Khronos has recently released the final versions of the ray tracing extension specifications. It is latest release, Diligent Engine enabled full support of these extensions to provide easy-to-use yet fully exhaustive cross-platform ray tracing API. The API is the same for Vulkan and Direct3D12 and allows authoring shaders in HLSL for both back-ends. GLSL and SPIRV bytecode are also supported by Vulkan back-end. The API lets developers concentrate on the algorithm essence and leave handling of the implementation-specific details to the engine.
A new tutorial demonstrates how ray tracing API in Diligent Engine can be used to simulate physics-based light transport in a scene to render soft shadows, multiple-bounce reflections and refractions, and dispersion.