NVIDIA Doubts Ray Tracing Is the Future of Games 198
SizeWise writes "After Intel's prominent work in ray tracing in the both the desktop and mobile spaces, many gamers might be thinking that the move to ray-tracing engines is inevitable. NVIDIA's Chief Scientist, Dr. David Kirk, thinks otherwise as revealed in this interview on rasterization and ray tracing. Kirk counters many of Intel's claims of ray tracing's superiority, such as the inherent benefit to polygon complexity, while pointing out areas where ray-tracing engines would falter, such as basic antialiasing. The interview concludes with discussions on mixing the two rendering technologies and whether NVIDIA hardware can efficiently handle ray tracing calculations as well."
Steve Jobs also uses this trick (Score:5, Insightful)
Like we were expecting something else (Score:5, Insightful)
Obey your thirst... (Score:5, Insightful)
This just in... (Score:2, Insightful)
Buggy manufacturers poo-poo the new horseless carriage
etc, etc.
Re:Like we were expecting something else (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously though, does anyone expect Nvidia to say, "Yes, we really do think that our products will all be obsolete and outdated in a few years. Thank you for asking." I personally have no idea as to whether or not ray tracing is the future of games, but I really don't think that Nvidia is the right person to ask either, (just as Intel isn't).
One could argue that the Nvidia folks have been well aware of ray-tracing for a long time, and if they thought it was reaching the point where it was going to be useful that they would have begun incorporating it in a future generation of chip. So it's not like they're permenantly committed against it - they may honestly believe it's time is not here.
As for Intel, I do think it's fairly obvious that the inherent parallelization of ray tracing is a big part of what makes it attractive to them right now. That and they have enough cash to just screw around with it without having to market it. But there's no reason Nvidia wouldn't go to multi-core chips if they thought the demand was there.
Re:Counterpoint (Score:3, Insightful)
The Ray-Tracing images are super slick, but are non real-time, highly processed work.
Whereas the comparison Rasterized images are real-time, game-generated examples. If you were to allow the pro-rasterization side the same time to produce a single picture, it would be super fancy.
Translation (Score:2, Insightful)
Probably right on this one... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, ray-tracing has its place in a lot of areas, but real-time gaming would be a terrible misuse of processing horsepower... especially when you could be applying it to other areas of gaming that actually affect gameplay itself. For example, how about more robust AIs for in game elements, or high-end physics processing that can combine things like fabric/hair/ fluid/fire physics processing with the ability to decimate objects completely as vector-calculated chunks based on the surrounding environments, rather than all this predetermined destruction we currently see in games. (Example, a surface could be eroded incrimentally by having a fluid running acrossed it until a hole forms in the shape of the fluid path...)
Re:Like we were expecting something else (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Obey your thirst... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Like we were expecting something else (Score:-1, Insightful)
Plus when people spout the benefits of raytracing they always seem to forget those benefits cost processing time. So yes, with raytracing things like radiosity, realistic glass and water rendering is possible to do in a straightforward simple manner.. just you'll be getting 1 frame per hour instead of 60 frames per second.
Of course you can add "hacks" or assumptions to the raytracing engine, and only use the "realistic" engine for certain things.. but hey, that's no different than what is done now in games.. back to square one.
Re:Like we were expecting something else (Score:2, Insightful)
1) Ray-tracing isn't going to solve all problems (it doesn't for movie rendering, why would it for real-time?)
2) Existing software still needs to run.
3) A hybrid approach will end up making the most sense (since it has for everything else).
He's not just talking "party line"
A matter of speed (Score:4, Insightful)
"Scripted languages are much too slow, to get good performance you must use compiled languages."
As computers get faster, there is always a move from technologies that are easier for the computer to technologies that are easier for the developer. Since ray tracing involves less hacks and is a more direct model of the effects developers want to create, it seems inevitable.
Re:Like we were expecting something else (Score:3, Insightful)