Ray Tracing To Debut in DirectX 11

crazyeyes writes "This is breaking news. Microsoft has not only decided to support ray tracing in DirectX 11, but they will also be basing it on Intel's x86 ray-tracing technology and get this ... it will be out by the end of the year! In this article, we will examine what ray tracing is all about and why it would be superior to the current raster-based technology. As for performance, well, let Intel dazzle you with some numbers. Here's a quote from the article: 'You need not worry about your old raster-based DirectX 10 or older games or graphics cards. DirectX 11 will continue to support rasterization. It just includes support for ray-tracing as well. There will be two DirectX 11 modes, based on support by the application and the hardware.'"

Call me old and grumpy

But I am really annoyed that April Fool's has now become a multi-day event.

Re:Call me old and grumpy

Shit. That reminds me that I'm going to have to ignore Slashdot tomorrow because it'll be full of unfunny-because-they're-trying-too-hard stories.

Re:Call me old and grumpy

No doubt. At this point the best slashdot could do on April 1 is post 100% real stories and watch everybody try to figure out where the silly fake stuff is.

Re:Call me old and grumpy

That's how it used to be before the OMG PONIES era...

Re:Call me old and grumpy

They've been doing this for a while before OMG PONIES actually. There was one year where they had a really good April Fools' post about how Microsoft was doing something evil to Slashdot (cease-and-desisting or something) but too many people forgot what day it was & it got blown out of proportion.

So now we have the current situation of stories so stupid that anyone can tell they're fake.

Re:Call me old and grumpy

Even that would be passe at this point -- years ago Google announced GMail on April 1 and with the claim that they would offer 1GB of storage a lot of people were tricked into thinking it was an April Fool.

At this point the obvious creative thing to do would be to skip April 1 and make everyone think that Slashdot had changed their ways, and there would be much rejoicing... then have a hideously annoying gag the next day.

Re:Call me old and grumpy

Just like any other day of the year then?

Re:Call me old and grumpy

This way, they can post it as a dupe tomorrow, thus making it funny for multiple reasons.

Re:Call me old and grumpy

They're in Malaysia (as stated in the Microsoft's comment bit), which is quite a bit ahead of Europe and the US in terms of time zone. If you look at the date on the article, its '01 April 2008'. So this isn't a pre-April Fool's April Fool's, it just seems like it.

Poster is really excited

If one's thing sure. Pity DirectX11 will work on so few platforms.

Re:OpenGL

There is now only OpenRT which have Open only fro similarity with OpenGL (it is fully proprietary implementation, but has API similar to that of OpenGL).

Surprisingly forward thinking on MS' part

Or maybe just obvious to anyone in the industry. Since clock speeds are bounded and not getting any faster and you can only lower voltages so much before signals get lost in the noise, the only way forward is in parallelism and ray tracing is wondrously parallelifyable (is that a real word?).

Re:Surprisingly forward thinking on MS' part

...parallelifyable (is that a real word?).

Yes, it's a very cromulent word.

Re:Surprisingly forward thinking on MS' part

I am anaspeptic, frasmotic, compunctious even, for the writer to have caused you such pericombobulations. Here's to hoping that he will apologize interfrastically.

Looks like a shun to current GPUs

It says nvidia will be locked out because DirectX11 raytracing will be based on x86.
Wasn't DirectX meant to be a generic middleman to allow developers to abstract away from the specific implementations?

Isn't this a backwards step that basically cuts anyone developing for it out of using the code on other systems (and I am meaning even the xbox 360).

John Carmack on Ray Tracing

An interesting read on this very subject here [pcper.com]. Quote:

"I have my own personal hobby horse in this race and have some fairly firm opinions on the way things are going right now. I think that ray tracing in the classical sense, of analytically intersecting rays with conventionally defined geometry, whether they be triangle meshes or higher order primitives, I'm not really bullish on that taking over for primary rendering tasks which is essentially what Intel is pushing."

Carmack admits he has his own personal preference, but generally he's pretty sensible about these things. He's usually called it correctly in the past when people have pushed various technologies that were supposed to take over the world, and they've fallen by the wayside.

Hopefully he'll chime into this latest article with some further thoughts.

More from David Kirk?

"I'll be interested in discussing a bigger question, though: 'When will hardware graphics pipelines become sufficiently programmable to efficiently implement ray tracing and other global illumination techniques?'. I believe that the answer is now, and more so from now on! As GPUs become increasingly programmable, the variety of algorithms that can be mapped onto the computing substrate of a GPU becomes ever broader.

As part of this quest, I routinely ask artists and programmers at movie and special effects studios what features and flexibility they will need to do their rendering on GPUs, and they say that they could never render on hardware! What do they use now: crayons? Actually, they use hardware now, in the form of programmable general-purpose CPUs. I believe that the future convergence of realistic and real-time rendering lies in highly programmable special-purpose GPUs."

Very interesting. A couple of years later he was arguing against special purpose GPUs for ray tracing, and for the use of "General Purpose GPUs", and the new nVidia 8xxx series seem to be following that path... away from dedicated rendering pipelines and towards a GPU that's more like a highly parallel CPU.

More comments from David Kirk. [scarydevil.com]

I would be very interested in what he learned between 2002 and 2004 that led him to argue so eloquently against Phillip Slusallek. I'd also like to know what Professor Slusallek is doing at nVidia, where he's "working with the research group on the future of realtime ray tracing" [linkedin.com].

Some less breathless articles

Intel has this article [intel.com] about the hardware needed to run at 50fps at 1920x1080p. They're claiming you need 8 cores. In a couple of years, that could well be within reach for most gamers.

There's also this John Carmack Interview [pcper.com]. Carmack isn't too optimistic about ray tracing replacing rasterized graphics.

Major breakthrough for Business Software

Raytracing allows the implementation of mirrors in 3d environments.

Finally all business software will have the feature of showing the cause of most problems. (See also "Error Id: 10T" and PEBKAC)

Thankyou GOD!

I thought PC gaming was in the throes of death. Fortunately now PC game developers will be able to use Ray Tracing instead of implementing the much ballyhooed 'fun' that graphically inferior console games seem to be touting.

Re:To Tech ARP...

Yep, like Microsoft's:

Who told you this? We have been monitoring your articles based on leaked Microsoft information and like this one, they are ALL incorrect. Please let us know who your source is so we can correct him. (Editor : Or fire him???) Note that we have notified our legal department and the FBI as all Microsoft internal documents are not meant to be taken out of the building. They will be in touch shortly. Please extend all courtesies in cooperating with their investigation. (Editor : Good luck! We are in Malaysia!)

By the way: It is already April 1st over there.

Re:Only available with Windows 7

This is very obviously a lie or joke for early April fools. I didn't know Slashdot fell for them. Did anyone actually read the last page?

Re:Only available with Windows 7

Yeah, for anyone who reads up to the last page, it seems pretty clear that it's not true. Something like this would be more likely announced by Microsoft PR a good while before release, in order to grow some hype.

TFA states

"As DirectX 11 is a work in progress, Microsoft does not have an exact timeline. But the source claims that DirectX 11 could be part of Windows Vista by late 2008."

I don't know where these guys get their information, but even Microsoft does planning ahead of time for products they create - especially if it's to be released the same year! The absurdity climaxes at the third page...do yourself a favor and read it for a little laugh.

"They also plan to have DirectX 11 ready in time to debut with Windows Vista Service Pack 2"

Service Pack 2? Sure, SP1 wasn't an improvement and SP2 might be needed - but, again, plans for this would have been more well announced or planned by Microsoft.

Sorry guys, article is simply BS.

Re:Only available with Windows 7

Is it just me or is this a stupid April fools joke? It's not funny, it's like it's just trying to get your hopes up.

Ugh.. Get ready for a whole day of hilariously deceptive articles like this..

That's a lie.

This can't be Windows 7 only - Linux has had Direct X11 [wikipedia.org] for years. This is yet another case of Microsoft playing catchup.