Khronos published the final specifications for Vulkan Ray Tracing, today we already have the confirmation, by NVIDIA, that the first drivers with support for the open-source API succeed the veteran OpenGL. Support comes with version 460.89 of the Game Ready variant of the manufacturer’s drivers, which can now be downloaded and installed normally.
- GeForce RTX 3050: Ray tracing and DLSS 2.0 with an affordable price
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- GeForce RTX 3050: Ray tracing and DLSS 2.0 with an affordable price
Official support for ray tracing arrive at Vulkan
This way, game developers who want to opt for Vulkan instead of DirectX 12 will no longer have to forego ray tracing, since until now only Microsoft’s proprietary API integrated the elements needed to employ this technology. This is one of the reasons why both Microsoft and NVIDIA chose the Bedrock version of Minecraft to bring ray tracing. With Vulkan Ray Tracing that exclusivity is now a thing of the past.
It is important to note, however, that at the moment the ray tracing support provided by Vulkan Ray Tracing is only compatible with NVIDIA graphics cards. The technology has been one of the main collaborators with the Khronos Group in the implementation of ray tracing in its API, while also working on incorporating such support in the drivers of its graphics adapters compatible with this technology.
But don’t worry if your graphics card is from another manufacturer, because although NVIDIA has actively collaborated in this implementation, obviously Vulkan maintains full compatibility with graphics adapters from other manufacturers, which will undoubtedly publish their own updated drivers with ray tracing support.
