Nvidia: Raytracing is too much even for Hollywood

Not to mention the games

Fudzilla has learned at this rather interesting show called Nvision that Nvidia believes that raytracing is too much even for Hollywood guys.

[bunbun777]

Or will they be able to incorporate it into games for the PS3.....? Would someone with some know-how explain to me how cool FF14 is going to look? thanks!

[Bombibomb]

Gran Turismo 5 is the first console game to do ray tracing.

[DJ]

GT5 Prologue has real-time 1080p raytracing for the menu and garage sequences.

[moses]

Since Nvidia did a demo and the outcome was

"The demo showed animation running 30 frames per second at 1,920 x 1,080. Nvidia cranked the demo up to 2,560 x 1,600 but would not reveal the frame rate. This could have huge implications for in-game graphics, although as the system currently requires 4 parallel Quadro GPUs with 1GB memory apiece, costing around $US 10,000 a pop it may be a couple of years before this hits even the most hardcore PC gamer's desktop."

I'm sure they're downplaying ray-tracing, but I think a few wires are being crossed about current ray-tracing in games.

[lsujester]

Menus don't amount to anything, though. You definitely won't be seeing fully raytraced cars running around raytraced tracks... not in this generation, anyway. Depending on how long it takes for the next gen to come out, we may see implications of it then. But that's pretty questionable as current GPU's are still primarily rasterizers.

But as for now, raytracing is a serious resource hog in its current state, way too much for the underpowered (compared to new PC tech) consoles.

But I can't way until the day we have computers strong enough to use photon mapping to render a scene. Mmmmmmm, photorealism.

[JOLLY1]

You spout off stuff that you think you know, but it's completely wrong. gt5p has pre-rendered videos that have ray-tracing done in the video. It has no real-time raytracing. Every garage video is pre-rendered.

You'll notice that dj will not argue, because he knows i am right.

[LeonSKennedy4Life]

DJ won't argue because he's an intelligent human being. He doesn't play around with ignorance. He's more interested in conversations where both people have an IQ over 12.

Grow up, dude.

You made that up on the spot. DJ knows what he's talking about.

[JOLLY1]

I own a business that does 3d rendering for architectural design. We have recently done a few game assets for a company. The renders in gt5p are pre-rendered and not real-time. The game realizes which manufacturer you have and plays the clip for that car and that manufacturer. I run 3ds MAX 2009 design and all of our visuals use mental ray ( a ray-tracing rendering program, recently purchased by Nvidia). Oh, I guess I might know a little more than you son.

[JOLLY1]

This is also for anyone else that was curious if I know anything about this matter.

[DarkArcani]

You guys should run with V-ray instead of mental ray. Way better support and it's just overall better IMO.

[JOLLY1]

I just like using Mental ray since it comes with the program. I also am used to it. The new Mental ray has a lot of great new features though. They are getting very close to v-ray. Man, I wish i could load these images.

[kevnb]

this sure is a geeky battle of words.

[socomnick]

LEon you got PWNED !!!!!!!!!!!!!

[HowarthsNJ]

http://ps3.ign.com/articles...

"Visuals

Just as past games in the series have pushed the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 to their limits, Gran Turismo 5 should be a system showpiece for the PlayStation 3. The pre-race screen shows your car being worked on by your pit crew in a garage, and these scenes will feature full HDR, ray-traced lighting. These scenes are stunning and easily rival anything pre-rendered footage could throw at the screen."

[shazam]

those sequences are real time. but it only uses the raytracing to get the reflections. the shadows are done traditionally. secondly if its pre rendered why does it have so many jaggies? have you even played the game? there are jaggies everywhere in the menu scenes. dont you think since its pre rendered they could have and should have easily anti aliased it? secondly how in the world would a 1080p clip for every car fit into an 1800mb download and still have the game in there.

the menu scenes run at 30fps which is why this isn't used in game because they wanted the game play to run at 60 fps.

[JOLLY1]

I am actually right. Howarth, I am not disagreeing that the garage and menus screens have Ray tracing. The thing is it is not real time. They are videos that were pre-rendered. I don't think that is a bad thing at all, they look great. I am glad that they took the time to do it. Ray traced videos take a very long time to produce. The rendering time is crazy. The even more crazy part is the pd is going to do it for every vehicle. For shazam, you have to look at it this way. If you had a full 1080p 2.5 hour movie it is roughly 15 gigs (that is a estimate) If you break that down per minute it is around 100 megs. they you compress it and depending on what you are using to compress you can take out around 70% of the file size.

[Droidbro]

Every one ray tracing was first used in Halo 3. Stop lier.

[Kleptic]

^^^ its obvious now that you are just spamming crap in every thread you can find...

I have yet to see any confirmation that any PS3 game, or console game, uses any 'real' ray-tracing in real time...GT5P is said to use it for the menus and pre-race garages, but i have yet to find anyone confirming that it was done in real time...and that is all that is relevant with ray tracing...any console can play a video that used ray tracing for accurate lighting...but to do even partial tracing in real time is a majorly big deal...

Killzone 2 is in a similar situation...after E3 2007, the BBC did a quick write-up and hands on preview of the game...commenting on how it was obvious there was a lot of work needed towards the texturing, but that the lighting was more advanced than anything real time to date (which is arguably still very true)...he went on to mention that the lighting engine was one of the first to use ray tracing in real time for certain aspects...

however, that question is quickly dodged by Guerilla now...they never confirmed it, and the BBC author never gave the name of who made the quote...its definitely intriguing, mostly because of how ridiculously good the lighting engine in killzone 2 is...but it needs a lot more clarification...

google will net you a hundred of articles like this on GT5P and Killzone 2...but they never have confirmation from Polyphony or Guerilla...and until then, I'm not buying it (the ray tracing part at least)...

http://forums.highdefdigest...

[shazam]

did you even read the first part of my comment? because you had no answer to it. and they are not video clips. there is no evidence of any blockyness or other artifacts due to compression. they are being rendered in real time. do you even have the game?

did you know that if you install linux on the ps3 and then download the IMB interactive raytracer it comes with a scene with a Ferrari and if you run it a 720p it runs pretty much at 30fps if you turn off the supersample aa, the ambient occlusion, and set it to 2 reflective bounces. and thats the cell all by itself without the rsx. the raytracing in gt5p is inferior to that because it uses traditional shadowing algorithm instead of raytrace shadows. this, along with the use of not just the cell but also the rsx, allows it to run in 1280x1080. and fyi gt5p doesnt run in full 1920x1080p it runs in 1280x1080p and is scaled horizontally.

[JOLLY1]

I didn't read that first part of your post. I have played the game. I don't own it. My friend has the Logitech wheel, so I go to his house and play it. I don't really look at the menu screens for long. From what I remember, I didn't see a jaggie at all though. If there are jaggies in the menu screne though, you just made my point. There are zero jaggies (I have watched them tons) in the garage views. How come they look perfect in the garage movies, but they can't make them look perfect elsewhere? If it was being done "real-time" they could show it the same everywhere. Also, I know that it isn't full 1080p. You should read my post again. especially the part where I said "if". Well there goes my last bubble, now you have to argue with yourself.

*edit* seriously, I actually know they are videos, Holy crap! The key word in that sentence is "know".

[shazam]

even if you had more bubbles im done arguing with you. its obvious that no words are going to change your opinion. no matter how many facts i state it wont matter.

you are just one of those people who would rather die than admit you are wrong.

[Kleptic]

Jolly...I am not necessarily saying they are real time rendered either (the garage scenes I mean)...and I am not about to argue with your credentials in this matter...but just because they can't recreate that lighting elsewhere does not mean there is no way that they are not real time...yeah...I seriously just put 3 negatives in one sentence...I love the internet...

seriously though...rendering one car with some people in a garage is a lot different than 16 cars on screen with dynamics incorporated into actually controlling them...the camera is fixed in movement (meaning the user has no control over that)...MGS4 was handled in a similar way...the cut-scenes were all confirmed to be rendered in game (obviously you could tell anyway by the way the octocam could be changed whenever you wanted during the cutscenes)...but they had insane amounts of detail in facial animation and character movement that simply wasn't there during the regular gameplay...when you take out the dynamics of the engine, in which a user can't manipulate the scene in anyway, you can tailer any of that processing to different effects...in this case, the animation of the characters in MGS4...or the incredible lighting reflections in GT5P...

still makes little sense why they wouldn't just pre-render them though...only reason to do it in real time would be if you had modified the car, and it would show your changes in that garage scene...which it didn't, mostly because those features where not included in GT5P...but possibly that tech is already in place, so that in the full game changes made to the car are still rendred in those garage scenes...

who knows...its never been confirmed either way...but shazam did bring up a very valid point, in which there are nearly 80 cars in GT5p, and those videos run in for several minutes before looping (some of which I never noticed looping, it just keeps switching to a different angle)...that is a TON of space for 1800mb...that is 70 plus HD videos that are several minutes long each...sure they could compress it, but even compressed with the core game engine (plus all the other real video included for track history, etc.)...its just not adding up...

My guess is that they really are real time rendered...but may not use true ray tracing at all...I am not very clear on the concept, but I am aware of how processing intensive it is...I just get lost when ray tracing is only used for 'part' of the lighting (i.e. not for shadows, but for reflections?...is that even possible?)...

[LeonSKennedy4Life]

How does working for a company make you aware of what another company is doing? You have no idea, dude.

Pwning would require him disproving DJ and myself...which he, in no way, did.

How old are you, dude?

[Ju]

Hint, 15sec @ 30fps @ 1080p and a 50% compression ratio would result in about 1.7GB.

[donator]

That was a short and uninteresting story.

[lsujester]

Yes it is, it's mainly just more from Nvidia trying to downplay Intel's push for graphics market lately. But the whole idea of raytracing vs rasterization is quite interesting.

Well, for the computer geeks, that is.

[jujunogo]

the ps3 already uses raytracing in killzone 2 so i dont understandwhy people say wait for ps4 or sumthing its stupid its already bening used listen to the killzone 2 developer

http://www.gametrailers.com...

[pwnsause]

Crysis is the most advance game ever created and it doesnt do Raytracing. think about that. it takes 3 PS3s to do Raytracing like on this video for example. you think Sony is going to force people to buy 3 PS3s in order make Raytracing as standard in the games? no.

Read the information window on youtube about this video. Now after you read this, answer this question, Do you think AT THIS TIME (PRESENT DAY) that it is possible for Cell Processor to do RayTracing at least 30fps?

My opinion I think it is possible in the future if Sony continues to continue and keep developing for a more advance Cell Processor that is at least 50x powerful than the Cell processor that is embedded into the PS3.

[Lionsguard]

Yes as much of a PS3 supporter that I am if the PS3 were to preform real raytracing on a game it'd explode and go nuclear and wipe out an entire city block.

[Kleptic]

the 3 PS3's connected for that ray tracing video was because the user was running iRT through linux...which locks out the RSX...

there are several articles on the PS3 doing what could be said real time ray tracing of the stanford bunny with just one machine...but it still is useless to any real world application, as it still took several minutes (still shorter than almost every GPU and CPU out there though; pertaining to the PS3 6 usuable SPE Cell...it was only topped by the 8 SPE server class Cell)...

[jujunogo]

wats with all this i cant wait to ps4 crap when ps3 can already use raytracing in killzone 2 as said by the developer check for youself..........

http://www.gametrailers.com...

[moses]

As I posted above

"The demo showed animation running 30 frames per second at 1,920 x 1,080. Nvidia cranked the demo up to 2,560 x 1,600 but would not reveal the frame rate. This could have huge implications for in-game graphics, although as the system currently requires 4 parallel Quadro GPUs with 1GB memory apiece, costing around $US 10,000 a pop it may be a couple of years before this hits even the most hardcore PC gamer's desktop."

It doesn't seem like current technology really supports feasible real time ray tracing in games. So don't fool yourself.

[pwnsause]

that is not raytracing. that is Deferred Rendering. Raytracing in consoles will happen, but 5 years from now.

[Bolts]

Anyone who think the console can do real time raytracing to render games is obviously a moron.

[shazam]

not raytracing. he is just a pr guy who doesnt know what hes talking about. you cant have raytracing ant deferred rendering because deferred rendering is raster graphics.

[LeonSKennedy4Life]

Raytracing may be cool and all...

...but Ted Price has already stated that Insomniac is working on a less expensive way to do the same thing. They know how to find shortcuts, how to burst open knowledge of a processor, and how to look for solutions nobody even knew existed. Ted is more than willing to share this knowledge with other developers...

...unless their first name is Gabe.

*snickers*

[pwnsause]

maybe it is possible in the PS3, Developers know how to Cheat the Hardware, but at this present time, its just not going to happen.

Just look at this video, it took 14 Cell Processors just raytrace this Enzo Ferrari at 1080p 60fps.

[SlyGuy]

that showed some technique that looked tons better than ray tracing.

Anyone remember what it was called?

[Kleptic]

^^uh no...there was an awesome video on Killzone 2's lighting engine (which was built by an out-sourced studio that focuses only on lighting, they worked directly with guerilla and sony) over a year ago...and that was the only thing I have seen that was even remotely comparable to pre-rendered ray tracing in big budget CG movies (cars, for example..which according to this article is one of the only films to do it)...

and by the way...I am saying 'comparable' in the sense of having several light sources and accurately representing their ambiance...not in the overall quality of the rendered frame...

but the video states that they and Guerilla designed the entire game engine for deferred rendering which is beneficial for accurate dynamic lighting among several on screen sources at once...

and all this brings up Crysis...and I have to dig up that article...crysis, in my ignorant opinion, does not have nearly the lighting sources as any given time as Killzone 2 apperantly...yet uses insane normal maps and physics based foliage to create immeasurably high amounts of shadows (something Uncharted did well also)...but the light source was almost always just the sun...or a series of spaced overhead lamps when indoors...they all created dynamic shadows, but from my experience you were never in an area that had several sources mixing together...

Killzone 2 was the opposite though...there is less focus on time of day changing, but one space on the map could have 4 different lights filtering into it...resulting in several dynamic shadows being processed in the correct directions...take for example the muzzle flash of the weapon in killzone 2...the muzzle becomes a true dynamic light source, creating real time shadows 'strobing' around anything within its range...yet it keeps the soft shadows of the complex lighting already fixed around the map...

it simply looks insane, yet still subtle at times...i'll find that video/article...I didn't realize just how crazy Killzone 2's lighting was until I read it for myself...

EDIT: the older article is what I was talking about iirc...but its a dead link now..awesome...i'll keep looking...

http://www.n4g.com/Search.a...

[Xi]

http://lightsprint.com/

Which i personally find more impressive then any other lighting middleware out there. (and I think it looks bettern then the stuff in killzone 2, the first game I know of that will feature it is LA.NOIR)

[AKIronMaiden]

Exactly Leon! The game dev world is based on finding shortcuts and exploits that pretty much do the same thing yet require much less power. I mean look at maps (Normal, Bump maps). People were able to find a way to make a 2D image react to light and although it is flat, still produces a trick in which it looks as though there are actually extrusions or more polys on the model.
Yes, When it comes down to it more polys will all ways look better than maps, but It's shortcuts like these that will lead to Realistic looking games without having to use these technologies. That's just what I think though. And I'm not a pro Modeler or anything, I use Max, Maya, Mudbox and Zbrush, but it's a lot of just a hobby rather than a job.

[Droid]

lmao @ 1 ps3 doing ray tracing. ok. good one.

[jay2]

Well just tweak the tech to speed things up then, simple.

[Bolts]

This is like asking NASA to tweak the spaceshuttle so it can run on Diet Pepsi and Mentos. You can't "tweak the tech" for raytracing. To do true raytracing in games you'll need a breakthrough GPU and a DX architecture that doesn't exist yet.

[Obsidian]

@ Jolly

Hahaha, that was the best u could come up with...typing Pwn'd and extruding it, wow are you ever gifted hahah! By the way Brazil blows Vray and mental ray away!

[Obsidian]

Jolly"I run 3ds MAX 2009 design and all of our visuals use mental ray ( a ray-tracing rendering program, recently purchased by Nvidia). Oh, I guess I might know a little more than you son."

You are aware that you can do ray trace rendering with the Default Scan Line Renderer right? You don't have to use mental ray. Apparently u don't know more then me son! Who cares about ray tracing any ways, radiosity is way more impressive!

[shazam]

radiosity is used with raytracing you numbnut

[JOLLY1]

You can use ray-trace with scanline? You are amazing! I know you can. I don't prefer scanline though. Yes, all I did was extrude text and add a daylight system, I wasn't going to waste too much time on the people that don't know anything, Holy crap. I think it's funny that you talk about ray-tracing like you know what it is doing. Radiosity is an old form of ray-tracing that people used with the scanline renderer. Now, if you use mental ray you get a faster ray traced computation. They are both ray traced though. The difference is mental ray does its calculations during the render, where radiosity you have to have an extra step. By the way, Brazil is pretty awesome.

[kinggeoff]

We use Mental Ray TONS for feature films. We've been utilizing ray tracing techniques in various ways in movies since I got into the industry. I wish this dude knew what the fck he was talking about

[Gish]

<----- (bows out of raytracing conversation since he has no clue WTF it is) But that Enzo sure is purdy!

[Obsidian]

"Numbnut"... no need for childish name calling Shazam! Sorry, but you can raytrace render without using radiosity.

and I quote "Calculating the overall light propagation within a scene, for short global illumination is a very difficult problem. With a standard ray tracing algorithm, this is a very time consuming task, since a huge number of rays have to be shot. For this reason, the radiosity method was invented. The main idea of the method is to store illumination values on the surfaces of the objects, as the light is propagated starting at the light sources.

[Obsidian]

I apologize Jolly, I'm in a cranky mood today!

[JOLLY1]

You look a little upset in that pic :P. Don't worry man, I don't really care. I just like keeping the little kids in check.

[Obsidian]

hahahah, I can make him smile if you want:) His face is fully animated. It's part of a 3d character i modeled a while ago

[JOLLY1]

You did a pretty good job. I totally suck at faces!

[Mc187]

I like pie.

[LeonSKennedy4Life]

Bubbles.

[NRG]

I'm going to disagree. I bet you don't.

[2Negativecool]

The clouds in Warhawk are raytraced.

pned.

[dkgshiz]

Also, no hollywood has been using ray tracing for many years now. Almost every movie with some decent special effects uses it.