New Graphics Firm Promises Real-Time Ray Tracing 136
arcticstoat writes "A new graphics company called Caustic Graphics reckons it's uncovered the secret of real-time ray tracing with a chip that 'enables your CPU/GPU to shade with rasterization-like efficiency.' The new chip basically off-loads ray tracing calculations and then sends the data to your GPU and CPU, enabling your PC to shade a ray-traced scene much more quickly. Caustic's management team isn't afraid to rubbish the efforts of other graphics companies when it comes to ray tracing. 'Some technology vendors claim to have solved the accelerated ray tracing problem by using traditional algorithms along with GPU hardware,' says Caustic. However, the company adds that 'if you've ever seen them demo their solutions you'll notice that while results may be fast — the image quality is underwhelming, far below the quality that ray tracing is known for.' According to Caustic, this is because the advanced shading and lighting effects usually seen in ray-traced scenes, such as caustics and refraction, can't be accelerated on a standard GPU because it can't process incoherent rays in hardware. Conversely, Caustic claims that the CausticOne 'thrives in incoherent ray tracing situations: encouraging the use of multiple secondary rays per pixel.' The company is also introducing its own API, called CausticGL, which is based on OpenGL/GLSL, which will feature Caustic's unique ray tracing extensions."
cant wait. (Score:0, Interesting)
wow i cant wait for this. assuming that it's easily fits into current hardware
One step closer (Score:4, Interesting)
While it may be underwhelming to some, I'm more than happy to see people working on this kind of tech. Sure, we've moved on from just "simple" ray tracing to using things like GI, etc, but in time we'll have that in real time as well. Some apps are already doing some tricks to enable real time GI and other tricks. (the key word being tricks, since they're not totally physically accurate). Obviously real time will always lag behind, but I look forward to the future.
Re:I'll believe it when I see it! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I try and point this out every time (Score:3, Interesting)
To raytrace a soft shadow you have to send out at least 16 rays per shadow calculation, for each light and even then your gonna suffer from nasty artefacts. Compared to the raster solution which involves rendering the zbuffer of any given light source and merely doing some blurring. same quality, much reduced cost.
It seems to me that the algorithmic complexity grows just as fast for both rendering techniques in the case of many lightsources. Both are accomplished in steps linear to the number of lights.
Its all well and good that rasterization is "fast" for what we use it for today. But, its growth is linear to the number of primitives while there are other methods that are sublinear. For a large enough number of primitives the sublinear algorithm must be superior in performance.
Re:2009 (Score:3, Interesting)
When will real time ray tracing happen... Real time will need to be above about 30 frames/second.
Lets say back in the year 2000 it took 1/2 an hour to render a high resolution complex page.
So we will apply Mores law With a conservative approach to it. lets say they double speed every 24 months (makes the math easier too)
2002 it would take 15 minutes
2004 it would take 7.5 minutes
2006 it would take 3.75 minutes
2008 it would take 1.875 minutes
2010 it would take 56.25 second
2012 it would take 28.125 seconds
2014 it would take 14.0625 seconds
2016 it would take 7.03 seconds
2018 it would take 3.52 seconds
2020 it would take 1.76 seconds
2022 it would be 1.14 frames/second
2024 it would be 2.27 frames/second
2026 it would be 4.55 frames/second
2028 it would be 9.10 frames/second
2030 it would be 18.20 frames/second
2032 it would be 36.41 frames/second
So expect real time Ray tracing between 2022-2032
That said, in the mean time there are shortcuts to get the quality simulated such as mixing raster and Ray Tracing. Simplifying textures, Pre rendering parts that have less change etc... But if that is the secrete of DN4E I wouldn't expect to see it for a few more decades.