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Nvidia demos real-time GPU ray tracing at 1,920 x 1,080
Quadro Plex system with four GPUs runs automotive ray traced demo at 30fps at 1,920 x 1,080
If rasterisation does indeed die out in favour of ray tracing, as Intel believes it could, then where does this leave GPUs as we know them? Well, if Nvidia’s latest demo at Siggraph is anything to go by, traditional GPUs could still be more than capable of real-time ray tracing using CUDA.
Nvidia claims that it’s just demonstrated ‘the world's first fully interactive GPU-based ray tracer’ at the show, which was achieved using a Quadro Plex 2100 D4 Visual Computing System (VCS) containing four Quadro GPUs, each with 1GB of memory.
Nvidia says that ‘the ray tracer shows linear scaling rendering of a highly complex, two-million polygon, anti-aliased automotive styling application.’ Impressively, Nvidia claims that the polished car demo runs at 30fps at 1,920 x 1,080, and includes ‘an image-based lighting paint shader, ray traced shadows, and reflections and refractions’ at three bounces.
Nvidia also demonstrated the demo running at 2,560 x 1,600, although frame rates have not been revealed at this resolution. Even so, the demo makes for a visual treat at this resolution, which demonstrates the gorgeous reflective potential of ray traced games. You can download full 2,560 x 1,600 screenshots of the demo below to see for yourself:
Of course, this is still very much a tech demo at the moment, and it will probably be a long while before we ever see mainstream games using this technology. Nvidia will release its new D series of Quadro Plex systems next month, starting from a price of $10,750 US (£5,788).
More images for this article:
Reddit | Technorati
and as I said they've probably made it look like this so they can demonstrate it running at 30fps but tbh just having lots of shiny things with real-time reflections doesn't really do it for me. Realistic lighting/shadows does more on the overall picture to make an image impressive. If they had the lighting effects in the images I linked to, then the whole thing would look alot more realistic (no bland backgrounds as people have noticed). Anyway, it's nice, a step forward and hopefully something that can be built upon :)
Comment by EdArch at 12:28am 19th August 2008
I imagine there'll be psuedo ray tracing combined with rasterization before we get proper, full, ray tracing in games. Methinks.
Comment by pbryanw at 6:02pm 18th August 2008
would be something based on mental ray, given that nvidia owns mental... mental ray can look this bad too if your scene and render settings aren't great
Comment by NewParadigm at 1:23pm 18th August 2008
would be something based on mental ray, given that nvidia owns mental...
Comment by NewParadigm at 1:23pm 18th August 2008
jaggies and crap material maps/shadows also depend on the rendering engine used. This looks like something similar to Accurender which produces similar results ( http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/images/kitchen_large.jpg ). However if you look at renderers such as Mental-Ray, things get alot nicer to look at ( http://dwayne-ellis.com/AU2007-Resources/DV500-2-RenderView01.jpg ), ( http://discussion.autodesk.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/248-647145-5862225-176999/Fireplace2.jpg ). This is obviously a simple ray-tracing engine and nVidia are just showcasing their renderfarm box so say "look you can do this with our box", when they can get Mnetal-Ray quality running at 30fps THEN I'll be very impressed. Unfortunately, as said in the Intel article, it will be 5-10 years before it really becomes mainstream and we have PC's capable of doing it that don't cost over £5k. The Veyron looks nice though...but they always do!
Comment by EdArch at 4:49pm 17th August 2008
. However if you look at renderers such as Mental-Ray, things get alot nicer to look at ( http://dwayne-ellis.com/AU2007-Resources/DV500-2-RenderView01.jpg ), ( http://discussion.autodesk.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/248-647145-5862225-176999/Fireplace2.jpg ). This is obviously a simple ray-tracing engine and nVidia are just showcasing their renderfarm box so say "look you can do this with our box", when they can get Mnetal-Ray quality running at 30fps THEN I'll be very impressed. Unfortunately, as said in the Intel article, it will be 5-10 years before it really becomes mainstream and we have PC's capable of doing it that don't cost over £5k. The Veyron looks nice though...but they always do! &subject=Reporting comment found on Custom PC, article id: 604656){kind=link}
if it takes 4 GX2s just to run that, then I am extremely dissapointed in this tech... I hope Nvidia just continue focussing on PhysX instead!.
Comment by NikoBellic at 1:13pm 16th August 2008
im sorry, but after researching the specs, it seems that little black box has the equivalent of 4 9800 GX2s in it. 4!!!. methinks its going to be quite a while (maybe longer than the 5-10 years Dan Pohl estimated in the previous article) before this becomes a widely available alternative, unless we want an entire generation of Crysis's
Comment by soddit113 at 8:43am 16th August 2008
The shots sem to look better @ 1920 x 1080p than 2500 x 1600. The 1080p shots look darker, but you can definitely see jaggies at the higher resolution.
Comment by Warrior24_7 at 9:54pm 15th August 2008
they build em now we the games buyers get to use em 2100 if the game dev stays alive long enough to put it on the shelf at zavvi . jj7
Comment by kingjohn721 at 9:12pm 15th August 2008
it would probably look like Russel brand... oops sorry, I meant Amy winehouse... I guess you cant blame me for getting confused between the two :P
Comment by NikoBellic at 4:39pm 15th August 2008
Ray tracing requires extremely realistic models which eats into development time and hardware requirements. Rasterisation is here to stay for a while yet. Imagine a ray traced face using today's models... It would look hideous.
Comment by Zhaoman at 4:17pm 15th August 2008
I was hoping for something like a proper render with soft shadows and global illumination, this is just really basic.
Comment by DudQuitter at 3:05pm 15th August 2008
they have no shaders... I would at least expect them to make the roads look as good or better than something as old as Need for speed Most Wanted... but It looks like Midtown madness with low quality reflections and AA enabled...
Comment by NikoBellic at 2:05pm 15th August 2008
Yep, I think you absolutely right about the sharp shadows and flat colours. If you look at the big images (the ones linked in the text), they look good, but also quite dated - they're too clean, too neat, especially compared to something like GRID.
Comment by Sifter3000 at 1:36pm 15th August 2008
there is no way I'm playing any space game ... such as EVE ... with ray traced lighting... I like to be able to see things.
Comment by NewParadigm at 12:27pm 15th August 2008
my personal bugbears about ray tracing... sharp edged shadows and flat colours on any surface which isn't reflective... look at the surroundings, especially on the second picture and they seem very flat and dull. Still a very long way to go for ray tracing
Comment by NewParadigm at 12:23pm 15th August 2008
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