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Nvidia's RealityServer to Offer Ubiquitous 3D Images

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the more-rain-from-the-cloud dept.

WesternActor writes "ExtremeTech has an interview with a couple of the folks behind Nvidia's new RealityServer platform, which purports to make photorealistic 3D images available to anyone on any computing platform, even things like smartphones. The idea is that all the rendering happens 'in the cloud,' which allows for a much wider distribution of high-quality images. RealityServer isn't released until November 30, but it looks like it could be interesting. The article has photos and a video that show it in action."

13 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. What about Data Transfer by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Aren't Photo-Realistic Images pretty big in size? If I want to get 30 Frames per second, how am I ever going to push 30 Photorealistic Frames through the internet - I can hardly get 5 Mb/s from my ISP.

    1. Re:What about Data Transfer by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Video's pretty big - but its always compressed to a point I wouldn't call it photo realistic.

    2. Re:What about Data Transfer by cheesybagel · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Compression. You know, MPEG-4 AVC.

    3. Re:What about Data Transfer by lhoguin · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Many applications do not need 30 fps, though. For example, an house architect software would be able to use this for rendering various shots of the designed house.

    4. Re:What about Data Transfer by VeNoM0619 · · Score: 2, Insightful
      RTFS

      which purports to make photorealistic 3D images available to anyone on any computing platform, even things like smartphones. The idea is that all the rendering happens 'in the cloud,' which allows for a much wider distribution of high-quality images. RealityServer isn't released until November 30, but it looks like it could be interesting. The article has photos

      Notice there is no emphasis on video or animation. This is for 3d images only. Or were you seriously hoping to play 3d realistic games on your phone?

      --
      Disclaimer: I am not god.
      We may not be created equal
      But we can be treated equal.
    5. Re:What about Data Transfer by im_thatoneguy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Really you wouldn't describe Netflix HD as photorealistic? Even things... originally shot on film? With a camera?

    6. Re:What about Data Transfer by LUH+3418 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Still, you can get fairly decent video quality at 720p on youtube nowadays, with connections that aren't so fast (mine is limited to 8mbps download). On a cellphone, you probably can't realistically get very fast speeds just yet (500 kbps?) but the screen is also much smaller. As connections get faster, approaches like this become more feasible.

      Another way to see this is that Nvidia just wants to expand its marketshare. They are likely hoping that with something like this, they could sell expensive server equipment (to game companies) for you to play online games on, with the rendering being done remotely. This would make it possible for people to play 3D games that are very CPU/GPU expensives on any platform that can stream and render the video fast enough. Imagine playing WoW on your iPhone... They might just be able to sell this.

    7. Re:What about Data Transfer by vikstar · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Good point, I didn't think about that way. More specifically the server could for example render expensive global illumination and then send the textures to the client, which can use simple GPUs to apply the textures to local meshes.

      --
      The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
  2. Re:Stop saying "cloud" by HBI · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For me, I just hate the marketing cocksuckers who come up with these terms. Some asshole saw too many Visio diagrams with a big cloud in the middle representing the intervening networks and decided that there are computers out there that will magically do what they want. Every time I hear the term 'cloud' I think 'botnet'. Because essentially, that's the only thing extant that resembles what they are proposing.

    --
    HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
  3. Re:Stop saying "cloud" by Spad · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Shhhhh! You'll ruin the scam (of convincing uninformed people that an old idea is a new idea by renaming it).

    Thin client -> fat client -> thin client -> fat client. *yawn*

    Every time, this happens; things move away from the client for "performance" and "flexibility" and "scalability" reasons and then everyone realises it's a pain because of the lack of control or reliability and by that point the client hardware's moved on to the point where it can do the job better anyway so everyone moves back to it.

  4. Re:Does it serve up glasses too? by Rockoon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I believe the term you were looking for is Stereo Images
    ,br> Anyways, this is just nVidia's attempt to come up with market for its soon to be irrelevant GPU business.

    note: I actualy LIKE nVidia video cards, but the writing is on the wall. AMD is going to be putting out a veritable monster with CPU + GPU on a single chip, and Intel is going to be doing similar with larrabee (more general purpose, tho.)

    nVidia can't compete without its own line of x64 chips, and they are just too far away from that capability right now.

    --
    "His name was James Damore."
  5. Re:Stop saying "cloud" by nurb432 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Don't worry, in 6 months we will have another buzz word we can hate and cloud will be history.

    --
    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
  6. Re:It takes chutzpah to use the term "RealityServe by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Any "new" technology that is marketed with the phrase "cloud computing" is starting to get a really bad reputation with software developers.

    The "cloud" is the sort of idea that managers and other fucking morons like that think is totally great, but those of us who actually have to work with such systems know how shitty most of them are.

    "Cloud computing" is this year's version last year's "web services", "SOA" and "SaaS". So many bold claims, but in the end nothing but a steaming pile of fecal matter pushed by the peckers in marketing.

    I wonder what next year's stupidity is going to be. I wonder what radical claims the marketing fools will make, only to find out that what they propose is stupid, costly and inefficient. There's just so much anticipation!