AFP/Getty Images / .Intel’s forthcoming graphics chips are poised to deliver some serious competition to Nvidia, which embraced real-time ray tracing when the company launched its RTX series graphics cards late last year. Intel also announced that it will back the new feature.

　　For gamers, ray tracing brings cinematic rendering by rendering how light is absorbed, reflected, or refracted on surfaces in real time. Initially, Intel’s support for ray tracing will be for the company’s data center graphics cards. Intel’s line of discrete graphics cards are scheduled for a 2020 launch.

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　　Though Nvidia’s GeForce RTX graphics are targeted at consumer desktops and laptops, Intel’s Xe graphics architecture is used primarily for data centers. Intel is targeting creatives with its server-based technology, and the company envisions that hardware-based ray tracing on its Xe architecture will be utilized for visual effects and in animated films.

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　　“Studios continue to reach for maximum realism with complex physics processing for cloth, fluids, hair and more, plus modeling the physics of light with ray tracing,” J