How to Enable Hardware Ray Tracing on Lumen

To harness the power of hardware ray tracing with Lumen in your application, follow these steps to configure your project settings:

1. Enable SM5 Shader Format:

   • Lumen operates only when the SM5 shader format is active. Navigate to your project settings under Platforms - Android.
   • Enable the option labeled Support Vulkan Desktop [Experimental] to activate SM5 shader format support, as shown below.

   

2. Select Deferred Shading Mode:

   • Currently, Lumen exclusively supports deferred shading mode. Go to your project settings under Engine - Rendering.
   • Uncheck Forward Shading under the Forward Renderer option, as shown below.

   

3. Enable Hardware Ray Tracing Support:

   • Next, enable hardware ray tracing for the entire engine. In your project settings under Engine - Rendering, check the box for Support Hardware Ray Tracing, as shown below.

   

4. Use Hardware Ray Tracing When Available:

   • As previously mentioned, Lumen can utilize both software and hardware ray tracing. To prioritize hardware acceleration, check Use Hardware Ray Tracing when available in the project settings under Engine - Rendering, as shown below.
   • This setting ensures that your application leverages hardware ray tracing first, falling back to software ray tracing if necessary.

   

5. Configure Console Variables:

   • Edit your engine configuration file to set up two essential console variables as per the following:
     • Set r.Android.DisableVulkanSM5Support=0 to remove any restrictions related to SM5 shader format usage.
     • Enable Ray Query shader support for Vulkan by setting r.RayTracing.AllowInline=1.

       
   
           
           
   r.Android.DisableVulkanSM5Support=0
   r.RayTracing.AllowInline=1
   
       
   

Your Lumen-powered application is now ready to dazzle with hardware-accelerated ray tracing!