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Real-time Ray Tracing?

S

shantd

Gawd
Joined
Aug 2, 2008
Messages
665
Hey guys, I've been away from the forums for several months so forgive me if this is common knowledge, but I was watching a discussion by PS4 architect Marl Cerny at GameLab conference 2013 where he outlines the history of his work on Sony consoles and how it led to the genesis of the ps4 ( http://www.ign.com/videos/2013/06/29/the-road-to-the-playstation-4 ).

3/4 of the way through, he's talking about how Sony asked a bunch of 3rd party devs what they wanted/didn't want in their next console. At about the 36:20 mark, he mentions that these developers unanimously didn't want anything exotic such as "Real-time Ray Tracing" in the PS4's next GPU.

I did a google search and this demo was the first thing that popped up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5mRRElXy-w

I'm not a programmer so basically all I gathered was that it allows for real-time rendering of reflections which is cool, but we already have that so I know there must be more to it. I was hoping that some of our resident smart guys could fill me in. Thanks.
 
shantd said:
Nobody? Is there a more appropriate forum to have posted this in?
Click to expand...

A ray tracing demo with two objects and some liquid is not an indication that gaming hardware is ready to run games with fully ray traced worlds.
 
Ray tracing makes a variety of things easier and a variety of things better. Shadows get easier: they work just the way real shadows work, and you don't have to kludge through approximations. Real reflections and refractions that don't suck up every ounce of compute power become possible and extremely inexpensive.

But that's essentially what you're getting. And to get that, you have to abandon all the years of advancement in rasterization. At this time, it's not a good trade off: modern GPUs are rasterization monsters.
 
when Intel was pushing Larrabee, everyone wanted to jump on raytracing.

Nvidia had a few real time demos and even sony with a few netwoked PS3s.

But Intel dropped Larrabee, and ray tracing is back in the grave.
 
Stoly said:
when Intel was pushing Larrabee, everyone wanted to jump on raytracing.

Nvidia had a few real time demos and even sony with a few netwoked PS3s.

But Intel dropped Larrabee, and ray tracing is back in the grave.
Click to expand...

Really? I wish someone would of filled me in...I would not be wasting my time doing 3D animation in Maya3D and such...

:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
 
The Cobra said:
Really? I wish someone would of filled me in...I would not be wasting my time doing 3D animation in Maya3D and such...

:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
Click to expand...



I think he's referring to "gaming" wise. They've been talking about Ray Tracing since, well, I can't even remember. The toll it takes on hardware is unbelievable. I imagine at this rate it'll still be another decade or two before its taken seriously just because of the impact it has on current technology.

Again this goes hand-in-hand with how far can we go before technology taps out, whether power draw, heat, ability to continue shrinkage, what about memory hitting a brick wall at 10nm, etc. We are approaching a cliff going 60mph with it clearly insight. A miracle is going to happen before we reach it or everything is going to come to a grinding halt. Its hard to say what will happen because Ray Tracing is already in the very distant future and a halt will take it off the table completely until things stabilize or a new technology that changes everything like silicon comes along.

Either the industry is being very tight lipped as to how they are going to break some major barriers moving forward, or nobody is taking it seriously. Some are already in a panic, others are working together, and even still many more are off doing there own projects. Time will tell how this all holds out, but Ray Tracing and gaming? I wouldn't hold my breath this decade.
 
shantd said:
Hey guys, I've been away from the forums for several months so forgive me if this is common knowledge, but I was watching a discussion by PS4 architect Marl Cerny at GameLab conference 2013 where he outlines the history of his work on Sony consoles and how it led to the genesis of the ps4 ( http://www.ign.com/videos/2013/06/29/the-road-to-the-playstation-4 ).

3/4 of the way through, he's talking about how Sony asked a bunch of 3rd party devs what they wanted/didn't want in their next console. At about the 36:20 mark, he mentions that these developers unanimously didn't want anything exotic such as "Real-time Ray Tracing" in the PS4's next GPU.

I did a google search and this demo was the first thing that popped up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5mRRElXy-w

I'm not a programmer so basically all I gathered was that it allows for real-time rendering of reflections which is cool, but we already have that so I know there must be more to it. I was hoping that some of our resident smart guys could fill me in. Thanks.
Click to expand...

Ray tracing is what they use to generate the lighting and shadows in 3D animated movies. It basically calculates the effects each individual ray of light would have by bouncing it off each surface. The ray loses differing amounts of luminocity as it hits different surfaces and will have a max amount of bounces. They need to calculate tons of rays so it typically takes a long time to process and isn't good for real time processing like in a game.

Games typical use shortcuts methods to create the lighting. When levels are created they will pre-render lightmaps sometimes using ray tracing, then use the lightmaps in the real time rendering sort of like textures. They also have some dynamic lights that can move and change and they usually just project a moving texture and it isn't quite as math heavy as ray tracing. They have all sorts of fancy ways to make the shortcuts look just as good and in a lot of cases better than ray tracing unless you get into a ridiculous amount of rays, reflections, and refractions.
So they can basically make it look much better using other methods while using way less processing power. And developers will always find better uses for the processing power. This is why developers don't care about ray tracing anymore.
 
Excellent, thanks for the info. I can always count on the brains in this forum. So are you guys saying Ray Tracing has no future? Or are you saying it will only be of practical use when processing power greatly improves?
 
Liger88 said:
Again this goes hand-in-hand with how far can we go before technology taps out, whether power draw, heat, ability to continue shrinkage, what about memory hitting a brick wall at 10nm, etc. We are approaching a cliff going 60mph with it clearly insight. A miracle is going to happen before we reach it or everything is going to come to a grinding halt.
Click to expand...

This quote really got my attention. Particularly the bit about memory hitting a brick wall at 10nm (which isn't too far off). Can you expound please? Why this 'brick wall', and why is it precisely at 10nm? As far as the other considerations mentioned, like power draw, or heat, I'm not really concerned there. They've overcome much bigger problems before. But what happens when we get to 10nm?
 
The Raytracing vs Raterization debate will keep going.

Some things are easier/faster with rasterization like triangle setup, culling and lighting (go figure), while other are better with ray-tracing like reflections and transparency.

nVIDIA talked about a hybrid rendering system a while ago. Might be the best choice.
 
shantd said:
This quote really got my attention. Particularly the bit about memory hitting a brick wall at 10nm (which isn't too far off). Can you expound please? Why this 'brick wall', and why is it precisely at 10nm? As far as the other considerations mentioned, like power draw, or heat, I'm not really concerned there. They've overcome much bigger problems before. But what happens when we get to 10nm?
Click to expand...

There is a wall for the size of the transistor since as the transistor gets smaller, so does the gate. As the transistor and gates shrink, leakage drastically increases. Gates get thinner and you start having problems with quantum tunneling.

Basically the future of computing lies in a technology not based in silicon.
Take this article for example.

Stoly said:
The Raytracing vs Raterization debate will keep going.

Some things are easier/faster with rasterization like triangle setup, culling and lighting (go figure), while other are better with ray-tracing like reflections and transparency.

nVIDIA talked about a hybrid rendering system a while ago. Might be the best choice.
Click to expand...

Hybrid- Yes and no. I'm leaning more towards no though, IMO.

http://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/94/
 
Hybrid- Yes and no. I'm leaning more towards no though, IMO.

http://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/94/[/QUOTE]


From the same article

A hybrid approach will probably offer the best of both worlds. Many ray tracers already replace primary rays with rasterisation and only compute secondary rays through traditional ray tracing. The ability to spawn rays in the GPU's shader core would solve many hard problems that rasterisation engines have to face.
Click to expand...
 
Stoly said:
From the same article
Click to expand...

Correct, which was true at the time while devs were still working on the lighting problems with DX9/10.

Now compare that with the current gen engines and near future next gen engines, and lots of the pros of raytracing are being accomplished, see redengine3, UE4, and I guess I'll lump CE3 in there too.
 
The artist want it but it will not happen.

If they did this they would have to start over with game engines and all production pipe lines that is why they do not want it. it will be too complex to use and other issues that have to do with coding and performance and production.

in fact most game engines already run on x86 and ati gPU and they are just going to tack code on to them to add effects.

Naughty dog is going to use the same engine as the last of us converted for ps4.

if they started raytracing they would have to toss out almost all knowlage of 3d game engines frame drawing and start from the start all over again.

will not be happening soon.

http://www.joystiq.com/2013/05/31/naughty-dog-to-retain-the-last-of-us-engine-for-ps4-games/
 
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