Ray tracing is a way to calculate how light interacts with a 3D scene. In games, it usually does not replace the entire rendering pipeline: rasterization still draws much of the frame, while rays are used for selected effects such as reflections, shadows or indirect lighting. The label alone does not tell you which effects a game traces, how much of the scene it covers, or how costly the setting will be.
How ray tracing makes an image
Rasterization and ray tracing approach the rendering problem differently. Rasterization maps 3D shapes, or primitives, onto the 2D screen. Techniques such as depth buffering and culling help determine which surfaces contribute to the visible image. Ray tracing instead follows rays through a representation of the 3D scene, finds where they intersect objects, and uses those hits to estimate the color of pixels.
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At an intersection, the renderer considers the surface, its material and the incoming light. Estimating that light may mean following additional paths: light could have reflected or refracted off another object before reaching the surface. As Microsoft’s Direct3D team puts it, “Raytracing calculates the color of pixels by tracing the path of light that would have created it and simulates this ray of light’s interactions with objects in the virtual world.” Microsoft’s DirectX explanation describes the underlying idea.
That does not mean a game literally traces every ray of light or computes every pixel from scratch. The renderer chooses which rays to cast, what they should hit, and how much of the lighting path to follow. Those choices determine both the result and the workload.
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Why games combine ray tracing with rasterization
Ray tracing can be applied selectively. A game may rasterize most of a frame and use rays only for a particular effect or set of surfaces—for example, reflections on reflective materials. Microsoft’s DirectX description explicitly presents ray tracing as something that can handle selected pixels or effects alongside rasterization, rather than an all-or-nothing replacement.
This hybrid approach makes practical sense: rasterization is an established way to produce the main view, while rays can help with effects that are difficult to represent accurately using rasterization alone. The two techniques can contribute to the same frame, with each doing work suited to its role.
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What a game’s ray-tracing setting might include
“Ray tracing” is an umbrella label, not a precise description of a game’s settings. Depending on the implementation, it may refer to one or more of these effects:
- Reflections: Rays can show reflected objects and parts of the scene that are outside the camera’s direct view, where a screen-space method cannot simply reuse visible pixels.
- Shadows: Rays can test whether light can reach a surface, helping produce shadows that respond to the scene’s geometry and lighting.
- Indirect lighting: Rays can estimate light that has bounced off other surfaces, adding illumination beyond light arriving directly from a source.
- Ambient occlusion or caustics: These are other effects that some ray-tracing implementations may target; their inclusion and methods vary by game.
- Path tracing: A broader approach that follows light paths through more of the scene and can combine lighting effects. It is not equivalent in scope or cost to enabling a single ray-traced effect.
NVIDIA’s overview of DirectX ray tracing discusses these effect categories and notes that their performance demands differ. To understand a specific game’s toggle, check its graphics menu or documentation for the named effect, quality level and any separate options—not just the words “ray tracing.”
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What happens between casting a ray and showing a pixel
A ray must be tested against scene geometry to find an intersection. Testing it against every primitive would be expensive, so renderers can organize geometry in an acceleration structure such as a bounding volume hierarchy (BVH). The BVH helps rule out large portions of the scene without checking every shape individually, but traversal and intersection work still take computation.
Real-time renderers also commonly use denoising. With a limited number of rays, the raw result can be noisy; denoising processes that result to create a cleaner image. NVIDIA’s technical overview describes denoising as a way to use fewer rays while keeping ray-traced rendering practical in real time. It is part of the rendering trade-off, not proof that every implementation uses the same ray count or produces the same image quality.
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Supported GPUs may include dedicated hardware to accelerate ray traversal and intersection tests. That hardware can speed up parts of the workload, but it does not make every ray-tracing effect free, nor does the presence of acceleration alone determine the final frame rate.
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Why the performance cost varies
There is no universal frame-rate penalty for “ray tracing.” The cost depends on what the game traces, how much of the scene and how many paths it evaluates, the chosen quality level, resolution, the game’s overall rendering workload, and the hardware. A limited reflection effect and a broader path-tracing mode are different workloads, even if both are described with the same broad label.
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Reconstruction and denoising, including how many rays are used, also shape the balance between image quality and speed. For a useful comparison, keep the game, resolution, graphics settings and hardware fixed, then compare the specific effect on and off. Vendor examples can illustrate why workloads differ, but NVIDIA’s cited performance article dates from 2019 and should not be treated as current graphics-card buying advice or as a universal benchmark.
How to judge a ray-tracing toggle
- Find out which effect is enabled: reflections, shadows, indirect lighting, path tracing or another feature.
- Check whether it applies to selected surfaces or a broader part of the scene.
- Look for quality controls, since higher settings can change the amount or detail of ray-tracing work.
- Compare image and performance in the same game and at the same resolution and settings.
- Do not assume that two games’ “ray tracing” presets have comparable coverage, visual results or costs.
Ray tracing is a rendering method, not a promise of photorealism. Its visible value depends on the effect, the scene, the implementation and the trade-offs chosen by the game. The most useful question is not simply whether a game has ray tracing, but what it traces and what that adds to the image.
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