Game Discussions Wargaming: World of Tanks RT on DX11 (not hardware dependent)

Robert Maynard · Oct 16, 2019

Yesterday I read that Wargaming had released an RT demo for World of Tanks - which works on DX11 and is hardware independent.

.... so I downloaded it and tried it - looks very nice indeed. The method uses Intel's Embree ray tracing kernel collection (https://www.embree.org/) which has been released under the Apache 2.0 licence.

The future of ray tracing might well be close than it appears (in terms of affordable solutions).

Download the demo here: https://wotencore.net/en

Viajero · Oct 16, 2019

The video that goes along is really interesting too:

Source: https://youtu.be/dXbjmF--QVc

GuruNot · Oct 18, 2019

Well I downloaded it and installed the new Game Centre that you have to use .... It doesnt launch/update for me though.

It looks like it uses a bunch of new UDP ports that are not opened up on my firewall so I will need to take a look in to what it connects to and set up a few new rules.

Chris Simon · Oct 18, 2019

Robert Maynard said:
Yesterday I read that Wargaming had released an RT demo for World of Tanks - which works on DX11 and is hardware independent.

.... so I downloaded it and tried it - looks very nice indeed. The method uses Intel's Embree ray tracing kernel collection (https://www.embree.org/) which has been released under the Apache 2.0 licence.

The future of ray tracing might well be close than it appears (in terms of affordable solutions).

Download the demo here: https://wotencore.net/en

Surely it's not hardware independent.

Yes, it's software-rendered, instead of having dedicated bits of GPU, but it must have a performance cost, no?

I'm gonna try it, though. I finally got the 5700XT but I still have my Vega 56 PC as well as my old build with 1500X and RX580. It should be an interesting comparison.

Robert Maynard · Oct 18, 2019

Chris Simon said:
Surely it's not hardware independent.

Well, the kernels don't seem to be limited to Intel CPUs - it works just fine on a 3900X.

It does indeed have a performance cost - however it does not rely on expensive proprietary hardware solutions - which bodes well for the next generation of consoles, in my opinion.

Chris Simon · Oct 18, 2019

Robert Maynard said:
Well, the kernels don't seem to be limited to Intel CPUs - it works just fine on a 3900X.

It does indeed have a performance cost - however it does not rely on expensive proprietary hardware solutions - which bodes well for the next generation of consoles, in my opinion.

Indeed.
Sony did let out some info about ray tracing a couple months ago, actually, so I was wondering whether AMD is planning a RT version of Navi. Now we probably know the answer.
Just like physX was once a hardware feature of nVidia GPUs and slowly migrated to CPU, RT will do the same. Good.

GuruNot · Oct 18, 2019

So my experience with this non-gpu ray tracing benchmark.

CPU is a 5930k and GPU an EVGA 980Ti Classified all tests on Ultra at 1080p:

RT Setting	Score	Percentage Drop compared to off
RT Off	28873
RT High	20312	29.65
RT Max	19119	33.78
RT Ultra	17415	39.68

Robert Maynard · Oct 18, 2019

Good idea!

CPU is a 3900X and GPU a 5700XT all tests on Ultra at 1080p:

RT Setting	Score	Percentage Drop compared to off
RT Off	33,828	N/A
RT High	23,703	29.93%
RT Max	22,300	34.08%
RT Ultra	20,276	40.06%

Chris Simon · Oct 18, 2019

RT Setting	Score	Percentage drop
RT Off	35,650
RT High	24,649	30.85%
RT Max	23,191	34.95%
RT Ultra	21,150	40.67%

CPU: R5 3600, GPU RX5700XT

Also, I'd just like to point out that it's hilarious that instead of Off/Low/Med/High they are calling it Off/High/Max/Ultra.
Much intelligible.

Viajero · Oct 19, 2019

By the way, the process for ray tracing calculations shown in the video, would not that be the standard way to do it? I mean, hindsight is 20/20 but why would other ray tracing engines try to calculate intersections in all polygons?

GuruNot · Oct 19, 2019

Viajero said:
By the way, the process for ray tracing calculations shown in the video, would not that be the standard way to do it? I mean, hindsight is 20/20 but why would other ray tracing engines try to calculate intersections in all polygons?

Interesting point, to which I am unsure of the answer. Possibly because of that old addage "That is how it was always done". Like you say, with hindsight it seems obvious and spending a little time grouping and running the calculations against the "boxes" saves a lot of compute in the long run.

With regard to the results posted so far, three different CPUs:

Intel 5930K - 6 Cores 12 Threads
AMD Ryzen 9 3900X - 12 Cores 24 Threads
AMD Ryzen 5 3600 - 6 Cores 12 Threads

All results exhibit the same percentage performance hit across the settings. I am not too sure what to make of that regarding the concurrency they mentioned in the vid.

Chris Simon · Oct 19, 2019

GuruNot said:
All results exhibit the same percentage performance hit across the settings. I am not too sure what to make of that regarding the concurrency they mentioned in the vid.

Regarding the CPUs - I think the maximum WoT engine can utilize is 8 threads, so basically all these CPUs are equal as far as the game is concerned and the score is GPU bound so it really doesn't tell us much.

What I find interesting, though is the relatively low impact compared to hardware RT from nVidia. I would really love to see this technology in apples to apples comparison (image quality and FPS) in some game or benchmark that can do both