FYI - Best Real-Time Ray Tracing demo to date

[RickyB]

This is off topic, but for those who crave the latest in graphic technologies (such as HL2), there is a new Real-Time Ray Tracing Demo available at www.realstorm.com. The is the most advanced Ray Tracing demo I've ever seen.

For those who are not familiar with Ray Tracing, it is a technique used to render 3d objects that is completely different than traditional 3d rendering. As such, your newest DX9 video card is not capable of assisiting this demo, which only uses your computer's CPU to render the scene. This particular demo incorporates real time shadows, reflections, anti-aliasing, depth of field, radiosity lighting, and volume lights - no matter which video card you have. Keep in mind, however, that because it is not accelerated, it will run much more slowly than you are used to for a typical 3d demo.

Enjoy.

 

[PriNcE oF SpAcE]

if it's off topic.

then why don't you post it in the off-topic forum?

 

[simmo]

I hate it when people cant read the words Off-topic

 

[RickyB]

I'm sorry. I didn't see it. Could you please move this post to that section?

 

[Aknot]

Originally posted by PriNcE oF SpAcE
if it's off topic.

then why don't you post it in the off-topic forum?

It would make to much sense......

 

[PriNcE oF SpAcE]

I just liked the way his first line was "this is off topic..." and then he post in general.

 

[MrMethane]

OMG, Ray-penis so small!

Only 8.01 fps

Hell, even an 1200MHz Athlon got 7.02 and I have a 2 GHz P4

Whats 1200MHz in "+"?

 

[Cheetarah654]

lets see how my g4 ti 4600, 2.4 ghz and 512 ram handles this

 

[hunteraz]

i got .6 fps and i use radeon9700pro and 1.733mhz athlon and 1 gig mem..? haw haw.

 

[Gaemon82]

Look at that: http://www.daionet.gr.jp/~masa/rthdribl/

 

[The Dark Elf]

It's not bad, I expected it to crawl but it did pretty well, and the music that went with it (still sucking nature demo) was pretty cool. Which version did you guys try? Cause I was getting pretty fast frame rate, nothing amazing, probably just 14/17fps and I've well, a shit machine for realtime stuff

now if they implement area shadowing, caustics and global illumination, soft body and rigid dynamics in a realtime environment and could get even 2fps I will be incredibly impressed. But in the mean time HL2's methods will be more than enough, and its shadows, while only the basic kind for the realtime stuff and the rest being fixed, do look much nicer than the CG looking hard edged shadows caused by traditional ray tracing methods. If they got rid of the ray traced shadows and replaced with shadow maps (like stencils) they could get softer edges, though wouldn't be as naturally realistic as area shadows, but be damn sight faster

So yeah, I was pretty impressed, at first I thought it was just a big fake, until I found a way to move the mouse around.. still a tiny bit skeptical though cause it could have still been pre-rendered as I was only able to rotate and not move around. Which could have been faked by clever use of QuickTimeVR style, each frame with a 360 degree viewing angle and instead of a single image a sequence of them, it could explain why it wasn't really quick

ok so im just playing devil's advocate naa it was good to see, I hope they keep working on it, it they get it working really well it could mean good things for anyone working with 3D. And might one day put a fright into the OGL and DX card makers forcing them to bring the prices down, which will benefit all of us then (shame its incredibly unlikely to happen anytime before I but that 9800xt card, damnit! )

 

[SidewinderX]

Originally posted by RickyB
This is off topic, but for those who crave the latest in graphic technologies (such as HL2), there is a new Real-Time Ray Tracing Demo available at www.realstorm.com. The is the most advanced Ray Tracing demo I've ever seen.

For those who are not familiar with Ray Tracing, it is a technique used to render 3d objects that is completely different than traditional 3d rendering. As such, your newest DX9 video card is not capable of assisiting this demo, which only uses your computer's CPU to render the scene. This particular demo incorporates real time shadows, reflections, anti-aliasing, depth of field, radiosity lighting, and volume lights - no matter which video card you have. Keep in mind, however, that because it is not accelerated, it will run much more slowly than you are used to for a typical 3d demo.

Enjoy.

Yes, it's cool and *can* produce better resaults than a normal game, however there is a reason why it's not used.

It's a waste. The reason Video cards exist is to prevent something liike this. The Video card is there to take a load off the CPU so that the CPU can be doing other, more important things, such as complex AI routines. The real secret and skill in programmign a game engine is finding ways to fake this. Computers have been capable of doing this for an extreamly long time, it's jsut not useful for anyhting other than graphical arts.

*edit* after going thrpoughthe demo, i'd like to add that Doom 3 has the same+mnore features, looks better, and runs much, much faster.

 

[Netherscourge]

Ray tracing is a waste of money. Yea - lets use this method to steal tons of CPU cycles away from importnat things like AI, pathfinding, scripting, etc...

 

[CNCAddict]

Sidewidner, I think you are missing the point of the demo. FAN is on a mission to streamline the coding so that raytracing can function very quickly. I think you are also mistaken about computers being able to do this for an "extremely long time". Raytracing in general is a very old technology, but usually it takes a much longer time to render a single frame. In the next 5 years it is very likely that we will see raytracing in video games as it is a superior technology when games have scenes which approach 1 million polygons per frame. I think it's great that bumpmapping and normal maps are slowly emerging in games such as HL-2 and D3. But these technologies are still a "quick fix" and will go the way of shadow maps as we progress in the search to emulate nature's way of rendering.

 

[Login_Here]

Moving this thread.

 

[CNCAddict]

Oh, and for those of you posting which video card you have. Please re-read the initial post.

 

[SidewinderX]

Originally posted by CNCAddict
Sidewidner, I think you are missing the point of the demo. FAN is on a mission to streamline the coding so that raytracing can function very quickly. I think you are also mistaken about computers being able to do this for an "extremely long time". Raytracing in general is a very old technology, but usually it takes a much longer time to render a single frame. In the next 5 years it is very likely that we will see raytracing in video games as it is a superior technology when games have scenes which approach 1 million polygons per frame. I think it's great that bumpmapping and normal maps are slowly emerging in games such as HL-2 and D3. But these technologies are still a "quick fix" and will go the way of shadow maps as we progress in the search to emulate nature's way of rendering.

Yes, this is steamlined, however, averaging 5 fps (Pentium 4 1.8GHz) on a 512x384 (might be wrong here, but it was near this) screen with low detail textures is not the direct way to the furture. I feel that the next step (or the next few for that matter) will be to raytracing games. I think that that advances in bump/normal maps will continue to eveole, and lighing engines will move down the path of Doom 3, which has the real-time lighting and shadowing, at much higher resolutions, and a much higher over all appearance.

 

[The Dark Elf]

This method is likely going to be of more use to the pre-rendered crowd, CG in movies and such where OGL, DX etc. might be faster but hasn't the accuracy or level of perfection possible. This while slower is much faster than current means where a single frame can take from between a few seconds to well over a day for the complex stuff. So while a few games may give it a go if it improves a lot, it'll be the CG crowd who'll likely embrace it, atleast until things like OGL or DX or whatever else arrives can provide the quality of pre-rendered stuff in real time. But when that happens we'll probably all be looking forward to version two of real holodecks (now admit it, who wouldn't shit themselves playing Half-Life 5 in a holodeck )

 

[Hudson]

lol with highest settings P4 2.5 512 ram i got an amazing 0.1 FPS on average. Well if this technology does make its way into games....i think i'll have to upgrade lol.