Parallel worlds

The first raytraced games would be little more than tech demos to showcase the capabilities - look at the game they made to show off the new PPUs. People would accept those running at low res but for mainstream play it will have to go a fair bit higher - 1280 at the very least

 

I wont argue with you that raytracing still has some time before it hits games in real time.. However, just need to point out a little hitch in your logic.

Raytracing is not the same as todays raster based rendering methods. Therefore, a raytraced image at 800x600 lacks many of the visible flaws in an 800x600 traditionally rendered image. First that comes to mind is aliasing.

One of the main reasons we up our resolutions is to sharpen the image. More pixels = more detail = less aliasing (jaggies) and pixelation. This isnt to say that there isnt any aliasing found within low resolution raytraced images (especially if you have an LCD or a CRT with a very poor DPI rating), but its considerably less. Just to get a general impression of the difference (i'm pulling this out of the air so dont quote me..) lets say an 800x600 raytraced image would have aliasing comparable to a 1280x1024 image not using raytracing. There are many variables that contribute to the final output of an image. Raytracing will provide for more realistic surfaces, reflections, interactions with lighting, effects and decreased aliasing at the same time due to its nature.

The reason hard core gamers push the resolution barrier is for increased image quality. If you can achieve the same image quality at a lower resolution.. you will do so. Remember when AA and AF started to first show some real merit? Last I checked most gamers.. even hard core gamers.. would rather run 1280x1024 with full shadows, pixel and vertex shaders on.. and let the advanced AA and AF nudge the IQ up to what you would expect from 1600x1200 or higher.. tahn run at 2048x1536 and forsake all the great shader effects that add to immersion and ultimately increase image quality. It just takes a while to educate end users that higher resolution does not in all cases mean higher image quality. It depends on your setup.. and the only instance where higher resolution will always equal higher image quality is when you're playing your PC games on a big screen (52" +) while 6 feet or less away.

My point is, you cant measure tomorrows tools with todays standards. in days past a single core 3.2ghz processor was thoguht to be faster than a 2.8ghz processor when measured with technologies and tools of that day. Now you take one of those processors and compare it todays and that assumption becomes false. You can apply the same thought process to raytracing vs. raster.

The real hurdle here wont be so much hardware capabilities.. I really believe we will be capable by 2008. The hurdle will be turning over the whole industry to an entirely new concept.. from consumers, to manufacturers to software developers. That is what will push this transition well into 2010+. I think it would be safe to assume that by the time the console manufacturers are ready to start on their next hardware cycles we will be nearing the debut of real time raytraced games to be delivered to the masses.

 

Scientific American Has a Great Article on Ray Tracing

Although the full article isn't available for free, I'd encourage you to check out the real-time ray tracing story in the last issue of Scientific American. The start is here: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=000637F9-3815-14C0-AFE483414B7F4945. They've managed to come up with real-time algorithms to be much more efficient than anything that's been done before.

 

- you a manager?

 

Heh, as well as being manegerial jargon it's a programming and software engineering term.

 

I learnt what it meant from dilbert...

 

Real time ray tracing goes open source, plus mud-wrestling waltzing dude

yeah, quad core would be nice

anyway, open source code for real time ray tracing and body tracking sounds interesting; and, the mud-wrestling waltzing dude is so it merits a look

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