Next-Gen Visuals on Legacy Tech: Mastering Pascal Gilcher’s RTGI 0.33 in ReShade
Overall, the shader is a remarkable achievement in the realm of real-time graphics enhancement and a testament to the community's drive to push visual fidelity boundaries. If you're a gamer or developer interested in exploring the next level of graphics rendering, the ReShade Ray Tracing Shader RTGI 0.3.3 is definitely worth exploring.
: Light from bright surfaces "bleeds" onto nearby objects, such as a portal's orange glow reflecting onto a concrete floor. Ambient Occlusion reshade ray tracing shader rtgi 033 2021
So, why does v0.33 hold a special place in the community’s heart? Released in 2021, this version arrived at a perfect moment for stability and accessibility.
: Objects moving near light sources cast softer, physically based shadows. Key Features of the 0.33 Update Ambient Occlusion So, why does v0
: Unlike native RTX ray tracing, RTGI does not require dedicated RT cores. It operates by tracing rays against the game's depth buffer
Enable the DisplayDepth shader in ReShade. You should see a clear grayscale image (left) and a "normal map" (right). Key Features of the 0
You don’t need 20 rays for a good look. Often 3–5 rays with a high-quality denoiser will look better and run faster.
| GPU | 1080p Performance (RTGI Medium, 2 bounces) | |------|-----------------------------------------------| | GTX 1060 6GB | 35–50 FPS (from 60–70 native) | | GTX 1080 Ti | 55–70 FPS (from 90–100 native) | | RTX 2060 | 60–75 FPS (RT cores unused, pure compute) |
Let’s cut through the marketing hype. stands for Ray Traced Global Illumination . In the context of 2021’s version 0.33, this is not the hardware-accelerated ray tracing found in Cyberpunk 2077 (RTX) or Control . Instead, it is a compute shader running entirely within the ReShade post-processing pipeline.
RTGI is the work of , a German rendering engineer, artist and mathematician who operates under the online name “Marty McFly”. Gilcher is not an unknown figure; his RTGI shader became so successful that NVIDIA adopted its core technique into GeForce Experience’s Freestyle suite (as “SSRTGI”).