Nvidia shows real time ray tracing: 30fps @ 1920×1080 at SIGGRAPH
One thing that Intel’s been touting about their upcoming Larrabee tech is the ability to do real time ray tracing. Of course Larrabee is slated for a 2009/2010 release, so today’s showing of real time ray tracing by rival Nvidia at SIGGRAPH is a bit of a coup for the boys in green.
Utilizing four of their newest Quadro GPUs, they were able to push 1920×1080 @ 30fps with three-ray tracing. While 3 rays isn’t exactly Pixar-quality, it’s still a very advanced way of lighting a scene, and when this trickles down to consumer-level hardware it will make for exceptionally well-lit and attractive graphics.
While at this point, four Quadros in a box is still a pretty expensive proposition (Think five figures), at the pace tech moves this will probably be in a $300 desktop video card in about 12-18 months.
It looks ****ty.
Don't look at the jaggies, look at the reflections, shadows, and lighting. It's only 3 bounces, so it's not amazing, but it looks promising. The jaggies are pretty unforgiveable on a quad-Quadro rig, though
I know what RT is supposed to offer over raster. Still looks ****ty.
As crappy as it looks race tracing in real time is something very new to the 3D world. Like your Bro Thrax I use to wait 30 minutes to get 1 frame rendered. But taking in mind it had thousands and rays