Release v2.4.g: Ray Tracing comes to Diligent Engine

The latest release v2.4.g adds support for arguably the most innovative GPU capability of recent years: hardware-accelerated ray tracing. Ray tracing is supported in D3D12 and Vulkan backends and is exposed through common easy-to use yet fully exhaustive API: exactly the same host code works in both backends. Similar to other shader types, ray-tracing shaders authored in HLSL will work in both backends verbatim. Vulkan backend also supports GLSL as well as SPIRV bytecode.

A new tutorial demonstrates how ray tracing API in Diligent Engine can be used to simulate physics-based light transport in a scene to render soft shadows, multiple-bounce reflections and refractions, and dispersion.

API Changes

• Enabled ray tracing (API Version 240080)
• Added

  IDeviceContext::GetFrameNumber

   method (API Version 240079)
• Added

  ShaderResourceQueries

   device feature and

  EngineGLCreateInfo::ForceNonSeparablePrograms

   parameter (API Version 240078)
• Renamed

  USAGE_STATIC

   to

  USAGE_IMMUTABLE

   (API Version 240077)
• Renamed static samplers into immutable samplers (API Version 240076)
  • Renamed

    StaticSamplerDesc

      ->

    ImmutableSamplerDesc

  • Renamed

    PipelineResourceLayoutDesc::NumStaticSamplers

      ->

    PipelineResourceLayoutDesc::NumImmutableSamplers

  • Renamed

    PipelineResourceLayoutDesc::StaticSamplers

      ->

    PipelineResourceLayoutDesc::ImmutableSamplers

• Refactored pipeline state creation (API Version 240075)
  • Replaced

    PipelineStateCreateInfo

      with

    GraphicsPipelineStateCreateInfo

     and

    ComputePipelineStateCreateInfo

  • Replaced

    IRenderDevice::CreatePipelineState

      with

    IRenderDevice::CreateGraphicsPipelineState

      and IRenderDevice::CreateComputePipelineState

  • pVS

     ,

    pGS

     ,

    pHS

     ,

    pDS

     ,

    pPS

     ,

    pAS

     ,

    pMS

     were moved from

    GraphicsPipelineDesc

      to

    GraphicsPipelineStateCreateInfo

  • GraphicsPipelineDesc GraphicsPipeline

      was moved from

    PipelineStateDesc

      to

    GraphicsPipelineStateCreateInfo

  • pCS

      is now a member of

    ComputePipelineStateCreateInfo

    ,

    ComputePipelineDesc

     was removed
  • Added

    IPipelineState::GetGraphicsPipelineDesc

     method

Old API for graphics pipeline initialization:

PipelineStateCreateInfo PSOCreateInfo;
PipelineStateDesc& PSODesc = PSOCreateInfo.PSODesc;

PSODesc.GraphicsPipeline.pVS = pVS;
PSODesc.GraphicsPipeline.pPS = pVS;
// ...
Device->CreatePipelineState(PSOCreateInfo, &pPSO);

New API for graphics pipeline initialization:

GraphicsPipelineStateCreateInfo PSOCreateInfo;
// ...
PSOCreateInfo.pVS = pVS;
PSOCreateInfo.pPS = pVS;
Device->CreateGraphicsPipelineState(PSOCreateInfo, &pPSO);

Old API for compute pipeline initialization:

PipelineStateCreateInfo PSOCreateInfo;
PipelineStateDesc& PSODesc = PSOCreateInfo.PSODesc;

PSODesc.ComputePipeline.pCS = pCS;
// ...
Device->CreatePipelineState(PSOCreateInfo, &pPSO);

New API for compute pipeline initialization:

ComputePipelineStateCreateInfo PSOCreateInfo;

PSOCreateInfo.pCS = pCS;
Device->CreateComputePipelineState(PSOCreateInfo, &pPSO);

• Added ShaderInt8, ResourceBuffer8BitAccess, and UniformBuffer8BitAccess device features. (API Version 240074)
• Added ShaderFloat16, ResourceBuffer16BitAccess, UniformBuffer16BitAccess, and ShaderInputOutput16 device features. (API Version 240073)