Dynamic rendering: Simplifies render pass setup and is now the preferred way to start rendering in Vulkan. We verified its usage via RenderDoc. Especially for mobile, it’s a boon when combined with extensions for local attachment reads.

Acceleration structures: We created BLASes and a TLAS from a loaded model. Using Nsight Graphics, we confirmed the structures were built correctly.

Ray queries for shadows: We cast shadow rays in the fragment shader. Initially considering only opaque geometry, then we refined it to handle alpha-tested transparency by manually checking texture alpha for intersections.

Ray queries for reflections: As a bonus, we shot reflection rays and used the hit result to modulate the fragment color for reflective materials. This leveraged the same acceleration structure and used similar Proceed() loop logic. You can imagine extending this to refractions, ambient occlusion rays, etc.