NVIDIA Comments on Ray Tracing and Rasterization Debate

There are many people that don't see ray tracing as the holy grail of gaming graphics, however. A corporation like NVIDIA, that has a vested interested in graphics beyond the scale of any other organization today, has to take a more pragmatic look at rendering technologies including both rasterization and ray tracing; unlike Intel they have decades of high-end rasterization research behind them and see the future of 3D graphics remaining with that technology rather than switching to something new like ray tracing.

PC Perspective recently was able to spend some time with NVIDIA's Dr. David Kirk, Chief Scientist of NVIDIA, and ask him some questions regarding the rasterization and ray tracing debate.

[Lord Anubis]

PS3 runs raytracing through Linux with three PS3s.

[Charmers]

what was the point of you making that comment ???? This is a story looking at whether Ray Tracing is viable in a gaming environment. You come out with Three PS3's can do it !!!!! I don't consider myself a fanboy of either MS or Sony but I can say it is stupid comments like this that is ruining the site for me.

[Lord Anubis]

<.<

the point is clear, this generation will run some routines. (global illumination is a reality in this generation "Killzon2") Next Generation of systems will run more routines.

[cmrbe]

Its interesting to know in any case for me personally. What Anubis said is interesting to me and its not fanboyish or stupid. You taking offence and attacking him/her personally for saying 3PS3 can do ray tracing suggest that you are the fanboy here.

[Lord Anubis]

here is the video of the three PS3s running full ray tracing and ray casting.

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

and here is a video of CELL running ray tracing. Not the same as above.
http://www.youtube.com/watc...

on the comment section for the last video a guy is claiming GT5 uses raytracing I doubt it but i would believe it simply because GT5 looks very real.

[pwnsause]

mmh, Nvidia created the RSX along with sony if you guys dont know, and look at the games we are seeing currently, GT5 for instance, it has raytracing abilities.

[mighty_douche]

Didn't the Cell processor beat an Nvidia 8800GTX in a ray-tracing exercise? Or is my memory playing tricks on me?

[Andreiy]

Isn't cell is cpu? and 8800gtx is gpu? go compare cpu to cpu

[mighty_douche]

Yes thank you, i DO know the difference, but if you go back far enough, the Cell processor was actually designed to be able to act as both a CPU and GPU.

But thanks for the smart ass advice.

[Gorgon]

Douche:

yes, there were some benchmarks running Ray Tracing software and the Cell was really good at it, beating a GF8800GTX. Unfortunately, faster doesn't mean you can actually use full-blown RT ij games yet...

[vasilisk]

your memory is fine as always
I believe that this is what you're talking about

http://gametomorrow.com/blo...

@gorgon

Actually that's exactly what it means if it's programmed correctly. Maybe not full blown RT yet, as you say, but I think in the near future we'll see some very beautiful games using RT

[cloud360-7th_account]

360 rsx is better which equal graphics, this causes Mixed Agglutination Reaction and i think . get a mose and horse add equlrbrium equals the same equivelenat which creates the binary 1001011 which means fire is possible on 360 only with a scratch or rub mark on the 360 and 360 is better because it takes longer to load meaning more rsxram

"and thats why xbox360 is better than ps3 "

[King2008]

Finally got your bubbles up...haters been holding you down for so long lol. Congrats. People are to crazy on this site sometimes. I try to visit a few times a day if school, work, gf allows it but I love to get a good laugh every now and then.

[cmrbe]

Thanks for the vids. Very interesting indeed. I don't really know what ray tracing is but these vids helped.

[camelio]

Does anyone now the difference between Ray Tracing & Procedural textures. I thought Procedural textures were the next big thing in graphics and 4d environments

[sloth4urluv]

are you unable to do the research on your own?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...
Its pretty much rays are sent from the camera to determine what path the light comming to the camera took.

This can be used to acuratly determine replection and refraction.

Procedual texturing is where the texture is generated from a series of commands.It has been used as compression, and has the application of animated textures (So called "4D").

Both are very processor intensive.

[GETPWNZORED]

WTF do procedurals have to do with next-gen graphics or with being the next big thing? They're only needed in CG to make things easier on artists without a lot of time. Games will forever be more than fine with bitmaps.

[Ludwig]

Did anyone here actually read the article? .. lol