Epic Games, Porsche, Nvidia Showcase Graphics ‘Indistinguishable From Reality’

By Vikki Blake

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Porsche, Nvidia, and Epic Games partnered up to reveal Monday night “The Speed of Light”, a stunning realistic concept video for the Porsche Speedster created with Unreal Engine 4.

In a brief teaser clocking in at just 46 seconds, the trailer uses real-time ray tracing and RTX technology to create the “groundbreaking” cinematic that “pushes real-time computer graphics ever closer to photorealism”.

The tech demo runs on two NVIDIA Quadro RTX cards and uses new features, including ray-traced translucency, reflections, rectangular area light shadows and diffuse global illumination, as well as dynamic textured area lights.

“The Porsche 911 Speedster Concept is the first car to be visualized with interactive real-time ray tracing,” said ’ director of HMI Francois Antoine, who served as the creative director and VFX supervisor on the project. “In concert with Nvidia we’re accelerating the adoption of real-time ray tracing across many industries.”

“When you see the quality of the cinematic, it’s remarkable to note that no baking or lightmaps were required. There is no precomputed lighting—it’s all fully dynamic for both objects and light,” Antoine added.

As well as benefiting “game development, filmmaking, architecture, design, manufacturing, AR/VR and simulation”, Antoine also explained how the tech aids real-life car design.

“When we’re designing cars, we have to explore every option from every angle, and having the ability to review fully visualized renders in real time has completely transformed the way we ideate.”

“With Turing architecture, Nvidia have shattered the photorealism barrier that current-generation rasterizing techniques have presented until now,” added Epic’s CTO, Kim Libreri. “Just as we saw with the movie business over a decade ago, ray tracing is going to revolutionize the realism of real-time applications, cinematic experiences, and high-end games. Now, we will see artists and designers using Unreal Engine technology to create, view and interact with content that is indistinguishable from reality.”