Real-Time Raytracing with NVidia Optix

At Carnegie Mellon University's National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC), I developed a real-time raytracing demo using NVidia OptiX, C++, and CUDA. It features a glass sphere shaded using the Fresnel effect, a sinusoidal height field using a glass shader, a 3D OBJ model of the Mars "Spirit" Rover, and an HDR environment map (from the OptiX SDK). The program runs extremely fast (20-75 FPS!!!) on an NVidia GeForce GTX 480.

Mars rover 3D model designed by Alvaro from Google 3D Warehouse
Music: Astral Projection - No one ever dreams

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• real-time
• raytracing
• NVidia
• OptiX
• CUDA
• OpenGL
• C++

[acf2802]

Are you using a k-d tree or bvh?

[Webking271]

@acf2802 BVH

[superkellerman8D]

good, REALLY good, but technically not ray-tracing. I must say you did a great job on this though! The glass effect I haven't seen in shaders yet, so, you did well on that.

[Webking271]

@superkellerman8D "technically not ray-tracing" care to explain?

[LightCaster1]

Is it really useful to use ray tracing instead of real time reflections?

[davemc0]

The reason the glass on the sphere looks so good is because this IS ray tracing.

OptiX is Nvidia's ray tracing SDK. Think of it like OpenGL for ray tracing. Google "nvidia optix".

[superkellerman8D]

@Webking271 nevermind... that was an ignorant comment. Simply because those effects could easily be simulated through shaders, to LOOK like raytracing but not be. There are quite a few posers who use cubemapping and shaders and say 'Hey look! Realtime Raytracing!' And i didn't notice the Nvidia Optix in the title. lol

[hygdreyer]

@wariofan279

4way sli\crossfire = 8gpu cores, 2x quad core proccessors, arent we there yet?

[GolemShadowsun]

irre geil, ich liebe die neue technik, kaufe mir bald welche und dann schreibe ich endlich auch etwas bessere shader und co ^^

[wariofan279]

You won't see huge benefits in using Ray Tracing over Rastering until we obtain 8-Core processors or higher.