NVIDIA Launches The World's First Interactive Ray Tracing Engine

[Final8ty]

SIGGRAPH 2009, NEW ORLEANS—Aug. 4, 2009— NVIDIA, the leader in GPU computing, today introduced the NVIDIA® OptiX™ ray tracing engine, part of a suite of application acceleration engines for software developers. NVIDIA acceleration engines make it easy to incorporate valuable, high-performance capabilities into applications, while simultaneously reducing development time.

NVIDIA application acceleration engines unveiled at Siggraph 2009 include:

* NVIDIA® OptiX™ engine for real-time ray tracing
* NVIDIA® SceniX™ engine for managing 3D data and scenes
* NVIDIA® CompleX™ engine for scaling performance across multiple GPUs
* NVIDIA® PhysX® 64-bit engine for real-time, hyper-realistic physical and environmental effects

ReadMore

[zalbard]

Wonder what kind of performance it has. Certainly interesting.

[Jamesrt2004]

Man they both look good =)

[Junos]

NVIDIA® - WeStillFailToNameOurProductX™ I think the 1st one looks a bit plastic - the second one is ok.

[Manicdan]

games wont look real until we get randomization. IRL nothing is perfect, but in games, things (like textures) seem to be perfectly repeated.

[perkam]

Nvidia's Quadro line is unmatched, but WTH is with the ray tracing images from 1998???

THIS is ray tracing today:



Perkam

[Manicdan]

perkman, how long did that take to render?

[Nautilius]

Looks absolutely stunning.

[Mk]

Nvidia's Quadro line is unmatched, but WTH is with the ray tracing images from 1998???

THIS is ray tracing today:



Perkam

HOLY!

[570091D]

so, is this the result of pressure from intel with their larrabee + ray tracing parade, or did nvidia do this on it's own?

perkam, that is f*#%ing awesome!

[sholvaco]

^
^
You guys act like those generic renders have anything to do with the technology being presented here. This won't find it's use in games for quite some time, not until the software libraries mature and not untill the hardware is up to the task. In the near future (once it's properly implemented) it may be more usefull in 3d rendering applications offering interactive render previews as these don't really need to run at more then a few frames per second and there will be the usual assortment of snazzy demos written for it of course. Still it's a nice step in (IMHO) the right direction.

Perkam: They're talking realtime here. That image took hours to render. Just because the same technique is going to be used, it doesn't automatically mean the same visual quality is going to be achieved. Not for a very, very long time.

[ToTTenTranz]

Nvidia's Quadro line is unmatched

I'm pretty sure the FireGL line is now king of performance, ever since they launched products based in the RV7xx architecture.

but WTH is with the ray tracing images from 1998???

It's what the nVidia hardware can do in real time right now..
A bit disappointing, if you ask me..

[perkam]

They're talking realtime here. That image took hours to render. Just because the same technique is going to be used, it doesn't automatically mean the same visual quality is going to be achieved. Not for a very, very long time.

Try to understand my point m8. If we can't achieve that quality of ray tracing in real time, then we shouldn't be focusing on it until we get there.

In the near future, real time radiosity and character lighting is what will power games towards realism: http://geomerics.com/enlighten-media.htm#gdc08-demo

Then there's the first time we'll see real time global illumination in Cryengine 3 coming 2010: http://www.incrysis.com/index.php?op...sk=view&id=797

Perkam

[Talonman]

Ya cant have enouigh interactive ray-tracing engines in my opinion!

Good job Nvidia...

[Hornet331]

Its guite ironic that nv now pushes raytracing. Given the fact that they said not even a year ago, that it's to calculation intensive and only will be used for some effects... now they present a full raytracing engien on there own (thought its not there own, but what they have bought from raysacle)

[Mechromancer]

Where is Caustic and CausticGL? I thought they had the world's first interactive ray tracing engine.

[Dainas]

I'm pretty sure the FireGL line is now king of performance, ever since they launched products based in the RV7xx architecture.

goddamn whats wrong with people on this forum, the second ATI manages to get near parity they own the gpu market by every measure allova sudden.

King=No question at the top, not trading blows with rival in some choice benchmarks.

[Oberon]

goddamn whats wrong with people on this forum, the second ATI manages to get near parity they own the gpu market by every measure allova sudden.

King=No question at the top, not trading blows with rival in some choice benchmarks.

It really is too bad that he's right (at least I think he is, I haven't read any workstation benches in months).

Anyhow, this would not be the first interactive raytracing engine. Quake3 was reproduced using raytracing a long time ago.

[sholvaco]

If we can't achieve that quality of ray tracing in real time, then we shouldn't be focusing on it until we get there.

You are being just a bit narrow minded here. Even at current levels of visual fidelity ray tracing offers significant advantages in faithfulness and cohesion of represented visual effects. Complicated hack approaches like the ones you mentioned also require significant investments of time, money and talent that not everyone is willing to spring for, nor pay licence for every bit of software tech their engine comprises of. Many of these effects (particularly involving ilumination, surface effects, shadows, behaviour of light in a medium...) that software engineers are stretching themselves in trying to simulate, are inherent to the raycasting/raytracing rendering method and require but the base libraries... and the hardware to push it at acceptable framerates that is yet to materialize. Once it does "happen" though, the least it can do is level the playing field and offer a raise in the most baseline image quality threshold.

Focusing on it? Even if Nvidia is offering support now, do you think everyone is going to suddenly switch over? Not while it means sacrificing either the performance or quality, and not doing so is still ways off. But in the mean time why not at least get the ball rolling? Which is exactly what Nvidia is doing by providing these libraries.

[Chumbucket843]

i can post cool ray tracing pictures too. GPU ray tracing has an advantage over linux farms that movies use. this isnt just for real time.

[Manicdan]

with the increase in polygons, view distance, resolution, and texture sizes. hardware has plenty of things that keep it pushed to its limits.

as nice as raytracing is, i honestly was not impressed with the videos linked by perkamn, given i only saw the youtube one (their download rate was horrible, 1 hour for 180MB). i think lighting effects are doing quite well with a bunch of shortcuts to get the user to believe whats going on. in real life, do you have that many lights moving around?

there are many more things that can be done to games currently (AI and randomizing textures come to mind), and probably alot less stressful on the hardware, that should happen first.

[Eastcoasthandle]

Nvidia's Quadro line is unmatched, but WTH is with the ray tracing images from 1998???

THIS is ray tracing today:

http://img265.imageshack.us/img265/9...ses800edit.png

Perkam

Perkam is right this is not any thing new and there are people in different professions that can provide pics like this (Architect, Engineer, House Designer, to name a few). All you need is the right program to do it. Evermotion comes to mind and has been around for a good while now. That's why I will file this under marketing until a real working demo is presented.

[Manicdan]

Perkam is right this is not any thing new and there are people in different professions that can provide pics like this (Architect, Engineer, House Designer, to name a few). All you need is the right program to do it. Evermotion comes to mind and has been around for a good while now. That's why I will file this under marketing until a real working demo is presented.

i was using 3D Studio Max while in highschool and could create some really nice things. and im a nub. i used it to design an acrylic computer case, and it came out quite well.

[Calmatory]

with the increase in polygons, view distance, resolution, and texture sizes. hardware has plenty of things that keep it pushed to its limits.

as nice as raytracing is, i honestly was not impressed with the videos linked by perkamn, given i only saw the youtube one (their download rate was horrible, 1 hour for 180MB). i think lighting effects are doing quite well with a bunch of shortcuts to get the user to believe whats going on. in real life, do you have that many lights moving around?

there are many more things that can be done to games currently (AI and randomizing textures come to mind), and probably alot less stressful on the hardware, that should happen first.

What exactly do you mean by "randomizing textures"?

First, you aren't happy with current textures. Then you demand more textures. Next thing you will have to do, is to explain me how are you supposed to create double the amount of textures we got now, and fit them in the VRAM without raising the card's price twofold.

[Glow9]

HOLY!

Wait so, that picture is fake right? The ice looks fake. Or am I missing something how does this work?