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Ray Tracing To Debut in DirectX 11
crazyeyes writes "This is breaking news. Microsoft has not only decided to support ray tracing in DirectX 11, but they will also be basing it on Intel's x86 ray-tracing technology and get this ... it will be out by the end of the year!
In this article, we will examine what ray tracing is all about and why it would be superior to the current raster-based technology. As for performance, well, let Intel dazzle you with some numbers. Here's a quote from the article: 'You need not worry about your old raster-based DirectX 10 or older games or graphics cards. DirectX 11 will continue to support rasterization. It just includes support for ray-tracing as well. There will be two DirectX 11 modes, based on support by the application and the hardware.'"
But I am really annoyed that April Fool's has now become a multi-day event.
If one's thing sure. Pity DirectX11 will work on so few platforms.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Or maybe just obvious to anyone in the industry. Since clock speeds are bounded and not getting any faster and you can only lower voltages so much before signals get lost in the noise, the only way forward is in parallelism and ray tracing is wondrously parallelifyable (is that a real word?).
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
It says nvidia will be locked out because DirectX11 raytracing will be based on x86.
Wasn't DirectX meant to be a generic middleman to allow developers to abstract away from the specific implementations?
Isn't this a backwards step that basically cuts anyone developing for it out of using the code on other systems (and I am meaning even the xbox 360).
liqbase
An interesting read on this very subject here. Quote:
"I have my own personal hobby horse in this race and have some fairly firm opinions on the way things are going right now. I think that ray tracing in the classical sense, of analytically intersecting rays with conventionally defined geometry, whether they be triangle meshes or higher order primitives, I'm not really bullish on that taking over for primary rendering tasks which is essentially what Intel is pushing."
Carmack admits he has his own personal preference, but generally he's pretty sensible about these things. He's usually called it correctly in the past when people have pushed various technologies that were supposed to take over the world, and they've fallen by the wayside.
Hopefully he'll chime into this latest article with some further thoughts.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
By the way: It is already April 1st over there.
More comments from David Kirk.
I would be very interested in what he learned between 2002 and 2004 that led him to argue so eloquently against Phillip Slusallek. I'd also like to know what Professor Slusallek is doing at nVidia, where he's "working with the research group on the future of realtime ray tracing".
Intel has this article about the hardware needed to run at 50fps at 1920x1080p. They're claiming you need 8 cores. In a couple of years, that could well be within reach for most gamers.
There's also this John Carmack Interview. Carmack isn't too optimistic about ray tracing replacing rasterized graphics.
Raytracing allows the implementation of mirrors in 3d environments.
Finally all business software will have the feature of showing the cause of most problems. (See also "Error Id: 10T" and PEBKAC)
....You forgot to carry the one a hundred million times or so.
There is now only OpenRT which have Open only fro similarity with OpenGL (it is fully proprietary implementation, but has API similar to that of OpenGL).
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
This is very obviously a lie or joke for early April fools. I didn't know Slashdot fell for them. Did anyone actually read the last page?
I'll hold on to Imagine for my Amiga until it's pried from my cold, dead hands.
34.2 minutes per rendered frame gives me plenty of time to do other things around the house.
Actually, I would have mentioned Turbo Silver instead if there were any good links for it.
TFA states I don't know where these guys get their information, but even Microsoft does planning ahead of time for products they create - especially if it's to be released the same year! The absurdity climaxes at the third page...do yourself a favor and read it for a little laugh.
Service Pack 2? Sure, SP1 wasn't an improvement and SP2 might be needed - but, again, plans for this would have been more well announced or planned by Microsoft.
Sorry guys, article is simply BS.
I thought PC gaming was in the throes of death. Fortunately now PC game developers will be able to use Ray Tracing instead of implementing the much ballyhooed 'fun' that graphically inferior console games seem to be touting.
I have nothing compelling to say
Is it just me or is this a stupid April fools joke? It's not funny, it's like it's just trying to get your hopes up.
Ugh.. Get ready for a whole day of hilariously deceptive articles like this..
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
a) OpenGL is an immediate-mode API - it doesn't store a "scene" it just processes a single polygon at a time.
b) You can't raytrace something unless you have access to the whole scene.
QED.
No sig today...
All of this talk about raytracing, and we still do not have high quality anti aliased renders with existing real time rendering methods.
:) It's just going to eat more pixel ponies for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Games still look like shit. NONE of them can even compare to the nice anti aliased images generated by software renderers.
Anti Aliasing is all fine and dandy, but when a game looks like shit, these days its due to anti aliasing. We can do plenty of visually stunning things in realitime but no matter what you do, it still looks like a video game because the damn hardware cant render high resolution enough with high quality anti aliasing enabled.
How in the hell will raytracing solve that?
Look at Gran Turismo on PS3. All of their PR videos have anti aliasing enabled and the game looks photoreal. However the reality is they're lying in their screenshots. The game itself does not use anti aliasing, thus making it look like a videogame. With Anti aliasing enabled, its photoreal, without, it looks like shit.
This is an old problem, which the hardware companies have addressed... they just cant deliver on performance.
But they can on raytracing? No thanks. Anti aliasing in ray tracing renderers is even slower. I dont care how accurate the reflects are, if its aliased to shit... it will never look convincing.
This can't be Windows 7 only - Linux has had Direct X11 for years. This is yet another case of Microsoft playing catchup.
Sig? What's that? Oh, 'signature'...and it's supposed to be witty? Right...
Actually God didn't create anything. Adam, Eve, Steve and all the others CREATED God. Big Difference! And, forgive me if I ask, what is a Gay Agenda and in which bookstore can I find one? I asked my gay friends but they said they stopped using agendas once they graduated from school, now they use laptops. Gateway, Dell and HP don't have Gay Laptops so I'm assuming these people are using generic ones.
Damn straight.
Gay people don't want to take over the world. They just want to redecorate it.
Anyone who has knows a bit about computer graphics will suspect this is a joke from the heading itself, and then when you look at the ray-traced image comparison all doubt is removed (especially because it seems to use global illumination). I was just upset they didn't spend more time on it. The joke could've been much better, showing realistic-looking specs, small rendering times etc.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.