At GPU Technology Conference in March, NVIDIA introduced Iray VCA (Visual Computing Appliance). Today, NVIDIA has renamed the appliance as NVIDIA VCA to reflect its expanded industry support for GPU rendering across multiple applications.

NVIDIA VCA dramatically accelerates ray tracing, enabling users to interact with computer models of such high visual fidelity that it can eliminate the need for 3D physical prototypes. In addition to native support of NVIDIA Iray, Chaos Group is supporting V-Ray RT on VCA for Autodesk 3ds Max, with Autodesk Maya, McNeel Rhino, and Trimble SketchUp for later in the year. Dassault Systemes 3DXCITE Bunkspeed support is also scheduled for later this year.

The scalable, network-attached GPU rendering appliance comes with eight high-end NVIDIA GPUs and is designed to do just one thing — provide designers and artists with the fastest and easiest way to create photorealistic images of their creations. It’s claimed to be so fast that designers can interact with their models or scenes in real-time rather than waiting minutes or even hours for rendered images to come back. This means that designers can study the play of light and reflection from their designs and catch flaws like glare on the interior windshield of a digital car model or see how the lobby of a proposed office building will look at different times of day.