Samsung Experts Explain Ray Tracing for Galaxy S23 Series – Samsung Global Newsroom

As the popularity of smartphones has increased, the popularity of mobile games has also increased in the mainstream gaming market. Today, more and more consumers want to experience their PC and console games with brilliant graphics on their mobile devices, raising expectations for smartphone gaming performance.

The Galaxy S23 series, Samsung Electronics’ flagship smartphone unveiled on February 1, features the best and most powerful GPU, which improves performance by 41% over the previous version, and Ray Tracing, which brings realistic lighting to mobile games. , have caught the attention of gamers all over the world.

Samsung Newsroom spoke with the developers of Ray Tracing, recently introduced in the Galaxy S23 series, to understand the story behind how the team improved the mobile gaming experience. Read on to learn about one of the biggest leaps in smartphone gaming graphics in years.

Ray Tracing: Improve your gaming experience with TStreet-to-Life Graphics

Ray Tracing is the latest rendering method that manifests real-time graphical effects by tracing rays of light. The Galaxy S23 series GPU is equipped with special hardware to accelerate these ray tracing simulations similar to a desktop GPU, displaying shadows and light reflections in mobile games much more realistically.

Jungwoo Kim of the System Platform Development Group, who handled GPU development for the Galaxy S23 series, described Ray Tracing technology as “the ultimate graphics rendering method.”

“Ray Tracing is a complex simulation that traces how the optic nerve in an eye receives a ray of light after it has been reflected, refracted, or diffracted by an object,” Kim said. “It’s very similar to how light is actually processed.”

“The previous rasterization technique is limited, resulting in clumsy and inaccurate expressions,” said Joonyong Park, who handled GPU technical support and internal and external cooperation for this new product. “With regard to the shadow effect, for example, the previous method was to cast an object on a stage to create a shadow map in advance and adjust it to the object again. On the other hand, Ray Tracing simulates the real effect of shadow formation, which appears accurately and realistically on the screen, so that users can enjoy more natural graphics.

Bridging the gap between desktop and mobile graphics with the Galaxy S23 series

Since 2010, Samsung has been working to break down the barriers between console, desktop and mobile by expanding the performance and reach of its graphics API (application programming interface). By partnering with major industry players, Samsung has led the way in standardizing its latest technology as a common API. By doing so, more companies can easily apply the latest technologies to more games and expand their relevant ecosystems.

“In 2016, we standardized the next-generation graphics API called Vulkan released by Khronos Group and successfully brought it to market through the Galaxy S7,” Kim said. “But we’ve been working on advanced GPU development with partners like Epic Games and Unity to optimize Android game performance since 2015, before Vulkan was integrated into Galaxy devices. The optimization code we acquired working together was first provided to game developers and successfully advocated for Vulkan and engine optimization, and the achievement was showcased at various developer conferences.

In line with recent upward trends in cross-platform gaming, Samsung has been quick to apply desktop GPU technology to its mobile GPU. “Through close cooperation with access point vendors, we have continued to improve the performance of the latest mobile GPU for flagships,” Park said. “With the increase in the number of consumers demanding that the graphics quality of their mobile devices match the quality of consoles, we have been preparing to offer Ray Tracing technology in mobile game engines for two years,” he said. said, describing his team’s proactive effort to lead this mobile innovation.

Multiplayer collaboration for mobile performance

The developers cooperated with Samsung R&D Institute Ukraine (SRUKR) and various partner companies including Unreal Engine developer Epic Games to prepare the best graphics.

Kim explained that the demo content shown at Galaxy Unpacked 2023 was a team effort. “It’s an area we’ve been working on in conjunction with a game engine developer and game developers,” Kim said. “We continued to make various attempts for efficient rendering. As a result, we were able to overcome the challenges by reducing the number of calculations while maintaining the same level of quality.”

Park also shared an episode from when he was working on Galaxy S7 product development.

“I remember developing a demo of content at Epic Games headquarters in North Carolina in the United States,” Park said. “We managed to render a demo game where a chicken character appeared using the Vulkan API for the first time. As soon as the chicken character first appeared after correcting an error, everyone from Epic Games, SRUKR and his colleagues on the MX R&D team all cheered. Then we all celebrated with dinner, where we all ate fried chicken. Park thanked his colleagues with whom he had worked so hard to achieve this feat.

The Galaxy S23 series opens up a new paradigm for mobile gaming

So, what does the future in which Ray Tracing technology is commercialized look like? “Going forward, I expect the pipeline for creating and consuming graphical content to change in a way aligned with Ray Tracing,” Park said. “In this process, we expect mobile devices with both console-like portability and high-performance hardware to contribute to the changes.”

“You can definitely expect an eye-catching gaming experience,” said the developers of Ray Tracing, addressing fans eager to experience the gaming performance of Galaxy’s new flagship. The developers have also shared their plans to make extensive use of this technology, starting with the Galaxy S23 series.

“Ray tracing technology is only just beginning to go mobile. Since Samsung has been researching and preparing this technology for a long time, our company will be leading the industry and rapidly developing this technology,” Kim said. “Our next goal is to find the optimal method to apply Ray Tracing to many mobile devices and provide excellent gaming experience to users.”

“Mobile games that support Ray Tracing are not yet available in the market, but if there is a game company that is interested in new mobile GPU technology, it will be more than welcome,” Park said. Asked about the future of mobile game performance, Park replied that they are “working very hard to apply Ray Tracing technology to more mobile games”.

The developers’ long-term vision is to present even more immersive mobile gaming experiences with realistic graphics in the future.

Watch the video below to learn more about Ray Tracing technology on the Galaxy S23 series.