Last year, Qualcomm made a noteworthy announcement by integrating hardware ray tracing support into its latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor. This move was significant as it enabled flagship phone users in 2023 easier access to ray tracing technology.
Fast-forward to February 2023, we’ve got an exciting announcement from OnePlus. The brand is partnering with Perfect World Games to bring ray tracing to the gameplay of Tower of Fantasy on the OnePlus 11 5G.
Ray tracing as a technology has been around for the past few years on PCs and consoles, but it is yet to go mainstream on smartphones. Hardware-accelerated ray tracing technology, like the one inside the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 enables smartphones to deliver realistic graphics while gaming. Given how ray tracing brings dynamic in-game lighting, reflections, and shadows, the gameplay becomes a lot more immersive with significantly better visuals than traditional rendering techniques.
OnePlus Is Working Closely With Perfect World Games To Enable Ray Tracing
OnePlus explains that the two companies have co-developed a Real-time Inline Ray Tracing Pipeline and a novel Fast Temporal Convergence Algorithm for Ambient Occlusion, specifically built for the “Tower of Fantasy”. Further, the implementation utilizes Spatio-temporal Oversampling to improve the quality of the rendering.
“We’re excited to cooperate with OnePlus to apply this advanced technology that previously only be seen on PCs in mobile phones,” said Dan Xu at Perfect World Games. “As a leading game developer, our mission is to bring the best experience to gamers, and ray tracing technology will dramatically transform the in-game experience”.
The game publisher has developed techniques such as a distance-based dynamic object frame-updating mechanism and range-based ray tracing culling based on light source perspective, enabling players to experience real-time stable frames while enjoying ray tracing effects. It further adds that ray tracing will enhance the immersive experience of open-world scenes in the Tower of Fantasy, like making the effect of flames more realistic from the surroundings and the hot sand underneath.
For example, look at the two images below, one with ray tracing enabled, and one without.
Perfect World Games’ Tower of Fantasy already supports ray tracing on PC, but we couldn’t confirm if the feature was available on its smartphone app for OnePlus 11 5G devices worldwide. That said, OnePlus will be showcasing the Tower of Fantasy gameplay with ray tracing enabled at MWC 2023.
OnePlus also announced that it will be demonstrating an AR concert using a Tower of Fantasy game character at MWC this year. The demo (Lin’s XR Stage Show) will use the OnePlus 11 5G (our review here), which is the first Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Snapdragon Spaces-ready smartphone, to showcase real-time ray tracings effects like specular reflection and shadow on the complex animated model, with interactive elements like hand tracking and plane detection.
Finally, OnePlus will be announcing its new OnePlus Concept 2023 phone at the big tech event tomorrow. More details about the phone will be available soon.
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