Now that the dust has settled over GDC 2014, we have started collecting and analyzing the coverage from the launch of our ray tracing PowerVR Wizard GPU. The week we’ve spent in San Francisco has been one of the busiest we’ve had in recent history: alongside a full day of PowerVR sessions (including two presentations on ray tracing alone), there were tens of briefings and meetings; on top of that, people were queuing on out booth to see the hybrid rendering demo and to ask questions regarding the new ray tracing architecture and PowerVR GR6500, the first ray tracing GPU IP processor from the Wizard family we announced at the event.

PowerVR GR6500 is the first member of the PowerVR Wizard ray tracing GPU family

In case you’ve missed any of the coverage, we’ve put together a selection of the articles that cover the topic. Skimming through the list, the general consensus is that our implementation makes sense; press and analysts agreed that providing a scalable solution which can fit inside your next-generation tablet or power your high-performance console ensures a smooth transition path between ultra-realistic games running across all of your main gaming devices.

Furthermore, a lot of developers were very excited to get a glimpse at the possibilities of improving pre-baked lighting using the new tool inside the Unity 5 game engine that is based on our PowerVR Ray Tracing technology. This allows for near instantaneous feedback for changes to global illumination lightmaps by displaying an accurate preview in the editor’s scene view of how lighting will look in the final game.