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NVIDIA Doubts Ray Tracing Is the Future of Games
SizeWise writes "After Intel's prominent work in ray tracing in the both the desktop and mobile spaces, many gamers might be thinking that the move to ray-tracing engines is inevitable. NVIDIA's Chief Scientist, Dr. David Kirk, thinks otherwise as revealed in this interview on rasterization and ray tracing. Kirk counters many of Intel's claims of ray tracing's superiority, such as the inherent benefit to polygon complexity, while pointing out areas where ray-tracing engines would falter, such as basic antialiasing. The interview concludes with discussions on mixing the two rendering technologies and whether NVIDIA hardware can efficiently handle ray tracing calculations as well."
I am an game-developing 3d-artist, and our biggest problem right now is the lack of ability to render complex per-pixel shaders (particulary on the PS3). But this is only a short-term problem, and what would we do with the ability to create more complex shaders? Fake the appearance of the benefits of Ray-tracing (more complex scenes and more realistic surfaces) of course!
On the other hand, the film industry could be a good place to look for the future technology of computer games. And as it is right now, it's preferable to avoid the slowness of raytracing and fake the effects instead, even when making big blockbuster movies.