Intel already did realtime raytracing

Submitted by Mighty BOB! on Mon, 04/27/2009 - 1:46am

You know they're already experimenting with realtime raytracing on Intel's new Larrabee hardware.  Research engine tests have realtime raytracing working in Quake 4 (Google it).  It's pretty cool.

I think in the (probably not all that distant) future we'll have a mix of raster rendering and raytrace rendering for different visual aspects. (Like the raytracing handling all the reflections and caustics.)

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This really will simplify

Submitted by NAYRhyno on Wed, 04/22/2009 - 11:41am

This really will simplify game development if/when it takes off. The developer will simply have to create the 3D models and deine the materials they are made out of. Then the ray tracing engine would know the reflectance parameters of those materials, and it could be rendered. The game could define atmospheric conditions and light sources to affect the way the world looks.

Imagine how cool night vision in a game would be. You could just have a switch to tell the ray tracer what wavelnghts of light to use. Imagine a AVP game with this feature.

The world of real time ray tracing is an amazingly advanced one, and if it can be achieved at HD resolutions and gaming framerates, we will be in for a revolution. Much more so than with PhysX, although that type of completely deformable world interaction is no doubt still on the horizon.

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So the whole idea behind this

Submitted by Balgaroo on Tue, 04/21/2009 - 10:29pm

So the whole idea behind this is that developers and programmers will no longer have to implement tricks or spend time developing these effects. So when the hardware catches up to the performance needed it should make developing a game that much easier and faster.  

Cool

I do hope they include this in an existing API, and keep this away from NVIDA and ATI.  Make them developed hardware that supports this.

 

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Yay! Another company for nVidia to buy. :)

Submitted by PhelanPKell on Tue, 04/21/2009 - 9:43pm

So, who is taking bets on how long before nVidia tries to buy this company and integrate their engine into CUDA?

No takers? Psht. 1.8 years. oO

Actually, I think this will likely be reprogrammed to work in the "OpenCL" API (I think that's what it's called)  in DX11. That's, if OpenCL truly turns out to be worth a damn and companies start coding for that instead of CUDA and that thing ATi is supposedly doing.

Will this card make it as an add-in by itself? No. We already have video cards. They are increasing in strength and numbers what almost seems like daily. Will it mark a somewhat revolutionary step towards more realistic gaming? I'd wager on 'yes' to a lesser degree than that of Ageia's PhysX.

In 5 years, we'll need Sexta-SLi so you can hyper render every scene with 32x AA, 5120x3200 resolution on a 56" monitor, ultra-fast (40fps) ray-tracing, physics calculated to the macro-level in every game...and we'll have no reason to leave our houses 'cause CryEngine 6 will ACTUALLY have made jungles look real. ^^

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So 14 times faster than slow

Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Tue, 04/21/2009 - 5:29pm

So 14 times faster than slow is better I guess. All I know is I want one please give me one.. Mommy.... Please give me one. I promise to be good. 

Looks like it's using SODims for memory and if in the production boards they use GDDR5 they'll be alot faster. Is it going to use a PCIEx x16 slot? God I wish I could find a genie to give me three wishes.\

My fourth wish would be world peace. Too bad there are only three wishes. 

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Response

Submitted by CTskifreak on Tue, 04/21/2009 - 5:26pm

Programs have to be written to do this. I don't think this is destined to fail, but it will be a long time before stuff will become available for consumers. From Wikipedia:

"In computer graphics, ray tracing is a technique for generating an image by tracing the path of light through pixels in an image plane. The technique is capable of producing a very high degree of photorealism; usually higher than that of typical scanline rendering methods, but at a greater computational cost. This makes ray tracing best suited for applications where the image can be rendered slowly ahead of time, such as in still images and film and television special effects, and more poorly suited for real-time applications like computer games where speed is critical. Ray tracing is capable of simulating a wide variety of optical effects, such as reflection and refraction, scattering, and chromatic aberration. "

Basically, it's the next step in graphics, but it is hard to do them in real time.

 

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Could someone explain this

Submitted by Nuxes on Tue, 04/21/2009 - 4:43pm

Could someone explain this to me? Do 3D applications have to be written specifically to support ray tracing, kind of like PhysX?  If so, this is destined to fail, just like the PhysX hardware.

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