Path / Ray Tracing for macOS and the new M1 Pro / Max

Unity Engine
,
1

Hello,

We are wondering if there are any plans to support raytracing and path tracing in light of the newly announced Apple hardware. The M1 Max is almost as fast as the RTX 3080 and Metal has had low level raytracing APIs for a very long time (already being used by Octane and Cinema4D). What is stopping Unity from supporting it?

3 Likes
2

Any words on this?

3

I also wonder about this :slight_smile:

4

Hopefully we can get a word from Unity about this.

5

I can understand why this claim is made, but in various ways I dont think its actually true.

HDRP on the M1 Max with 32 GPU cores is OK but it doesnt perform well enough for me to desperately want raytracing on this machine at the moment.

I would quite like pathtracing for non-realtime purposes though.

1 Like
6

Yeah, we are more interested in path tracing than “raytracing”. I think the 32 cores M1 would do fine job especially if the metal raytracing accelerator is used.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/metalperformanceshaders/metal_for_accelerating_ray_tracing?language=objc

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/metalperformanceshaders/animating_and_denoising_a_raytraced_scene?language=objc

1 Like
7

Also interested in hearing from Unity about this. Perhaps @INedelcu ?

8

Hi!

Unfortunately, there are no plans to support ray tracing on MacOS in Unity currently.

1 Like
9

@INedelcu I understand why this didn’t make a lot of sense back in 2021. Has the team changed plans 2 years later ?

10

Hi @GeorgeAdamon

For 2023 LTS there are no plans to add ray tracing for MacOS.

11

2024 ?

12

Hi!

Please vote here https://portal.productboard.com/8ufdwj59ehtmsvxenjumxo82/c/2220-hdrp-raytracing-effects-on-metal?utm_medium=social&utm_source=portal_share

1 Like
13

I need it for URP, HDRP I don’t care about.
Is that what this vote is about?

14

I created a card for URP Ray-Tracing Support on the URP roadmap.

Please vote there and if possible also share your thoughts about the priority of the effects and your desired use case.

Thank you!

2 Likes