ATI 4800 and Ray-Tracing

Got me, I'm just happy that there is interest by the VGA manufacturers. Ray-tracing is going to kick a55 on raster graphics.

lol ronla trolling everywhere?? nice XD

hahahaha, quote of the millenium.

I think they should worry about getting FPS up before adding more features to games that we don't need. The kind of ray tracing that video cards can do has to be filtered to fake light fall-off so why not just use a map?

Ray-tracing is the future, not a feature. Spell it right next time.

Yeah he's joking. There was a troll who went by the name of thunderman around here a while ago that made posts exactly like that. I mean EXACTLY like that...

As for ray tracing, from what I've read it's not the end all be all solution. It's definitely good for stuff like reflections, refractions, and hard shadows but last I heard z-buffering is better for determining primary visibility.

Yeah Ronka's gone!!!

Monsta's still active, but we did talk yesterday.

I just wanna try to keep the heated discussions in their place and these free of that influence if possible.

Back to the OP... Wow I am really impressed with the performance the article speaks of with the 4870. Ray-tracing in Real-time and holding 60 fps with AA, not trying to act like an ATI fan boy or anything, it is just very impressive to me.

As someone who renders in Maya a lot, I thought we were still years away from that kind of performance. Just goes to show how powerful these cards are getting. Just wonder if we can get our hands on the software that interfaces with DX9, I doubt it but it is cool technically all the same.

Ray tracing can achieve a very high degree of realism, near as we can currently get to photo realistic with current technology. However Real time Ray-tracing is normally very slow and was something that was unheard of recently, even so you were talking about graphic computers with multiple gpu's and multiple processors.

For some comparison (even if it is a bit different) on June 12, 2008 Intel demonstrated real-time ray-tracing with Enemy Territory: Quake Wars running in basic HD (720p) resolution (same resolution as the Transformer Trailers), ETQW operated at 14-29 frames per second. The demonstration ran on a 16-core (4 socket, 4 core) Tigerton system running at 2.93 GHz. I would like to see what the 4870 could do with that demo.

So, no one really addressed the coming of ray-tracing. It's ok, I see it.

Do matta.

Am I alone?

Does it matter?

I'm glad that you see, not that your understanding or mine matters. Others will embrace Ray-tracing (RT) when it becomes painfully apparent.

At least someone sees it.

There will be transitional pains, life hurts.

Ray- tracing 4 life.

Who am I kidding, I don't give a crap.

But get ready it's coming.

To all that are fighting it, sorry.

Is doom 3'e engine RT too? Wow! I got a game that has RT and I don't know about it...
I really have to dig deep into this, this is way too attractive.

No it's not natively RT, but intel have been working with Q3, Q4 and Q:ET for their demos.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/I [...] ,5650.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsCgJhoAm0c

Here's an old article that covers some of their earlier work;
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=334

It's sorta always been the demo platform for raytracing and gaming. And it has been promising, but there are still limitations.
However I take the position between the article's two extremes, I don't think it's a 2008 or even 2009 reality, but I think by 2010 we will have ray-traced games starting to trickle out, and their adoption will influence the next rate of game development. Because it's all well and good that it can run on the very top end rigs, but if it can't run on at least 25% of the 'gaming' rigs out there then it's not reaching critical mass yet. And I doubt the first raytracing title will have the allure of Crysis which was likely just at that 25% level yet still considered a flop by many (though I like it and played it on a GFGO7600, GF6800, X1600 and my HD2600 fine enough for me).

Rendering trailers on rails is one thing, rendering an interactive game is a little more challenging. Bu the future is definitely ray-tracing, of that I've always been pretty certain.

LOL .,..helluva segway lol

:x

The only thing that will decide whether gamers/gaming companies adopt ray tracing is if they are willing to pay for it. I'd bet you at least 1 Intel dollar that any ray-tracing graphics card/software engine will cost a fortune due to the RnD going into it.

I would expect ray-tracing to be going into console games and hardware long before it will enter PCs. Knowing Intel, the Larrabee video card will have the performance of an 8800 GT for 1500$

I'm not trying to fight the current, but if you think that Intel is going to spread this technology around for free then you might as well forget it - and the cost is what will determine its success.