Real Time Ray Tracing Is Coming To Ring of Elysium and Moonlight Blade

With the launch of our Turing-architecture GeForce RTX GPUs in 2018, we introduced the world to real-time ray tracing in video games for the first time. Games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Metro Exodus, Battlefield V, Wolfenstein Youngblood, Control, Minecraft with RTX Beta for Windows 10, and Deliver us the Moon paved the way for the future of video game graphics.

But of course it hasn’t stopped there. With our new NVIDIA Ampere architecture GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs, more RTX supported games are on the way. Fortnite, Cyberpunk 2077, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, and Watch Dogs: Legion are just the tip of the iceberg. Today, we would like to share with you two new RTX titles we’ve been working on with our friends at Tencent Aurora Studios, Ring of Elysium and Moonlight Blade.

Ring of Elysium is a free-to-play Battle Royale on Steam, developed by Tencent Aurora Studios, and powered by their in-house engine QuickSilverX. It focuses on bringing realistic graphics, fun to play unique game mechanics, and an unforgettable survival experience. The game has more than 10 million total players globally, and an 8.5 rating from IGN.

Tencent Aurora Studios decided to introduce ray-traced global illumination (Gi) and ambient occlusion (AO) effects to Ring of Elysium. With the game's dynamic lighting system, it just made sense to go with both features. Walking through dimly lit structures or under the shade of trees looks much more realistic with ray traced GI and AO enabled. The sunlight is richer and warmer, and the shadows darker. It just “looks” like it should.    

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Both features bring the game’s graphics quality to a whole new level, and the new GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs makes it happen with amazing efficiency. According to Bailin An, technical director from Tencent Aurora Studios:

“Since Ring of Elysium is a shooter with dynamic, large maps. We have high demands on dynamic global illumination, and higher demands on frame rates. And to our surprise, RT-core brings such an amazingly high-performance for us to implement the dynamic global illumination. It’s just so gorgeous and so efficient at the same time!”

Moonlight Blade is a fantasy martial arts MMORPG adapted from the work of prestigious fiction writer Mr. Gu Long. The story line is based on the Northern Song Dynasty of ancient China. The game has been one of China’s most successful MMORPG’s, with millions of players logging on each day throughout the country.

This game also uses Tencent Aurora Studios’ internally developed QuickSilverX game engine, so they too are adding ray-traced global illumination and ambient occlusion effects. Moonlight Blade boasts a dynamic day/night cycle, which provides a great way to show off both tay traced GI and AO in the game. Whether it’s flying through a desert canyon, traversing the forest, or walking through the ancient capital of Kai Feng, you can really see the difference with GI and AO enabled. Just like in Ring of Elysium, the sunlight is richer and warmer, and the shadows are darker. You become immersed in the world.

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According to Feng Yang, game producer of Moonlight Blade:

“Moonlight Blade is a game with day-night cycles and fully dynamic weather. There are lots of things we can’t do without dynamic global illuminations. And with RT based global illumination, the game is not only more photo-realistic, but also expanded dramatically on our design and artwork possibilities.”

Real time ray tracing is something Tencent Aurora Studios has been interested in for quite some time. With Turing and now the NVIDIA Ampere architecture, their vision of film quality video games has gotten that much closer. According to Ethan Yu (President of Tencent Aurora Studios):

“For a long time, we have been eager to create film-quality game worlds for players, and the introduction of real time ray tracing in video games by NVIDIA was a crucial step towards this vision. The dev teams behind our two products are thrilled by the improvements in graphics quality and performance brought by real time ray tracing. We will continue to work closely with NVIDIA to create game worlds that are more vast, more realistic, and more beautiful.”

Ray tracing support is available now in Moonlight Blade, and will be available in Ring of Elysium October 22.