Interactive Ray Tracing: A Better Way to Program 3D

Google Tech Talk
June 30, 2009

ABSTRACT

Please view slides at http://caustic.com/docs_presentations.php

Presented by James A. McCombe - Chief Technical Officer, Founder.

3D graphics today is dominated by two distinct rendering algorithms. Rasterization paints objects on the screen one at a time while ray tracing models the physics of light to determine the color of a pixel. Rasterization is fast, enabling games at 30 fps, but creating content is a labor intensive process that still delivers images falling short of photorealism. Ray tracing offers a more intuitive artistic model where accurate visual effects fall out of the interactions between objects producing great looking images with much less effort. Unfortunately, today, ray tracing is limited to a small set of applications where rendering speed is not critical and interactivity is not required.

Caustic Graphics has created CausticRT, a ray tracing platform with the promise of delivering ray tracing capabilities at a speed comparable to rasterization. This speed will deliver an immense productivity gain to professionals dependent on render farms for ray tracing today, and will open up new applications for interactive ray tracing, ultimately allowing ray tracing to replace rasterization as the dominant algorithm for interactive 3D.

James McCombe, Caustic Graphics CTO and Founder, will discuss how to program on top of the CausticRT platform, and demonstrate the ease with which stunning visual effects can be created and the speed at which they render. He will also touch on additional applications for Caustic technology.

CausticRT is available today to qualified developers, and includes the CausticOne accelerator card, and the CausticGL API. CausticOne achieves a 10-20 times performance gain over current software renderers on a modern 8-core CPU. While CausticTwo, due in early 2010, will be 200 times faster than current software. At that time Caustic Graphics expects several commercial rendering packages to be available that support their technology. Moreover artist and designers for the first time will be able to leverage these phenomenal raytracing performance gains in their production pipeline.

Caustic Graphics website: www.caustic.com

James A. McCombe, a native of Belfast, is the technical visionary behind Caustic and one of the company's three founders. Most recently he was the chief architect of Apple's next-generation embedded rasterization algorithms, the basis of the rendering and compositing technology used in the iPhone and iPod. He was also a lead architect for Apple's OpenGL graphics system, and worked with the OpenGL standards committee to create early specifications for programmable shading languages.

Before Apple, James wrote the world's first fully interactive 3D rendering engine and first-person shooter game for the Palm mobile platform. Upon moving to the U.S. in 2000, James worked at Firepad where he continued to develop the mobile rendering technologies that formed the foundation of street mapping solutions available on today's most innovative mobile phones.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• google
• tech
• talk
• 3d
• graphics
• ray
• tracing

[Kazichia]

oh crap 1 hr !

[polypusher]

but he's probably much smarter than you... What does that say?

[dahahaka]

@UNCHARTED9444 i guess a intel core i7 SandyBridge 3.5Ghz can do it :)

[dahahaka]

thumbs up if you watched the whole thing too!!! :DD

[malkdk]

31:34 he just blew his mind!

[UNCHARTED9444]

can the Cell Processor do this?

[pwiattitto]

in the name of all that is holy!!! why doesn't he wear a microphone like any normal presenter?

that fading voice method is insanely annoying!

[nintendomaniac64]

@buzinaocara But my point was that there were ports of Dreamcast games on the N64 but not on the PSX! I'm not talking about ports between both systems, but from the Dreamcast! (Rush 2049 is yet another example)

And even though I haven't any proof, I somewhat doubt the framerate part. The N64 definitely had a faster CPU, and had the only 60fps game of that generation (F-Zero X)

Also some (if not many) N64 games ran at 480i instead of 240p with the expansion pack! (Rogue Squadron anyone?)

[buzinaocara]

@nintendomaniac64

I was a nintendo 64 fan boy, and still think it kicks the psx ass. But still many multi console games of the time, dispite the pixalized and crazy dancing textures, the psx had drastically better frame rates and more detailed models... But personally a still prefer the acuracy and solidity of n64 games better as well.

[nintendomaniac64]

Wait wait wait... PS1 games looking BETTER?

I'm pretty sure it's universally established that the N64 was better than the PS1 graphically - heck it was getting ports of DREAMCAST games. (like Star Wars Episode 1 Racer)