Future of game graphics: Nvidia’s "Zorah" tech demo showcases near-photorealistic visuals
Nvidia has unveiled a new tech demo called "Zorah," showcasing the potential of neural rendering. This AI-driven technology aims to enhance efficiency in complex graphics processing by replacing traditional shaders with trained neural networks. The goal is to achieve higher image quality while improving performance. Nvidia provides further details in a blog article.
The Zorah tech demo is built on Unreal Engine 5 and was specifically developed using Nvidia’s custom RTX branch (NvRTX), a tailored version of the engine. It runs on the new RTX 5090, the flagship of the 5000 series, aiming to deliver near-photorealistic visuals with realistic lighting and shadows. Nvidia first showcased this technology in January:
On March 13, an updated version of the tech demo was released, featuring even more detail:
Community is critical
YouTube comments praise the tech demo’s artistic presentation and visual quality. However, its static nature raises doubts about whether these technologies are ready for game development. Some users also joke about the potentially low frame rates with remarks like 'RTX 5090: 17 FPS' or 'Without DLSS: 4 FPS.'
In collaboration with Microsoft, a preview version of the DirectX 12 Agility SDK with neural rendering support will be available starting in April. Nvidia will also release several Unreal Engine 5 plugins for developers. However, it remains to be seen when and how this new technology will be adopted in game development.
Source(s)
YouTube / Nvidia GeForce
Image source: Nvidia
