Ray tracing to revolutionise gaming graphics

[dream431ca]

A new type of rendering called ray tracing is getting some major headway in to the computer and console world. Here is one article about it. The next link is the wikipedia definition of ray tracing.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6457951.stm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_tracing

And if you really want your mind to be boggled...read this explanation on ray tracing. It's extremely complex.

http://www.cs.unc.edu/~rademach/xroads-RT/RTarticle.html

 

[theotherguy]

Lol, you're kidding right? Ray tracing is older than raster rendering. Every major 3d rendering scene has used ray tracing since the 80's. All pixar movies and most all static 3d rendering uses ray tracing.

I think what you're trying to say is that real time raytracing will revolutionize gaming.

In that case I posted an article on this (using a standalone processor or RPU to do realtime raytracing)at least a year ago.

and yes, if they can get the RPU to pump out frames at 60FPS it will indeed revolutionize gaming. Imagine perfect lighting on everything, render-quality graphics, unlimited engine customizablility on lighting, completley unified rendering engines, polygon independent performance, etc.

EDIT: ah, so saarland has finally released their API via opensource. This could mean very good things coming out of the gaming industry now that they released their realtime algorithm. Unfortunatley to get it to run at any reasonable framerate you will need a standalone RPU or a quad-core system.


here are some screenshots of scenes rendered in realtime using saarland's technique

 

[Tollbooth Willie]

Read about this in GamePro like a year or so ago. Sounds cool.

 

[i am HOLLYWOOD]

i was about to say the same thing as willie. . GP also said it takes a supercomputer to Realtime Ray Trace Q3 at any reasonable speed so it will prolly be a while. . .still freaking cool. . .

 

[Asus]

That article just made me confused. Talk about Quake yet a Doom picture. A lot of describing ray tracing yet not really talking about much new.

They just refer to openrt a couple times.
Openrt
inTrace

 

[theotherguy]

Openrt is still using the old, slow methods that run at around 3FPS. What the article is saying is that Saarland released its fast ray tracing algorithm to OpenRT, which runs anywhere from 20-50FPS (with saarlands proprietary hardware)

 

[Asus]

Openrt is still using the old, slow methods that run at around 3FPS. What the article is saying is that Saarland released its fast ray tracing algorithm to OpenRT, which runs anywhere from 20-50FPS (with saarlands proprietary hardware)

That article really wasn't focused. Understood the point better from 1 sentence in a forum than all the write-up in the article. :\
But still no links.

 

[Kyorisu]

What most ray tracer programmers tend to do wrong is assume "I'm writing a ray tracer therefore it must be a pure ray tracer" There are little tricks and hacks one can do to improve speed in general.

For the noobs. Ray tracing gives you ability to have things such as all those nice shader affects with nigh no performance loss.

 

[Krynn72]

Actually im pretty sure Pixar only used Raytracing in the last one or two of its movies. I think they used a really hacked up version in Cars, and only sparingly. I remember a talk where they said that if they raytraced the movie it was rendering at like 14 hours a frame or something. Then they tried a new method and got it under 45 mins or so.

 

[CrazyHarij]

ray tracing 3d is as old as the amiga.. pure tracing is too CPU intensive as of today, someome modded quake to be ray traced and it takes really powerful computers to even barely run it

 

[mindless_moder]

dont all offline renderers use raytracing ?. i dont really see the difference in quality , all of the detail that you see in the screenshots can be recreated in a real time environment with dx9 .i think the only thing you cant really do right now is GI .
ther are probably a few subtle differences but the general rule in game development is that if it looks close enough its more or less good to go. i really dont like the idea of having an rpu although i guess thats where we're heading. pretty son we're going to have an independent processor for every major aspect of gaming physics, ai , sound , networking,graphics and now raytracing most of these already exist.

 

[Gargantou]

ray tracing 3d is as old as the amiga.. pure tracing is too CPU intensive as of today, someome modded quake to be ray traced and it takes really powerful computers to even barely run it

Indeed, it was about time someone pointed it out :>

 

[_Z_Ryuken]

Lol the M2 video game console that was never released was supposed to use ray tracing extensively.

 

[Przemek]

Hey, I recall looking at images rendered with ray tracing... and it was like 1994

 

[Remus]

I remember a talk where they said that if they raytraced the movie it was rendering at like 14 hours a frame or something. Then they tried a new method and got it under 45 mins or so.

I WANT TO KNOW WHAT THAT METHOD IS!

No seriously now, whenever I use ray tracing in 3dsMax a scene takes ages to render. Especially if I use blurry reflections/ refractions and caustics in the same scene.
So whenever it's possible I use "cube maps" for reflections and a technique called thin wall refraction which drastically improve render time...

 

[VictimOfScience]

I think the only reason people might be talking about this again is due to this.

Could be very interesting potentially....

 

[clarky003]

Real time raytracing ftw. In max it calculates the exact position per pixel I think, I'm not entirely sure but maybe the realtime technique is per polygon. Some fancy pants stuff that keeps it fairly accurate to the eye and yet doesn't need too much calculation to getting it running at a decent frame rate.

 

[DEATH eVADER]

ray tracing 3d is as old as the amiga.. pure tracing is too CPU intensive as of today, someome modded quake to be ray traced and it takes really powerful computers to even barely run it

I wonder if you can actually use the redundent power from your physx cards to aide in rendering

 

[theotherguy]

dont all offline renderers use raytracing ?. i dont really see the difference in quality , all of the detail that you see in the screenshots can be recreated in a real time environment with dx9 .i think the only thing you cant really do right now is GI .
ther are probably a few subtle differences but the general rule in game development is that if it looks close enough its more or less good to go. i really dont like the idea of having an rpu although i guess thats where we're heading. pretty son we're going to have an independent processor for every major aspect of gaming physics, ai , sound , networking,graphics and now raytracing most of these already exist.

Well, the real difference is the flexibility of raytracing. It is also easier to code for, because artists don't have to worry about special conditions, tricks, lighting conditions, faked shadowing, etc. Raster rendering is certainly faster, but Raytracing is much easier to code for.

Let me put it this way, if anyone here is a programmer, it is comparable in using Recursion instead of iteration. Writing for iteration is much faster and easier on the computer, but its a pain to code, while writing recursively takes only 2-3 lines of code for something you could do iteratively with 20 lines of code.

Similarly, you can techincally fake just about all raytracing aspects in a raster renderer like DX9, but you have a ton of workarounds you have to do. With a true raytracer you just plug the models in, set the conditions and lighting, and its all calculated for you. You could change all the lighting conditions and material properties on the fly and not have to worry about any extra code.

Eventually, when the RPU (or those PS3 processors) are powerful enough to do GI, then we will really see lifelike rendering. There are certain things that really only raytracers can do, like true radiosity shadowing and light blending, true subsurface scattering, photon mapping, caustics, true HDR. The real world is esentially raytraced, so it makes sense for gaming to go in the direction of reality to emulate it.

But, I can imagine raster rendering will always be faster, and thus will always have a niche that it can fill.

 

[Naudian]

Eventually, when the RPU (or those PS3 processors) are powerful enough to do GI, then we will really see lifelike rendering. There are certain things that really only raytracers can do, like true radiosity shadowing and light blending, true subsurface scattering, photon mapping, caustics, true HDR. The real world is esentially raytraced, so it makes sense for gaming to go in the direction of reality to emulate it.

do want

 

[Gargantou]

I remember a raytracer I used recently that had a awsome caustics modelling/shader etc, I am trying to remember the name, World Art something I think