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New Graphics Firm Promises Real-Time Ray Tracing
arcticstoat writes "A new graphics company called Caustic Graphics reckons it's uncovered the secret of real-time ray tracing with a chip that 'enables your CPU/GPU to shade with rasterization-like efficiency.' The new chip basically off-loads ray tracing calculations and then sends the data to your GPU and CPU, enabling your PC to shade a ray-traced scene much more quickly. Caustic's management team isn't afraid to rubbish the efforts of other graphics companies when it comes to ray tracing. 'Some technology vendors claim to have solved the accelerated ray tracing problem by using traditional algorithms along with GPU hardware,' says Caustic. However, the company adds that 'if you've ever seen them demo their solutions you'll notice that while results may be fast — the image quality is underwhelming, far below the quality that ray tracing is known for.' According to Caustic, this is because the advanced shading and lighting effects usually seen in ray-traced scenes, such as caustics and refraction, can't be accelerated on a standard GPU because it can't process incoherent rays in hardware. Conversely, Caustic claims that the CausticOne 'thrives in incoherent ray tracing situations: encouraging the use of multiple secondary rays per pixel.' The company is also introducing its own API, called CausticGL, which is based on OpenGL/GLSL, which will feature Caustic's unique ray tracing extensions."
2009 is the year of the ray traced desktop.
You can't take the sky from me.
Do they get their chips from Flammable Systems, and their capacitors from Toxic Components Inc?
Table-ized A.I.
"Caustic" Graphics? Would you want to do business with a video company that names itself after a chemical that damages your eyes?
I know! This is totally going to solve the problem of the utter lack of glass spheres and infinite checkerboards in today's games!
I hate to burst your academic bubble, but MLT has approximately zero use to any production-quality renderer.
they are the next BitBoys
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitBoys_Oy
zero product, some IP, waiting to get wads of money and run away with it
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
He obviously likes kittens.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
Didn't OpenGL always support real-time raytracing if you throw it enough hardware? Unfortunately "enough hardware" to render complex scenes in real time has not existed yet.
Can you magine what kind of 3D modeling rig god has? Somehow I don't think it's based on an ATI or nVidia chipset. ;)
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50