When Will Ray Tracing Replace Rasterization?

[xophaser]

Not sure why not,

I been using ray tracing in architectural rendering for a while (since 98), noticeably the architectural software FormZ use this. This is the highest level of render I can pick (most accurate to lighting and candle), and we usually have to render a scene for a few minutes to hours depending on the level of details.

 

[matt87_50]

great article, i think another less explored advantage of raytracing is its ability to handle any mathematically defined object - not just triangles - such as the curves mentioned in the article. like hight maps, your whole outdoor level could be one primitive, defined by a plasma fractal, or perlin noise. ray tracers can more easily draw a whole sphere than just one triangle. i think the way things are modeled will have to change from "just a shit load of triangles all stuck together" in order to see the full advantage of raytracing

 

[matt87_50]

[citation][nom]douken[/nom]Ray Tracing, a technique that was too advanced for its time and was later forgotten. -year 2045[/citation]

hehehe, so you think raytracing has only existed for the last 3 years? it actually had its prime time back in the 80s and 90s where ppl who were getting their first PCs were doing their own simple raytracing on their 8086s, POVray has been around longer than microsoft...
it may be too advanced for its time, but that hasn't stopped us trying and we certainly haven't forgotten it, and we won't, cause quite simply it is the "correct" way to do it, and rasterization is a "hack".

 

[Guest]

1. Raytracing lends itself to better to physical effects (scattering, transmittance,
diffraction, etc).
2. However, photorealistic imagery requires a huge amount of objects.
(trees? leaves? rocks? sea waves?)
How can this ever be realtime?
In the meantime, rasterization + texture mapping will do...

 

[bangskij68]

I'm a 3d animator, and using lightwave I can render really good looking images that would have been hard to do with rasterization in just a few seconds. It's not all about photorealism, a future 20-30 core cpu could be doing "real interesting" graphics in realtime and I think we'll get whole new games created in ray tracing. This is no more than 10 years off, even though, using raytracing/radiosity/caustics to render photorealistic images would take hundreds or thousands of cores. Still, there's a lot of interesting graphical ground to cover that may not be as much about photorealism as of a stylized look. And anyway, when 50 core CPUs become commonplace anyone could run such a game without requiring a specialized graphics adapter meant purely for games.

 

[Draven35]

I use Lightwave as well, and the funny thing to think of is that things that were done in Lightwave, rendered in software, fifteen years ago- i.e. Babylon 5- can be done in rasterization in real time now.

Sure, ten years from now we may be ray tracing in real time- but by then we'll be using something else as our non-real-time renderer.

 

[bangskij68]

On a modern, fast computer you'll be raytracing babylon 5 type images in realtime now if you all you want is SD.

 

[Draven35]

Yep, for the direct-to-dvd B5 movie that was done recently, they used the original B5 models as the low-poly standins during animation.

 

[bangskij68]

Yesterdays cutting edge, now good enough for the preview, it's funny -like, every other year there are new buttons I can push in the software that there didn't use to be enough CPU to bother with...

 

[Draven35]

I remember discussions before Lightwave 6 came out about the possibility of it having radiosity (global illumination) rendering and all the old hat were "naah it wont have it and besides its too CPU intensive to use anyway"

And now we practically use it for everything.

(Lightwave user since LW 4.0 Amiga)

 

[bangskij68]

ah, radiosity -so nice, I've dabbled some into caustics as well. Particles too, can run really lots of them these days.

remember the Amiga days, would look at demos with raytraced images that had taken weeks to render, didn't use lightwave before the mid 90s though. on pc. but i like the look, remember how awful it was when they changed it -glad they changed it back.

 

[Guest]

All the comments to the contrary, its a simple scientific fact that the human eye is exceedingly easy to fool. Or rather, the human brain is. Your eye doesn't decide on what looks good, it just passes signals to your brain, which routinely 'fills in' information that it thinks it needs, even if it doesn't actually have it. Magicians are a good case in point here. Your eye actually sees what's going on, but your brain ignores it, either because its been distracted, or because you just don't understand what's actually happening.

This is the same for graphics. Sure, in a still picture, you can see the minute differences between rasterisation and ray tracing. However, when it comes to moving pictures, its another matter entirely. Its much easier for your brain to fill in minute details that it thinks should be there such as small discrepancies in reflections, because you see these things 100 times a day in real life. Your brain knows how things are 'supposed' to look, and so if it doesn't it auto-corrects.

Lower performance, on the other hand, is harder to disguise from your senses. Why? Because there's nothing for your brain to fill in. When you have hanging or ripping or just a slightly lower frame rate than usual, its very easy to pick up on? Again, why? Because your brain is -used to- the faster rate. It sees that framerate 100 times a day too, but unlike filling in small details, now your brain is being asked to fill in whole screens, and that's not as easily overlooked.

In order for ray tracing to become mainstream, this is the issue that is going to have to be overcome. While ultimately ray tracing is the better solution visually, it will be years before we see the processing power neccesary to make up for this. Someone will need to not only make the capability -available-, but make it -affordable- for the majority. Until then, ray tracing will remain a tool sparingly used.

 

[rpmrush]

Wow! This read much like an Anandtech.com article. Informitive and deep.

 

[intelx]

image quality with lower fbs is better than Low quality with high FBS, because having high quality images gets you more in the game that your playing and better effects.

so yea its good they'r working on this, because right now u get a 5870 and u max out every game, that it even got extra power that produces more frames that you dont benefit from, so using these frames with Ray tracing will definitely be wroth it.

 

[Guest]

nice article. i also say its all about approximation and compromises. the human eye itself, the way the electromagnetic beams are encoded in a totally different way and reconstructed in the brain is itself a kind of "fake" - and not: its reality. everything is reality.

or => is the reality quantized or beamed? you find both aspects ... also in physics ...

lets change the perspective a bit and picture future hardware, computer games, movies, where you are "in". you are surrounded by the scenery like in the holodeck of startreck. you have quantumcomputers available.

what would have changed compared to today?
i would say, like with the sound/noises in a game, its then not about better (more realistic) graphics anymore, its then more about realism in another way. for example the interacting aspects ... that you not just have material which is shown realistic but interacts more in a physical way and way deeper ... detailed ... objects created over approximations in simulating the interchanging of quarks, atoms, molecules ...

so i would say like with the realism of sound/noises after some kind of realism for optical aspects another focus will raise ... the general physics ...

seen all together we are going to recreate the reality we are in, to live in that and bring that together. a learning aspect .. an enlightment aspect ...

 

[IzzyCraft]

Wow! This read much like an Anandtech.com article. Informitive and deep.

could almost swear you got the -1 for mention of anandtech T_T oh trolls

 

[blubberdiblubb]

eat this raytracing sceptics http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGnvuL8kq_Q
And btw: one really big advantage of raytracing that the author misses out on is correct GI. Reflections and refractions are indeed nice to have but GI is what makes the huge difference between rt and rasterization.