NVIDIA's new RTX Bonsai Diorama tech demo is a showcase for path tracing, DLSS 4, and AI

NVIDIA has been releasing tech demos for its GeForce graphics cards for well over two decades now. The era of 2000 - 2010 is widely considered the golden era for these tech demos, as they demonstrated cutting-edge rendering technologies for lighting, animation, reflections, and the creation of complex 3D worlds. Stuff that brought in-game visuals and fidelity to where we are today.

NVIDIA's latest tech demo and RTX Technology Showcase, called Bonsai Diorama, is in keeping with the spirit of the company's GeForce demos, focusing on cutting-edge rendering and RTX technologies enabled within Unreal Engine 5.6.1. The scene depicts a large bonsai tree on a waterfall-adorned rock floating in the sky, offering an impressive view of the current cutting-edge state and future of real-time graphics.

The scene includes new technology like RTX Mega Geometry for creating complex environments with seemingly infinite geometry, full path-traced nanite meshes with RTX Dynamic Illumination, and DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation for enhanced ray-traced image quality and performance.

• Read more: Blade Runner-inspired Cyber Streets Unreal Engine 5 tech demo shows RT versus dynamic lights

And if you've got a GeForce RTX graphics card, you can download the full demo here, which lets you fire it up and make changes to DLSS settings as well as interact with the scene. Game developers and enthusiasts can also download the Project Files to get a better sense of how it all works.

In fact, this demo doubles as a showcase for what's possible with the NVIDIA RTX Branch of Unreal Engine. The latest NvRTX 5.6.1 release includes all of the tech you see here as simple-to-use plug-ins designed to "create immersive visuals or interactive experiences that surpass traditional rendering techniques." NVIDIA adds that this new version of the RTX Branch also brings improvements to path-tracing performance and image quality.