Quake Wars: Ray Traced

[nomercy8989]

i dont undestand whats so adwanced about this....

[doltBmB]

Raytraced reflections are obviously ideal but I don't see anything else in here that isn't ugly as balls.

[WolfosDotOrg]

@doltBmB That's because it's an old game.

[doltBmB]

@WolfosDotOrg The point is that apart from a very select few effects, raytracing really provides no advantage over raster.

[2kliksphilip]

@doltBmB If done right, it looks very good. Sadly, this is the sort of demonstration that I don't like- it makes loads of shadows that look like artifacts, over-the-top cube reflections everywhere and really doesn't show how nice raytraced graphics can look. Nvidia's new car demo is an example of what REAL raytracing can achieve. It's just a shame that the hardware still isn't capable of doing it in real-time... but give it time. (Literally).

[doltBmB]

@2kliksphilip In the meantime you can run rasterized spherical harmonics lighting that looks just as good and runs ten times faster. Raytracing is just slow, whatever you can do with raytracing you are off better performance wise doing somehow else. Even Pixar chooses their battles, Renderman uses raytracing only for the things that need it. Why would realtime games use it on everything when Pixar doesn't?

[2kliksphilip]

@doltBmB Yes, you can get very good results using cheap tricks. The latest computer games show this, and simply wouldn't be able to look good if they used raytracing.

At the end of the day though, if you have the power, raytracing is going to deliver the best results. It's just at a very expensive cost.

[doltBmB]

@2kliksphilip Raster can do nearly everything that raytracing does. For example, looks up "imperfect shadow maps" that show global illumination results using rasterized shadow maps that is close to the kind of results path traced GI can give. But in real time.

[2kliksphilip]

@doltBmB The clue's in the name.

[doltBmB]

@WolfosDotOrg And also eats up so many more resources for that.

[WolfosDotOrg]

@doltBmB With rasterization, speed decreases quickly over the number of polygons. With raytracing, it decreases a lot less.

[WolfosDotOrg]

@doltBmB Try Googling "Ray tracing and gaming" and click the link to the 'pcper' website. It shows a lot of advantages.

[antzrhere]

While I look forward to this quality of realtime RT, what it can improve on existing techniques is being eaten away by advanced rasterization techniques. The above demo does look nice and can render a frame in the millisecond range. However, even with GPGPU acceleration, industrial standard RT with GI,AO etc.is still 5+ orders of magnitude slower - whats that 20 years to wait? Interestingly industrial rendering is rarely 100% RT - e.g. RenderMan is a hybrid rasterization-raytrace setup.

[Arcadeprehacked]

The water looks really nice

[antzrhere]

I always enjoy how raytracing demos ALWAYS put in a reflective sphere. I know it's a technical strongpoint over rasterization, but be honest, how many giant silver reflective spheres do you see in games?

[Argoon1981]

@antzrhere The only strong point (and is a very important one i must say) that rasterization has above raytracing or Photon mapping is speed, because the later techniques can make 100% realistic images. What is funny is that rasterization based games does use more and more effects based in tracing rays like POM (parallax Occlusion mapping), real time radiosity and others, so i believe that in the future rasterization and raytracing will converge until raytracing is the only one left.

[antzrhere]

@Argoon1981 Yes, INDUSTRIAL RT wins almost everytime(although aliasing is an issue without increasing the samples per pixel, perhaps MAA?). The big problem is that this BREED of RT lacks effects such as photon mapping,caustics,GI,AO etc. People assume that all RT is equal, and that as RT becomes realtime (GPGPU, Intel KF) we will see these effects in games. This isnt true. The next gen of realtime RT will be limited to reflections,refractions&shadow­s,whereas rasterization can already fake GI,AO

[hardstyle905]

a lot of smartasses here.

[AfghanLibre]

i like round objects

[Argoon1981]

@superkellerman8D I forgot to say, that video is indeed raytraced it was made by a Intel employee (Daniel Pohl) to showcase their latest i7 CPU's and to try to say that the future of graphics will be raytracing (and it will be).

[danielodors]

@Argoon1981 - Lol, ray tracing was the future over 20 years ago.

[LightCaster1]

It looks good but I don't think it really justifies the performance hit, so, is there anything similar to Ray Tracing that isn't a system hog?

[xalener]

1:14

Well that doesn't make much sense... but alright...

[Evi1M4chine]

If the textures are bad and the water doesn’t animate, the best raytracing can’t save the day.

[vborg101]

ok so will ray tracing only affect the reflections in the games or will it more realisticly depict real time shadows as well?

[AzuMao]

Can I run this on my Commodore 64 if I upgrade to the Voodoo 5 graphics accelerator?

[doubletap85]

@AzuMao Should work!

[SafasoTV]

@AzuMao no.

[iaincollins]

No, that is a silly question. The Voodoo 5 series can only be fitted to an Amiga 1000 or newer, due to the higher power requirements of the latest 3dfx cards.

[iaincollins]

@AzuMao 8)

[MatukaHAHA]

@AzuMao Perhaps it is you who is bad at reading sarcasm? :p

[slitor]

@AzuMao Why not ? Everything is done in shaders these days ;)

[slitor]

@slitor aaand....what i said made no sense what so ever.

Firstly because Ray Tracing today relies on CPUs and voodo didnt even have pixel shaders.

Still, its a C64 I'm sure it can be done :)

[shotgunmasterQL]

actualy lol that looks better than the quake 3 and quake 4 demonstration versions. but im not still impressed by raytracing.

[MagnesiumAlloy]

@shotgunmasterQL then watch watch?v=zbokPe4_-mY&NR=1&featu­re=fvwp

[pabsensi]

errr... what's ray tracing? the graphics look like half life 2 (six years old)

[ZacharySarver]

@pabsensi Raytracing renders graphics by shooting lots and lots of simulated rays of light at things, rather than simulating light in other ways. It has a lot of potential, but it's very computationally intensive. What's significant is that this is real-time, not prerendered.

[MagnesiumAlloy]

@pabsensi watch?v=zbokPe4_-mY&NR=1&featu­re=fvwp

[roller4312]

looks like its running with 10-20fps

[GraveUypo]

too bad this game sucks and this isn't real time.

[starsiegeplayer]

@GraveUypo it is real time.

[GraveUypo]

@starsiegeplayer maybe, if its running on large a CPU farm.

[starsiegeplayer]

@GraveUypo No. It takes a muscular PC (more than most of us can afford) but it's not a farm. You should do some reading on Intel's ray tracing work.

[InvisibleSandwichTM]

Cool stuff, but it's going to take a while to filter into the latest videogames.

On the other hand, it would be cool to see rereleases of older games raytraced - stuff like Half-Life 2 or Far Cry. The next generation of processors (Sandy Bridge/Bulldozer) would probably have enough cores and overall thoroughput to play such games at high resolutions, although converting them would definitely take a while.

[hunterwolf53]

The part was with the Cubemap (Shouldn't even be called that actually.) spheres, that actually blew me away.

[jayjjj3]

No soft shadows? That's lame.

[TheFXGuy]

0:54

wai-wai-wai...ziguwuh?

[pornostar100]

SEGA's Model 4 ray tracing capable hardware is currently in development

Further information is to be found at the following address -

fgnonlinedotwebsdotcom

[illmagnified]

CHEA RAY TRACING IN OUR GAMES FINALLY! And no Killzone 2 and its gay "bullet hole ray tracing" doesnt count- im talking ray tracing on a level that is actually noticeable.

[hoffm263]

This is real time? I dont believe that for some reason. 1280x720x27.5x60 is 25 million rays from the point of origin per second without shadow feelers or recursive rays.

[Xenodamus]

Well 16 intel cores from 2008 can do basic real time in 15 to 30 fps. I imagine that in 10 years from now, we'll all have ray tracing GPU/CPU hybrid chips capable of not only doing it at 60 fps, but using octrees instead of polygons.

[whattheima]

@Xenodamus doubt we will still be using octrees in 10 years, there are already better methods today :)

[Xenodamus]

such as?

[carlosgeijo]

@whattheima John Carmack is proposing this for their future new-gen engine id-tech 6: "What John does see ray tracing useful for is a very specific data model he has created called "sparse voxel octrees" that allow him to store immense amounts of data in a fashion that is easily accessed using ray tracing methods. " so maybe there are new uses for octrees.

[sutasman]

@Xenodamus: comparing octrees to polygons is the same as apples to oranges...

[goodbad1325]

lol i have this on my ps3 well i have the demo

[Lidve1337]

no you dont

[Evi1M4chine]

Weak. It still lacks high-dynamic-range image-based-lighting. Then it would seriously look like a photo!

[sivadfa]

@Evi1M4chine Floating point colours can't even be displayed on a monitor, and out of what the monitor can actually show people can only differentiate from half of the colours subconsciously and pick up only one sixth of the colours consciously, so what point there be. Besides it was done in real time so there wasn't enough computation time left for those extras. Unless if you like watching slide shows instead of a video go ahead.

[katalysis]

Larrabee ftw

[walter0bz]

perhaps some combination would be usefull.. regular rasterization for putting everything onscreen, then add raytracing for lighting effects..

[cyborgtroy]

I don't think hybrid graphics will work, if you're going to raytrace you'd just as well trace everything and keep it simple.

[sivadfa]

@cyborgtroy Hybrid graphics can work if you use the hardware of the rasterization and implement code that dynamically keeps changing the initial texture of the mirror, and then keeping the original copy in memory for future iterations. So code wise it is not hybrid, but is still effectively hybrid graphics. Doing it this way would mean that it would only need to reiterate it when something changes that affects the mirror. That way the hardware is still being used... In theory.

[dacredens]

this is really cool but seriously ... a) what hardware is required to achieve this and b) what is the frame buffer resolution

[PrazeJC]

This was rendered on a single machine with 4 CPU sockets, each powered by 2.66 GHz Dunnington Processors. As for the frame buffer resolution, it's running @1280x720 (720p) and there's no telling what the color depth is. Frame rates are said to fluctuate from 20-35fps using this hardware, which is amazing considering the computational black hole that ray tracing brings to the table. Did you notice the textures where at horrendously low resolution? O_O

[aerodigital]

Honestly, i think shader model 3.0 and above are the best route, ray tracing requires more power but doesnt make up for the garbage textures most games have. but sm3 does. have you ever looked at cod4 with shaders off, barf!

[LoLWTF77]

0:25 what are those "mirror" balls? they look like cubbemaps from Valve Hammer Editor to me :D

[Argoon1981]

Cube maps aren't real time reflections like you see on that balls, raytracing is able to do physical correct reflections unlike cube maps that are in reality a six sided texture.

[Tplkkvkk]

how about i reflect on your balls you flaming faggot

[Argoon1981]

By your comment you are the flaming faggot, what i said above about raytracing is correct so inform your self and growup.

[Argoon1981]

You are calling me retard after all your replys!! Ah, ah, ah, ah, :D you are a funny guy.

This is the last time i will reply to you, i don't want to fall to your level. Have a nice day. ;)

[sivadfa]

@Argoon1981 true there is a 3d program that I work with has started to put in ray tracing implementation, and according to its programmer, placing the pixels on the mirrors like that is extremely hard. So the beta only has part raytracing bet it plans on making full raytracing by next year

[Vikinatorn]

@sivadfa Yeah... Most 3d programs renderers have supported raytracing for a loong time... What 3d program are u talking about?

[sivadfa]

Anim8or the Current beta has a Ray tracing mode, however the support is partial so you still need cube maps. It's programmer is planning on implementing full ray tracing by having the programme continually regenerating cubemaps.

[Vikinatorn]

Have u tried the other 3d programs out there? Like Maya, 3ds max, Blender..

Blender is free too, but it is far more capable that Anim8or..

[sivadfa]

Anim8or is my favorite mesh editor, I normally import its meshes into blender.

[masterpiraka]

@sivadfa

Nah, it can do full reflections. Just takes a long fuckin time.

[superkellerman8D]

@Argoon1981 cube mapping can do real time reflections, just use a six-sided render-to-texture.

[superkellerman8D]

@Argoon1981 cube maps can be dynamic. Just use a render-to-texture with six cameras oriented like the faces of a cube, then Cube-map it onto a surface. This can also have recursion, like a reflection of a reflection.

[Argoon1981]

@superkellerman8D Yes i know about that, that is how the new games simulate mirror surfaces in real time, but as you know it is still a texture trick, ;) in Ray tracing the reflective surfaces are physically accurate and so better mimic how reflective surfaces work on real life. :) Peace

Someone above asked if Real time shadows are better in ray tracing, the reply is YES! Ray traced shadows are the most realistic shadows that you can achieve on computer games.

[Argoon1981]

Why? Because they are just like shadows in real life, this is to say the Ray traced shadows are the inexistence of light on a surface, as the name imply's you shoot ray's to a surface (pixels) and if the ray is blocked by any object the pixels were the ray collided become lighted and the surface behind the objects were the ray didn't reached becomes shadowed.

[superkellerman8D]

@Argoon1981 heard of the stencil buffer? Shadow volumes are just like real-world shadows, absence of light, etc. And they can be accurately softened through jittering the light. My point is, The effects simulated in video games are just as good as those of raytracing, and the producers can just SAY it is raytracing. The only difference between raytracing and realtime video games is polygon count and the imperfections of the real world. I personally don't think this video is raytraced at all.

[Argoon1981]

@superkellerman8D Yes i know stencil shadows (also called shadow volumes), stencil shadows use the stencil buffer to extrude the profile of a object by extruding their geometry on a surface and no they aren't like real world shadows,

[Argoon1981]

yes you can simulate the (lack of light) using the John Carmack Technic called Carmack's Reverse (Z-fail), to delete the geometry in the shadow ense the really dark shadows of Doom3, by the way they are being replaced with shadow maps because shadow volumes don't work with alpha mapped geometry.

[Argoon1981]

I don't think you are understanding when i talk about real world shadows and ray tracing, to better understand what i'm saying i recommend that you go to this site humus.name

And see the Raytraced shadows demo and the Stencil shadow demos, there you will see what i'm talking about. By the way Humus was the guy that did the engine for the game Just Cause 2.

Peace

[DGMRuadeil]

@Argoon1981 The important thing is though... "does it look good" vs. correctness. A cube map can usually do pretty good in games. The difference is only really noticeable if you put them next to eachother.

[HeatSpecific]

@Argoon1981 Cubemaps are actually usually updated in realtime now (as well as a year ago when you posted this). But you're right, they're still inaccurate due to the sampling direction and occlusion being all distorted.

[Argoon1981]

@HeatSpecific Thanks for your comment i responded to similar reply 4 months ago to user called superkellerman8D with this. "Yes i know about that, that is how the new games simulate mirror surfaces in real time, but as you know it is still a texture trick, ;) in Ray tracing the reflective surfaces are physically accurate and so better mimic how reflective surfaces work on real life. :) Peace"

So has you see we agree in the subject. ;)

[JKBenchmarks]

Ray tracing= the natural way light hits a surface

[RaiCoss]

I don't see any improvement over the normal ET:QW graphic's.

What am I missing?? O,o

[speedaddict2008]

shadows and full reflections i think

[RaiCoss]

Shadow's look the same to me, but your right about the reflection!

But that isn't really anything. Even the original FarCry had that. :S

[LokNarash]

Read up on raytracing and you will know that the original Far Cry did not have it ;)

[RaiCoss]

I meqnt reflection on the water, not Ray Tracing :P

[RaiCoss]

-q +a

[Petchhyy]

No game in the world uses real time ray tracing. =]

[RaiCoss]

Did I say any game did?

[aerodigital]

He means far cry has graphic features that offer this, some people arent impressed. i have to say that reflections are a bit more accurate because of the draw method and the nature of ray.

[lesleyhenriquez]

Raytracing calculates each ray of light the exact way it would hit the viewers eye in real life. Something very different from how graphics are shown on your computer now. (In games at least)

[roxxyrave247]

This example barely shows off anything to do with the benefits of true ray-tracing.

[phosphor112]

Ray tracing is def the future. It has great potential for games.

[0hypnotoad0]

a dudv map can do the same stuff with 1/10 of your computers processing power...

[iD0NUTZ]

Directx 11 is featured to ease ray-tracing processes on GPU's, CPU's and GPGPU's

[avsti]

errr. maybe. i'd wait for the Intel Larrabee either way.

[1nSaN3BG]

yes and actualy it utilizes the CPU and GPU very well from what I've seen in their SDKs

[iD0NUTZ]

Let's see what amd's RV870 can do since it's their first ever D3D 11 chip.

[1nSaN3BG]

actualy it seems that even the old ones work qute well with DX 11 cuz it's mainly processor orientated update from what I see.

[IMattNovakI]

Looks quite a bit nicer, but remember, raytracing/programmable technology can only go so far, Textures and game are play a huge roll. Aside from that, great job. This is very interesting to watch.

[keshaz12]

intel ROCK!

[IMattNovakI]

Lol, fanboys. Learn a lil then make a comment. Neither Intel nor AMD are the best, they each have their +'s and -'s, I switch between the two or choose whatever I think has a better setup/future with. Both are good, both have their uses, its like Nvidia and ATI, both are awesome, but either way you cant go wrong.

[petelebu]

to me it lloks a little better, the objects seem more solid, and has better lighting thats all i see, textures play a role as big as the raytracing.

[carcosa]

I'm really kind of amazed that it doesn't look better than this. Other than the realtime caustics, which can easily be simulated using baked textures, there isn't all that much graphical improvement here over a high resolution rasterization.

And that's rather astonishing in itself, but there it is.

[cyborgtroy]

I think the reflection and refractions are a lot faster. With rasterizing, you have to do all kinds of stuff and re-draw the scene from like 6 viewpoints just to reflect off one small object. With raytracing, there's less of a slowdown and it's more accurate on large objects.

[carcosa]

Probably part of it has to do with the textures and models which can stand to be vastly more complex under raytracing. I saw something else rendered under Larrabee and it looked rather like this, somehow. I'm sure things will look amazing when the actual game developers get their hands on whatever hardware is coming.

Larrabee just got postponed until 2010. Better late than never, and raytracing is a coming tsunami that may very well finish both of the major raster card vendors.

[chadversary]

Beautiful water. Congrats to Daniel Pohl and the rest of the Intel team.

[wheezart]

Cool, chrome spheres. Bring it.

[therevengeofsaladboy]

Wow, that is looking really really good.

[davidopoulin]

I see what they're trying to show off here, but they're using a dated engine with a game that's not very impressive graphically wise.

Ray tracing can get you so close to reality it's frightening, but any application for video games will likely come in a hybrid of vertex fragment rasterization and ray tracing.

John Carmack had some interesting thought about this and the next, next engine he's working on just might work with this new paradigm shift.

Can't wait to see a Crysis demo using this :)

[zette999]

Magnifique! bravo;)

[system16]

Problem is that while the shadows may be more accurate and it's great for reflections. It's terribly inefficient for games. Really aside from the shadows and reflections, it doesnt look any better at all and it's probably using 10 times the computing power.

[fashnek]

hay dis looks kinda badd plz jst throw some bloom on it!!1

[system16]

haha yeah :P

[eldwulf]

Looks awesome, especially the reflections. The main issue is that ray-tracing tends to produce very sharp shadows (you can see them in the flying VTOL scene) which are a bit too sharp to be real. How about modelling a bit of diffuse scatter? (It might be more efficient to fake it, I guess...)

[Circa1990]

Aren't shadows quite sharp in real life though?

Unless there are multiple light sources..

[eldwulf]

Yeah, theoretically, but the light tends to be refracted and scattered when passing through atmosphere (AFAIK). So even for sunlight, you can get kind of fuzzy edges. Also, the edge of the shadow should be distorted by the surface it lands on. And finally, that only really works for sunlight since the sun is so far away. For fluorescent lamps and stuff, you tend to get fuzzy shadows because the light isn't a point source.

[Circa1990]

Thats kinda what I meant since its outdoors.. but I get what you mean now.

They just need more detailed modeling of surfaces, or find another way of rendering other than using polygons.. which would be a long ways away.

[oliv16]

eesse game nem é compativel com o ray tracing , é coloca um motor de ferrari num fusca, não orna .

a qualidade dos gráficos tem que estar a par da qualidade de luz

[filmsock]

looks nice, but lacks the detail/polies to make it look real gorgeous.

[alben982]

I know right? Imagine if everything was put together, still impressive though.

[sirdanrhodes]

Hey, future me, I am coming for you!

[conradhw]

Big improvement. Looks much better. I have to admit I wasn't a big fan of raytracing, but I'm more convinced every time.

I hope that in 2 years graphics cards (and consoles) offer high level raytrace (& photon lighting), Ageia physics, and procedural content generation (CUDA). As well as more/faster texture memory, and 10-20 (or more) more processing power than is currently possible.

[EricTheRed03]

most of this Ray Tracing isn't done in Hardware (GPU) its more based on CPU capability and scales well with multiple CPU's ..

[Westonci]

thats why everyone is so excited about Intels new Larrabee GPU. It has the throughput of a GPU and the programability of a CPU

[cyborgtroy]

Raytracing with raster?

Is that sort of like stereo with mono, or is it more like color with black and white?

[Govindsuresh1]

you either Ray Trace or you use Rasterization, not both

and this will be out on home Pc's waaaaaaay before consoles, the current consoles are using versions of GFX cards from 2-3 generations before what is available on the PC

[mikemurko]

I'm no expert, but I think you're wrong there. From what I've read you can raster certain portions of the screen where you wouldn't need multiple reflections, etc ... but then ray trace only certain "zones" of the screen.

This way you could get the best of both worlds with a bit more overhead.

Thoughts?

[xuseonceanddestroyx]

This is totally possible. The problem appears when you add a small raytraced element to a rasterized world: As the object is small, the raytrace overhead over the rasterization is not high, but when you actually get so close to the raytraced elements that it covers most of the screen, the computing power used would approach to the one needed to raytrace the WHOLE scene on the first place.

[Argoon1981]

Some very influentially people from the game development world (John Carmak, and others) don't agree with you (about the raytracing/rasteriztion part). They say a hybrid engine is the way to go. John on idtech 6 is doing exactly that using raytracing and rasterization together.

[chumbucket843]

@Govindsuresh1 actually you can have hybrid renderers. it's actually very common to do things that rasterization sucks at like refractions and reflections in ray tracing and everything else in rasterization. you get the best of both worlds.

[beefygoblin]

@Govindsuresh1

Actualy its just as likely to wind up on console first. the ps3 uses cell processors, and alot of early experimentation with interactive ray tracing ie real time was done using ps3s. The larabee died because game devolopers were not willing to switch over from raster.

[Naturality]

16 Cores :o!

[BadWolfTalks]

wow.awesome dude

[Westonci]

WOW!!! I cant wait until Games use Ray tracing

[EricTheRed03]

First you've gotta wait till CPU's use many more cores than 4 or 8 ..

Yes it will come... but be patient.