March 2021 – While NVIDIA and AMD pushed hardware-accelerated ray tracing in blockbusters like Cyberpunk 2077 and Control, PC gamers with older GPUs or libraries of classic titles were largely left in the dark. Enter Pascal “Marty McFly” Gilcher and version 0.33 of RTGI (ReShade Ray Tracing Global Illumination) – a shader that simulated ray-traced global illumination using only post-processing, no specialized RT cores required.
The year 2021 was a transformative era for PC gaming graphics, largely due to the widespread adoption of the ReShade Ray Traced Global Illumination (RTGI) shader. Developed by Pascal Gilcher (also known as Marty McFly), the RTGI shader version 0.33 represented a pinnacle of post-processing technology, allowing gamers to inject sophisticated lighting effects into almost any title—even those released long before the hardware ray tracing era. What is the RTGI Shader? reshade ray tracing shader rtgi 033 2021
Not every game benefited equally. The shader worked best in games with: ReShade RTGI v0
Top community picks in 2021:
Access: This version was typically accessed via Marty's Mods Patreon (Breakfast/Beta tier). Developed by Pascal Gilcher (also known as Marty
. By leveraging screen-space information, it brings a form of ray tracing to virtually any game, regardless of whether the user has a native RTX-capable GPU. marty's mods Core Functionality & Visual Impact
Dynamic Lighting: Adds realistic shadow casting and material interaction that adapts to the in-game environment.