GPU accelerated ray tracing?

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Monkeypillow

Gawd
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Aug 30, 2006
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Does anyone know if there are any ray tracing programs (like POV-Ray) that can utilize the GPU for acceleration? I'm not sure how it would work -- I think GPUs are only single precision, and I think you'd want/need double precision, but I figured I'd ask.
 
well ray tracing i think requires different type of hardware, there is a new company out there that is making a card that does ray tracing. Still nothing mainstream yet.
 
Yeah... being able to emulate real world or close to real world ray tracing is considered in some circles as the next "pillar" of innovation for the graphics world. Even more so than physics emulation. It takes billions of complex and dynamic calculations. It's extremely difficult to do with any of today's hardware and that makes anything in that group (like everything else that's new) extremely expensive as well. It's a ways off but I'm sure it is coming soon.
And even if it is a great and makes games/3d rendering, more realistic; if people don't like the feature it'll die just as quick as rambus... :D (sorry i'm a bit scattered today)
 
paco16 said:
Yeah... being able to emulate real world or close to real world ray tracing is considered in some circles as the next "pillar" of innovation for the graphics world. Even more so than physics emulation. It takes billions of complex and dynamic calculations. It's extremely difficult to do with any of today's hardware and that makes anything in that group (like everything else that's new) extremely expensive as well. It's a ways off but I'm sure it is coming soon.
And even if it is a great and makes games/3d rendering, more realistic; if people don't like the feature it'll die just as quick as rambus... :D (sorry i'm a bit scattered today)
Click to expand...

I don't mean real-time ray tracing, I mean scene rendering. Currently, it can take several days to render a complex scene. I figured that with CUDA doing pretty well in other applications, someone may have been able to utilize them to bring rendering time down to half a day or less.

Wishful thinking on my part, I'm sure.
 
CUDA is the x-factor here. I want real-time ray tracing... Sorry, my response is coming from a selfish wish...
 
Monkeypillow said:
Does anyone know if there are any ray tracing programs (like POV-Ray) that can utilize the GPU for acceleration? I'm not sure how it would work -- I think GPUs are only single precision, and I think you'd want/need double precision, but I figured I'd ask.
Click to expand...

No, there isn't one yet (at least commercial and/or freeware). Also, modern GPUs are not only single precision. They have double precision capabilities too.
 
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