• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Realtime Raytracing on Cell to be presented @ Siggraph 2005

G

gofreak

GAF's Bob Woodward
Wasn't entirely sure if this was gaming related or off topic or a mix of both, but this interesting piece of news popped up today..

http://www.uni-saarland.de/de/medien/2005/07/1122474975

Basically, the University of Saarland is to present realtime raytracing on Cell at Siggraph 2005 - these guys have been working on their own dedicated raytracing chip for some time now, and that is also going to be presented (a new revision of it). The gist of it is that in just 2 weeks, with help from IBM Germany, they revised and ported their software over to Cell, and with one Cell chip have scenes rendering in realtime at full resolution. No other technical details are provided.

Before people come away with an overly enthusiastic impression, remember we don't know the details, and with something like this, the devil is in the details. I mean you can technically do realtime raytracing on a P4 if you wish :P And their definition of realtime may not coincide with the typically accepted one for games.

That said, there's been some debate on various boards about the potential for Cell and raytracing (although also with how to mesh that with RSX), so this may shed a little more light on the feasibility. Just don't let your imagination run away with itself - this may all be very academic!

It all seems quite closely tied to http://www.openrt.de/, where you can view some of their previous work.

Siggraph starts July 31 (http://www.siggraph.org/s2005/)
 
Ok I know this may sound off the wall.........but I think if the consoles released every 2-3 years from each other, both the hardware manufacturers and us would benefit.

Plus I'd imaging it could keep the developers supplied with steady sales with the ability to almost constantly push the envelope with new technologies every 2-3 years.
 
mckmas8808 said:
Gofreak please remind us after the presentation has taken place.
Click to expand...

Sure, I'll prob bump this thread. This presentation is on Monday.

I've had a look at their Siggraph 05 demo video, of stuff running off their own custom programmable raytracing chip, and it seems my concerns about this being academic may hold - some of the stuff was running at a relatively low framerate..from 4 to 20ish fps. Who knows how Cell does..I'd be inclined not to suggest it'll do much better though (especially since they've only worked on the Cell implementation for a couple of weeks).

From a games perspective, as a curiousity it should be interesting, though, if nothing else. Could help flesh out debate on the feasibility of GI on PS3 though. I guess for potential multi-Cell RT applications it could be very interesting.
 
Raytracing, or a REYES renderer, + incredibly scalable floating point monster.

Oh yes.

There was discussion of the possiblity earlier this year about Sony or IBM putting out Cell based render units that you could just stack and plugin for personal renderfarms. Need more power? Buy a few more units and plug em in.

Although that would be targeted at personal/small company animation generation.

A REYES renderer hooked up to a NVidia rasterizer would be killer. Probably looking at the next generation of Cell chips with more SPEs per chip or multi Cell chip systems.
 
What would mean "realtime raytracing" in the craziest way of the concept?

I mean, If you let your imagination go crazy, what could be the results of this?
 
the way I look at it:

Raytracing on Cell = experimental. Raytracing in PS3 games = experimental and very limited, *if* it happens at all


Raytracing on PS4 in 7 years, widespread in PS4 games = a decent possibility
 
xexex said:
the way I look at it:

Raytracing on Cell = experimental. Raytracing in PS3 games = experimental and very limited, *if* it happens at all


Raytracing on PS4 in 7 years, widespread in PS4 games = a decent possibility
Click to expand...

Yea, really.

This reminds me of the big news about putting your own face photos in PS2 games, only to see it as a huge factor in PS3 instead.
 
DJ Sl4m said:
Yea, really.

This reminds me of the big news about putting your own face photos in PS2 games, only to see it as a huge factor in PS3 instead.
Click to expand...

Just remember, no one's promising you raytracing in PS3 games :P

I'm not even sure if it's the best way forward even in the longer term.

But asides from all that, it should be at least as useful in terms of ascertaining relative performance in another application area as, say, mpeg decoding or fast fourier transforms were ;)
 
Damn my intern is going to Siggraph (not for my company - her brother makes flight sim graphics for boeing) I'll have to have her give me a report!
 
Raytracing or other forms rendering doesn't mean that the entire, or even majority, of scenes would be rendered using those methods. There is a lot of stuff in scenes that doesn't matter what method you use.

The PS3 has been designed to use hybrid approaches to rendering. Once the final devkits with the crazy bandwith are here you will really see these types of things showing up on the PS3. So far most of the PS3 demo are showing off traditional, but massive, rendering techniques.
 
Most of the effects of raytracing can be faked anyway while being alot less processor intensive. Are movie effects studios using raytracing software?
 
I'll be there and will check this out. I doubt it will look anything like a raytraced render.

It's all about radiosity now anyway. ;)
 
dorio said:
Most of the effects of raytracing can be faked anyway while being alot less processor intensive. Are movie effects studios using raytracing software?
Click to expand...

GPUs like the ones in desktops/workstations are horrendous hacks. The PS3 is the first stage of their inevitable obsolesence as they become basically nothing more than micro-triangle rasterizers with all the heavy work done by the Cell CPU(s) themselves.
 
Very cool. I know that there's no chance of realtime raytracing in next gen gaming, but it is pretty awesome to know that it is possible to do it using today's tech. I really didn't think we'd see it for at least another 5 years. Yay for CELL! :D
 
Assuming CELL is able to realtime raytracing, it would leave little to no room for AI, Physics, and everything else the cpu needs to handle in an actual game.
 
RiZ III said:
Assuming CELL is able to realtime raytracing, it would leave little to no room for AI, Physics, and everything else the cpu needs to handle in an actual game.
Click to expand...

Actually the first thing I thought when I heared about Cell was, 'hey it's going to be awesome to make a realtime raytracer'. But I can give you the Cell is able to do that :)
I did realtime raytracing on gameboy advance at about 60 fps (well actually at 30 fps, I rendered the even scanlines and then the odd scanlines every other frame, you'll percieve it as 60 fps), but that was just a texturemapped tunnel with basic shading. There are people on the classic Amiga (the demogroup TBL) raytracing some awesome scenes at realtime.
 
Laguna X said:
Very cool. I know that there's no chance of realtime raytracing in next gen gaming, but it is pretty awesome to know that it is possible to do it using today's tech. I really didn't think we'd see it for at least another 5 years. Yay for CELL! :D
Click to expand...


exactly. it puts realtime raytracing 'on the map' - the roadmap perhaps. even though the PS3 generation will not see realtime raytracing in games, the experimentation this generation could lead to actual use in games for the PS4 and PS5 generations. now maybe if Sony reduces the amount of time between Playstation consoles from 6 years, to 4-5 years, we will have PS4 in 2010 and PS5 by 2015 :D
 
xexex said:
now maybe if Sony reduces the amount of time between Playstation consoles from 6 years, to 4-5 years, we will have PS4 in 2010 and PS5 by 2015 :D
Click to expand...
WTF? Are you insane? We don't want them coming out too soon. Think of your wallet man! Mine is already screaming bloody murder. :P
 
waste of power if you ask me...I'd rather they find ways to better ways to "fake" ray tracing the way normal maps give the impression of a high res model. Use that extra power to give me a boss that will kick my ass because of the sick AI.
 
Laguna X said:
WTF? Are you insane? We don't want them coming out too soon. Think of your wallet man! Mine is already screaming bloody murder. :P
Click to expand...


relax. dispite what I said could possibly happen, i think Sony will stick with their 6 year gap between new Playstations.
 
>>>>Most of the effects of raytracing can be faked anyway while being alot less processor intensive. Are movie effects studios using raytracing software?<<<

In many ways, raytracing is a waste of processing resources. It's only in the last few years that it's even been practical for visual effects shots. Take a big shop like ILM... I think the first time they used any raytracing at all for features was for the transforming car in Men in Black in 1997, and even then, it was only for that one thing. Renderman didn't even support raytracing until version 11, and that came out in what, 2002?
 
Yea Renderman(pixar) used shadowmaps exclusively for a long time until recently I think. Raytraced shadows tend to be too sharp. Raytracing makes more sense when it comes translucent objects like glass.
 
Doc Holliday said:
waste of power if you ask me...I'd rather they find ways to better ways to "fake" ray tracing the way normal maps give the impression of a high res model. Use that extra power to give me a boss that will kick my ass because of the sick AI.
Click to expand...

That sick AI will be coming anyway on X360 and PS3....

Kudos for trying "other stuff" on CELL
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

  • Poll
Is Raytracing a necessity?
3 4 5 6 7
302
17K
JCK75 replied
The Year is 2005
2
75
2K
Hypereides replied
Splinter Cell: Deathwatch Trailer
2
59
1K
EverydayBeast replied
ShaderGlass - Realtime CRT shader overlay.
News 
48
12K
Corporal.Hicks replied
Jason Schreier: Ubisoft SF was working on Splinter Cell; it got derailed by GaaS ambitions and became xDefiant
Opinion Rumor Game Dev 
34
363
EDMIX replied
Top Bottom