Yes, I think the shortcuts are a given.
I can't imagine them using something
like POV-Ray in real-time when a single
frame could take weeks to render.

Ray-tracing algorithms don't have to be complex. There was a graphics guru back in the 1980s who had the source code for a complete ray-tracer printed on the back of his business card. As for being processor-intensive--that's true enough.

As for radiosity--now THAT's both algorithmically complex AND even more processor-intensive than ray-tracing.

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mycelo: True ray-tracing that is a perfect depiction of a 3d scene is beyond painfully slow, which is why effects like radiosity are usually precalculated offline.

FYI: most every form of rendering can handle higher order surfaces, this isn't something unique to ray-tracing. It's just that ray-tracing is usually slow enough to begin with it doesn't matter much if you add another slow feature to it.

Viscountalpha: Nvidia isn't scared of Intel, they're scared of dumb investors which have been brainwashed by Intel that ray-tracing is the future.

I wish they had posted a video showing this stuff off. Sounds great though.

And thank you Mr. Booth, this article was fair and informative. It's always nice to see balanced reporting about nVidia on inq.

Just like current graphics, real time ray tracing will still require plenty of compromises. If time didn't matter, you'd probably cast multiple rays per pixel. Some surfaces would split the rays, with a surface ray and a penetrating ray. You'd take into account radiosity, of course. Ray tracing for games will still use lots of short-cuts and mathematical tricks to speed things up.

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Sure why not, let me just find a bank
that'll give me a loan for that much just
to play games with perty reflections/lighting.

I thought nVidia and other game developers thought ray tracing (in your words) was pants.

The must be sincerely scared of intel if they have to start research into making ray tracing work on their hardware.

Apparently KillZone 2 will use Ray tracing and looking at the current vids it looks like it. That video where there fighting in a warehouse you can see the light popping through holes and everything.

Pretty impressive stuff

I remember when Intel claimed MMX technology would make 3d cards extinct and bring in a new dawn of realistic game graphics. It was all bullshit and a way to sell more CPU's for more money. A few extra instructions that made certain simple operations a little faster. This is pretty much the same thing, just on a grander scale, to reclaim processing work from GPGPU's to the CPU's.

Raytracing is old hat. All the cool people are doing radiosity now.

True raytracing wouldn't need things like "lighting paint shader", neither any other extra processing to cause the impression of a true 3D image. True raytracing is the perfect depiction of a 3D scene limited only by the number of pixels and the colors that each one can assume. Maybe you can apply some antialiasing, only to make it look prettier.

Also, the world "polygon" rang a bell, since raytracing also works with true curved surfaces - including every little bump in the asphalt, for example - and not only a collection of tiny polygons masked by a bitmap texture as is the case of the common real-time rendering methods. 

Hell, raytracing is just a matter of following the path of every light ray from the light source to its target pixel, thus determining its final color. It is not a complex task, but it's nevertheless too much for any current consumer computer to do.


Just for fun. And would any bleeding edge gamers actually pay that much for it?


Were NVidia able to play Crysis at 60 fps?