--- title: Ray Tracing Just Got Way More Accessible | daily.dev description: Unity 6 introduced a unified ray tracing API (URT) that lets developers run ray tracing workloads on the GPU using either hardware ray tracing or a compute... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/ray-tracing-just-got-way-more-accessible-jtrlsqklw twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Ray Tracing Just Got Way More Accessible | daily.dev og:description: Unity 6 introduced a unified ray tracing API (URT) that lets developers run ray tracing workloads on the GPU using either hardware ray tracing or a compute... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/ray-tracing-just-got-way-more-accessible-jtrlsqklw og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/JTRlsQKLw.png og:image:alt: Ray Tracing Just Got Way More Accessible og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Ray Tracing Just Got Way More Accessible **[git-amend](https://daily.dev/sources/git-amend)** · 17 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Unity 6 introduced a unified ray tracing API (URT) that lets developers run ray tracing workloads on the GPU using either hardware ray tracing or a compute shader fallback, removing the RTX hardware requirement. The tutorial walks through building a complete example from scratch: installing the render-pipelines.core package, setting up a RayTracingContext, building an acceleration structure from scene mesh renderers, defining matching C# and HLSL ray/hit structs with correct memory layout, writing a .urt shader with a ray generation kernel, allocating GPU buffers, dispatching the trace each frame, and reading back hit results for gizmo visualization. Key advantages over Physics.Raycast include GPU execution and no collider dependency. A current limitation is that the public API only returns intersection info (triangle index, distance, barycentric coords) without normals or UVs, though internal Unity classes can be copied into a project to access geometry attributes. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Rendering at scale: Efficient strategies for massive object counts](https://daily.dev/posts/rendering-at-scale-efficient-strategies-for-massive-object-counts-vrlkgfvgg) · Unity · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Ray tracing massive amounts of animated geometry using tetrahedral cages](https://daily.dev/posts/ray-tracing-massive-amounts-of-animated-geometry-using-tetrahedral-cages-fepvmjmjr) · AMD GPUOpen · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Issue \#301- UI, C\#, Graphics Programming, and more](https://daily.dev/posts/issue-301--ui-c-graphics-programming-and-more-m9duw8hle) · Game Dev Digest · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#game-development](https://daily.dev/tags/game-development), [#gpu](https://daily.dev/tags/gpu), [#unity](https://daily.dev/tags/unity) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/ray-tracing-just-got-way-more-accessible-jtrlsqklw) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Ray Tracing Just Got Way More Accessible","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/ray-tracing-just-got-way-more-accessible-jtrlsqklw","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/ray-tracing-just-got-way-more-accessible-jtrlsqklw"},"datePublished":"2026-07-19T07:59:05.362Z","dateModified":"2026-07-19T08:26:06.970Z","description":"Unity 6 introduced a unified ray tracing API (URT) that lets developers run ray tracing workloads on the GPU using either hardware ray tracing or a compute...","image":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/97cXpbruQFY/sddefault.jpg","thumbnailUrl":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/97cXpbruQFY/sddefault.jpg","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"git-amend","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"git-amend","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--dR-FewbM--/f_auto,q_auto/v1784447928/logos/git-amend?_a=BAMAMicg0","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/git-amend"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/ray-tracing-just-got-way-more-accessible-jtrlsqklw","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"game-development,gpu,unity","timeRequired":"PT17M","video":{"@type":"VideoObject","name":"Ray Tracing Just Got Way More Accessible","description":"Unity 6 introduced a unified ray tracing API (URT) that lets developers run ray tracing workloads on the GPU using either hardware ray tracing or a compute...","thumbnailUrl":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/97cXpbruQFY/sddefault.jpg","uploadDate":"2026-07-19T07:59:05.362Z","duration":"PT17M","url":"https://api.daily.dev/r/JTRlsQKLw","embedUrl":"https://www.youtube.com/embed/97cXpbruQFY"}} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"git-amend","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/git-amend"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Ray Tracing Just Got Way More Accessible"}]} ```