Microsoft has released one of the most significant updates to its DirectX Raytracing (DXR) since its debut in 2018. This update officially introduces clustered geometry and partitioned top-level acceleration structure (PTLAS). With clustered geometry, Microsoft envisions scenes where all animated and generated geometry is broken down into simple, reusable clusters of triangles. Typically, scenes repeatedly build large bottom-level acceleration structures, which incur additional compute costs. By using clustered geometry, ray tracing can utilize full detailed geometry used for standard rasterization instead of proxies, ensuring that ray-traced shadows and reflections match the currently visible scene.
In open-world games, using a top-level acceleration structure (TLAS) can lead to massive VRAM and compute demands. To address this, DXR now introduces partitioned TLAS (PTLAS), allowing ray tracing to focus on changes in a specific region while retaining acceleration-structure data elsewhere. Clustered geometry and PTLAS can be used together or separately, with no limitations. Below image is NVIDIA's sample of clustered geometry in action, visualized in three stages: default, clusters, and triangles applied.[](https://www.techpowerup.com/img/uHTc4gD5yNNAtYzw.jpg)Benchmarks follow.Read full story
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