Nvidia's RealityServer to Offer Ubiquitous 3D Images

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Nvidia's RealityServer to Offer Ubiquitous 3D Images

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday November 13, 2009 @09:47AM 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."

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It takes chutzpah to use the term "RealityServer" by jeffb+(2.718) · 2009-11-13 09:49 · Score: 3, Funny

...for demoware.
Re:It takes chutzpah to use the term "RealityServe by DeadDecoy · 2009-11-13 09:51 · Score: 5, Funny

It could have been a CloudServer for vaporware.
What about Data Transfer by Monkeedude1212 · 2009-11-13 09:55 · 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 Fulcrum+of+Evil · 2009-11-13 09:57 · Score: 1
  
  how big is video?
  
  --
  "We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
2. Re:What about Data Transfer by Monkeedude1212 · 2009-11-13 09:58 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Video's pretty big - but its always compressed to a point I wouldn't call it photo realistic.
3. Re:What about Data Transfer by cheesybagel · 2009-11-13 10:06 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Compression. You know, MPEG-4 AVC.
4. Re:What about Data Transfer by lhoguin · 2009-11-13 10:10 · 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.
5. Re:What about Data Transfer by VeNoM0619 · 2009-11-13 10:13 · 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.
6. Re:What about Data Transfer by Fulcrum+of+Evil · 2009-11-13 10:14 · Score: 1
  
  the point here is that photorealistic stuff isn't any bigger than a photo
  
  --
  "We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
7. Re:What about Data Transfer by Dunbal · 2009-11-13 10:19 · Score: 1
  
  how am I ever going to push 30 Photorealistic Frames through the internet - I can hardly get 5 Mb/s from my ISP.
  I'm far from being a computer programmer/expert.
  But say you have a display at, for argument's sake, 1280x1024 pixels at 32 bits per pixel. That's 41.9 million bits per frame. Call it 42 Mbits. You want to do that at 30 frames per second? You're up to 1.26 Gb/s. Now please raise your hands who has a 2GBs internet connection? OK there will be some compression, and algorithms that mean you don't have to send the WHOLE screen every frame, but still...
  I don't think this is meant to be used for games.
  
  --
  Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
8. Re:What about Data Transfer by im_thatoneguy · 2009-11-13 10:23 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Really you wouldn't describe Netflix HD as photorealistic? Even things... originally shot on film? With a camera?
9. Re:What about Data Transfer by Monkeedude1212 · 2009-11-13 10:24 · Score: 1
  
  Maybe not the phone - I can't imagine why anyone would really need high quality photo realistic Renderings on your phone - I mean once the image is rendered you can just put it on your phone and show people, if thats what you're going for. But there isn't exactly an Engineering or Architect App for the iPhone, as far as I'm aware (don't hold me to that).
  However, in my experience, the only time where rendering is preferable over a picture is for entertainment purposes. Though someone above mentioned this would be handy for Engineers and Designers, thats a very small group of people to benefit from this. What was so slow and painful about the old way of dealing with Wireframes and sprites and spending 30 minutes Rendering your final products that way?
  If there isn't going to be a push towards some form of animation, I don't see it going much of anywhere. There isn't enough of a need for high performance rendering like this when people achieve these results already at a slower pace.
  Rather - let me just ask - what will YOU use this for?
10. Re:What about Data Transfer by Monkeedude1212 · 2009-11-13 10:33 · Score: 1
  
  Then I beg you to come up with more than 5 practical applications.
11. Re:What about Data Transfer by LUH+3418 · 2009-11-13 10:47 · 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.
12. Re:What about Data Transfer by JobyOne · 2009-11-13 10:50 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  How big is your screen?
  That's the real question here. "Photorealistic" (a meaningless term in the context of transferring image data) on a smartphone screen is a whole lot smaller than on my full 1920x1280 desktop monitor.
  "Photorealistic" will only ever be as high resolution as the screen you view it on.
  
  --
  Porquoi?
13. Re:What about Data Transfer by vikstar · 2009-11-13 10:51 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Forget the data transfers, they'll increase, it's the latency that's the problem. Games using this technology will be almost useless, especially action games. Currently you get practically 0ms latency when you interact with a game, which is what makes it seem fast. If it's a multiplayer game then the only latency you get are from other people, and if they appear to go left 50ms later than when they pressed the button to go left it doesn't make a difference for you, since you don't know when they pressed the button. If you get 50ms latency on your own controls, then it's really really visible, since we have great motion vision... like T-Rexes.
  
  --
  The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
14. Re:What about Data Transfer by geekoid · 2009-11-13 11:20 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  Yes, no one could ever get you 30 frames a second, that's why we can't watch tv shows and movies online~
  
  --
  The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
15. Re:What about Data Transfer by geekoid · 2009-11-13 11:21 · Score: 1
  
  With this technique, it might be possible with a 4g connection.
  
  --
  The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
16. Re:What about Data Transfer by ChrisMaple · 2009-11-13 11:27 · Score: 1
  
  RTFS
  RTFA. Animation of a dress worn by a model of a size specified by the user is given as an example.
  
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  Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
17. Re:What about Data Transfer by Toonol · 2009-11-13 12:10 · Score: 1
  
  DVD quality is 720x480. That's much lower resolution than modern consoles and PCs put out, and yet a decent movie looks far more photorealistic than anything they can render. I think a decent game at 640x480 res, with good animations and realistic aliasing, looks better and more realistic than a crisp HD image without those. By focusing so much on resolution, we've been putting emphasis on the wrong thing.
18. Re:What about Data Transfer by im_thatoneguy · 2009-11-13 14:18 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  Not all games. Many genres would work great such as an RTS or many RPGs like WOW or Baldur's gate or any other game where the interface could be run locally on the portable's hardware and then let the server handle the rendering.
  I imagine even a local 3D copy which is hidden from the user but handles all of the 3D Mechanics of detecting unit selection etc. Since it's not being shaded and it only needs collision meshes it would run fine on a cell phone. Then let the server render the well shaded and lit views.
19. Re:What about Data Transfer by vikstar · 2009-11-13 14:38 · 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.
20. Re:What about Data Transfer by mikael · 2009-11-13 14:45 · Score: 1
  
  You can have supersampled pixels to avoid jagged lines - for every pixel in the framebuffer, your raytracer might generate a grid of 8x8 or 16x16 rays, each of which has its own unique direction. These leads to smoother blended edges on objects. It takes considerably more time, but helps to improve the appearance of low resolution images, especially mobile phone screen which may only be 640x480 or 320x200 (early VGA screen resolutions).
  
  --
  Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
21. Re:What about Data Transfer by KibibyteBrain · 2009-11-13 15:00 · Score: 1
  
  Because it would be cloud based, they could merely send the finished rasterized frames for cellphones(very little bandwidth), or preprocessed data for desktops/notebooks/things with a GPU which it could then assemble. The whole problem is usually when you do something like this you need to download much more data than you actually need to your machine to view only one small subset of that information. Now, it can send you only the data you need, or all of the data in progressive chunks that you can start to view in full [apparent] quality right away, vs. having to wait to download all the information to have your own machine start assembling it.
22. Re:What about Data Transfer by physburn · 2009-11-13 15:09 · Score: 1
  
  The reality engine isn't for real time gaming, its for artists, game and CAD designers to see the scenes rendered in near real time. It makes a lot of sense to the render on a remote server, most of time the artists computer will be just a user interface for modelling using very little CPU, only on the few rendering occassion will you need the vast ammout of CPU power that the remote render farm, can provide. Nvidia and Mental image have picked a great application for the cloud here. Even cleverer for Nvidia is decided to let 3d parties buy and host the render engines. No doubt the market will vastly overestimate the need for these engine, making Nvidia a lot of Telsa GPU sales, and a many cheap resources for rendering. I'm not sure what the payment system for using the render farms will be, it will probably vary from provider to provider, and settle down as cheap once there are enough render farms available.
  Nvidia where also clever in buying Mental Ray, since there render plug-in, fits most of the industries main 3d packages, like Maya, 3D studio and Autocad, the reality engine farms will already be useable on most of the common software.
  ---
  Ray Tracing Feed @ Feed Distiller
23. Re:What about Data Transfer by pipingguy · 2009-11-14 00:26 · Score: 1
  
  Let's see it perform with something like this: http://tinyurl.com/ycm5uy5 It's a YouTube 3D refinery flythrough - architectural stuff is tame, compared to this. This is not as finely-detailed as the interior of a microprocessor but the actual thing processes much more than electrons and has to accommodate humans walking throughout and managing it. It looks complicated to the uninitiated, but it's not really. Nifty, eh? Complex enough?
24. Re:What about Data Transfer by RespekMyAthorati · 2009-11-15 06:34 · Score: 1
  
  That looked like shit. Is that the point?
25. Re:What about Data Transfer by JobyOne · 2009-11-21 17:29 · Score: 1
  
  That's a rendering trick that has zero impact whatsoever on the final size of a rendered frame. I highly doubt they're sending raytracing data to smartphones.
  A pixel is a pixel is a pixel, no matter how you go about generating it, and a screen can only display so many of them. The smart phone or whatever isn't generating these images, it doesn't give a crap about the raytracing methods behind them. It just downloads them and puts them on the screen.
  Reminds me of people who take a 300x300px image into Photoshop and change the resolution to 300dpi in an attempt to make it "print ready." Congratulations! You've made it print ready to be an inch wide.
  
  --
  Porquoi?
26. Re:What about Data Transfer by mikael · 2009-11-25 08:36 · Score: 1
  
  The screen resolution of an iPhone is around 640x480 . I would guess that there are probably applications to allow larger images to be viewed through the use of scroll and zoom functionality. What I meant is that the server is going to do the raytracing, and all it has to do is send an image back to the iPhone.
  
  --
  Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Uh oh... by XPeter · 2009-11-13 09:57 · Score: 1

Somebody tell 4Chan's /hr/ department, quick!

--
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
1. Re:Uh oh... by Anonymous Coward · 2009-11-13 10:24 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  Not your personal army.
Stop saying "cloud" by HockeyPuck · 2009-11-13 09:58 · Score: 5, Funny

FTFA:

By moving ray tracing and many other high power graphics algorithms off the client and into the cloud, lightweight-computing platforms like netbooks and smartphones can display photorealistic images in real time.

Why not just say:

By moving ray tracing and many other high power graphics algorithms off the client and onto nvidia's servers, lightweight-computing platforms like netbooks and smartphones can display photorealistic images in real time.

I guess it's just not as cool...
I wonder if this would work for cooking?

By moving cutting, peeling, baking, frying and many other food preparation techniques off the dining room table and into the food cloud (kitchen), lightweight-eating platforms like TV trays and paper plates can be used to eat off of in real time.
1. Re:Stop saying "cloud" by HBI · 2009-11-13 10:01 · 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.
2. Re:Stop saying "cloud" by Spad · 2009-11-13 10:04 · 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.
3. Re:Stop saying "cloud" by thePowerOfGrayskull · 2009-11-13 10:13 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Thin client -> fat client -> thin client -> fat client. *yawn*
  We were forced to stop using the term "fat client' here at Big Bank; our end-users got offended when they heard the term, apparently they thought we were talking about the /users/ and not the systems... Instead, we must call it "thick client"* -- which is odd, since if they interpret it the same way it's just as insulting from another direction.
  *go ahead, laugh, but it really happened!
4. Re:Stop saying "cloud" by HockeyPuck · 2009-11-13 10:20 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  We were forced to stop using the term "fat client' here at Big Bank; our end-users got offended when they heard the term, apparently they thought we were talking about the /users/ and not the systems... Instead, we must call it "thick client"* -- which is odd, since if they interpret it the same way it's just as insulting from another direction.
  
  You forgot how we used to refer to IDE devices as either a "master" or a "slave"... this wasn't back in the 50s either.
5. Re:Stop saying "cloud" by nurb432 · 2009-11-13 10:27 · 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:Stop saying "cloud" by Anonymous Coward · 2009-11-13 10:30 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  I'm all about the "river computing" system. You dump whatever crap you want in, and its downstream's problem.
7. Re:Stop saying "cloud" by Xtravar · 2009-11-13 10:55 · Score: 1
  
  We used to call "computers on wheels" COWs, except apparently a customer and/or customer's customer got very offended during implementation.
  And yes, that really happened, too.
  
  --
  Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
8. Re:Stop saying "cloud" by Hurricane78 · 2009-11-13 11:02 · Score: 1
  
  Oh, and it's not real-time at all. IT will *at least* have the lag of one ping roundtrip. Then add some ms of rendering time and input/ouput on the device to it. On a mobile phone that can mean 1.5 seconds(!) in delay. Or ever more.
  It's real-time, when it does not sound weird anymore, when I press a key in a music game, to hear the sound.
  That's below 10 ms for me. But something around 50ms TOTAL for the average Joe.
  Oh, and don't even think about winning a game against someone with real real-time rendering.
  In Internet speak this project is a... LAG FAIL!
  
  --
  Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
9. Re:Stop saying "cloud" by unjedai · 2009-11-13 11:42 · Score: 1
  
  My kitchen sometimes resembles a cloud when I allow my high powered processor to over-render my inputs.
10. Re:Stop saying "cloud" by ChrisMaple · 2009-11-13 11:42 · Score: 1
  
  I too was skeptical. But last night there was a presentation on cloud computing at Monadlug, and rerendering for a video service to insert new advertisements was given as an example. This is something that is being done NOW, a few dollars paying for 20 minutes of time on someone's "cloud", that would otherwise require that the video service buy a whole roomfull of expensive multiprocessor computers.
  Amazon and Rackspace and others are already offering cloud services. I don't like it - I think everyone should own all the processing power they need - but cloud computing is here, it's real, and it performs a valuable economic function.
  
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11. Re:Stop saying "cloud" by symbolset · 2009-11-13 15:22 · Score: 1
  
  Buzzwords can be fun. Next time you're scheduled for a sales presentation make up a bunch of cards with different sets of mixed buzzwords and give each attendee a card and a highlighter. The first person to get five buzzwords marked off should yell BINGO! and win a small prize for paying attention. It's called buzzword bingo. It works equally well whether you warn the presenters or not, since they can't help themselves. Some salespeople can't get past the first slide without "BINGO" ringing out.
  Here's a nice starter list: Manage virtual ROI available secure cloud service protect tier integrate enterprise 2.0 TCO efficiency scale trust partner federate content core architect generation.
  
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  Help stamp out iliturcy.
12. Re:Stop saying "cloud" by symbolset · 2009-11-13 15:26 · Score: 1
  
  Thick client is also insensitive these days. You want to go with "fluffy client".
  Just kidding... the least offensive term is, I believe, "rich client", though in a bank that could be confusing too.
  
  --
  Help stamp out iliturcy.
13. Re:Stop saying "cloud" by F34nor · 2009-11-13 19:06 · Score: 1
  
  Just tell them that its the BSDM release.
14. Re:Stop saying "cloud" by JohnnyBGod · 2009-11-13 23:44 · Score: 1
  
  Duh! Come on, man, everybody knows that the Internet is not something that you just dump something on!
15. Re:Stop saying "cloud" by Fred_A · 2009-11-14 00:39 · Score: 1
  
  I think everyone should own all the processing power they need - but cloud computing is here, it's real, and it performs a valuable economic function.
  Old news. It used to be called "server time". There are bits and pieces related to "server time" billing left in most Unix or Unix-like systems (which could probably be brought back to life if need be). No need to bring any meteorology in it.
  "Sorry, your cloud computing operations have been cancelled because of an unexpected storm which washed away our reserve of zeroes"
  
  --
  
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  Made from the freshest electrons.
16. Re:Stop saying "cloud" by thePowerOfGrayskull · 2009-11-14 12:53 · Score: 1
  
  There's just no way to win... hefty? sizeable? hmmm, "standalone" might work but is also rather ambiguous in technical meaning...
17. Re:Stop saying "cloud" by RespekMyAthorati · 2009-11-15 06:39 · Score: 1
  
  Unless there's a series of pipes to take it away...
Photo-realistic on smart phones! by Enderandrew · 2009-11-13 10:01 · Score: 1

That low-resolution BlackBerry in your pocket will suddenly be capable of producing high resolution images?
Uh-huh.
Nvidia also claims that simply by wiring money into their account, they can make you lose weight by doing nothing at all!

--
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
1. Re:Photo-realistic on smart phones! by im_thatoneguy · 2009-11-13 10:25 · Score: 1
  
  The point is that the blackberry doesn't do any processing. It just streams the end result. Which is certainly doable considering the ZuneHD can playback 720p HD footage and it's not much bigger than a blackberry.
2. Re:Photo-realistic on smart phones! by Enderandrew · 2009-11-13 10:50 · Score: 1
  
  I'm not talking about real-time processing (which cloud rendering can help with).
  The new Zune HD is one of a few select devices that actually supports a decent resolution. It pisses me off because I can't use a Zune in Linux, and I won't buy a Zune, but it does have perhaps the nicest screen of any portable device on the market right now.
  Most smart phones have low-resolution screens. You can't produce a photo-realistic image on a low-resolution screen, regardless of pushing rendering out to the cloud.
  
  --
  http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
3. Re:Photo-realistic on smart phones! by EvanED · 2009-11-13 11:33 · Score: 1
  
  ...it does have perhaps the nicest screen of any portable device on the market right now. Most smart phones have low-resolution screens.
  Really?! I'm looking at specs now; by what I see, the Zune HD 32 has a 480x272 pixel screen.
  There are quite a few smart phones out there with better than that. The Droid has 480 x 854; the HTC hero has 320x480; the Nokia N900 has 800x480. Even the iPhone, which doesn't have stellar resolution, is 480x320.
Re:Does it serve up glasses too? by Rockoon · 2009-11-13 10:26 · 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."
lack of control by nurb432 · 2009-11-13 10:28 · Score: 1

That depends on which side you are on.
For the people hosting ( or governments that want to butt in ) there is plenty of control.

--
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Re:Does it serve up glasses too? by Neil+Hodges · 2009-11-13 10:35 · Score: 1

Actually, Intel is putting its GMA into the CPU, not Larrabee. In no way will Intel GMA spell the end for discrete graphics cards, a category which includes Larrabee.
Re:Does it serve up glasses too? by Rockoon · 2009-11-13 10:51 · Score: 1

Their roadmap for larrabee is first as an add-in card, then integrated into motherboards, and finally integrated onto the cpu itself.

AFAIK, GMA is never going to be integrated into the CPU. Its going to continue to be integrated in motherboards.

--
"His name was James Damore."
I've just worked out what "the cloud" means by Colin+Smith · 2009-11-13 10:58 · Score: 1

"Not my responsibility".

--
Deleted
Re:Does it serve up glasses too? by an+unsound+mind · 2009-11-13 11:18 · Score: 1

And we haven't heard promises of technology X doing Y spelling the end of Z before?
I'll believe it when they have functional units past the prototype phase at a reasonable cost.
You may only disagree if you post while driving your flying car.
The article kinda misses the point by fontkick · 2009-11-13 11:22 · Score: 1

While the comments here are mostly negative, I can say this is a big leap ahead for rendering technology mainly because the rendering is occuring at the hardware level, rendered on the Nvidia processors on a video card, instead of the CPU via software rendering. They are calling this iray and it's developed by mental images, not nvidia. While video cards are currently great at rendering games in real time, they require a tremendous amount of shader programming and only do this sort of rendering within the context of a game, instead of within a CAD application. They are also limited in their ability to render GI, area (soft) shadows and refraction/caustics. By passing the rendering from a CAD app to iray and onto the videocard hardware, you have access to 200 parallel processors, instead of the 2, 4, or 6 processors on the CPU. So in theory a 3dsmax/Maya scene that takes you 5 hours (300 minutes) to render on a dual core CPU will only take 3 minutes with your videocard's processors. With the use of reality server (and enough multiple nvidia cards all rendering the same frame), the 3 minutes drops down to 3 seconds. Personally I'd settle for the 3 minutes and I'd be damned happy about it.
1. Re:The article kinda misses the point by ceoyoyo · 2009-11-13 11:46 · Score: 1
  
  It's not the leap you make it out to be.
  Ray tracing has been done on video hardware for quite a while. It still takes a pile of shader programming. These things are programmed using CUDA, which is really just another layer over top of a shader. The 200 parallel processors in a Tesla are really just a modified version of the X number of shaders on your video card. Yeah, the Tesla boxes are cool, but they're not a revolutionary change - people have been talking about GPU clusters for a long time.
  The "cloud" delivery is even less remarkable. Years ago SGI was busy trying to sell servers that would do high quality rendering and then send the result to other devices... like cell phones. It didn't really go anywhere. And SGI went bankrupt.
Games make no sense... by GameMaster · 2009-11-13 11:41 · Score: 2, Interesting

Wanna know what playing games on a system like this would be like? Go to your favorite video streaming site and change the player settings (if you can) to 0 caching. The end result is, approximately, what you'd get here. The internet is a very unstable place. The only reason online games work is that programmers have gotten really good at developing latency hiding tricks which all stop working when the video rendering is done by the server. And, don't think this will just effect fps games. Just because it doesn't make or break a game like WOW doesn't mean you'd want the stuttering game-play you'd have to put up with. As far as I can see, the only kind of game this would be useful for it photo-realistic checkers.

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1. Re:Games make no sense... by sowth · 2009-11-14 07:43 · Score: 1
  
  What about Dragon's Lair or Space Ace? Or how about all the "games" out there which are mostly noninteractive cut scenes?
  Hmmm...I see the big game studios may be moving back to those "choose your own adventure" video titles of the late 1990s...except in 3D!!!! Mwahahaha! (**cue cheesy villan is victorious music**)
  Though I did think the Star Trek: Klingon one was a bit cool...
SGI?! by sp1nm0nkey · 2009-11-13 12:37 · Score: 1

I smell an SGI naming convention, i.e. RealityEngine
Re:It takes chutzpah to use the term "RealityServe by Anonymous Coward · 2009-11-13 12:38 · 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!
Re:Does it serve up glasses too? by Tiger4 · 2009-11-13 14:07 · Score: 1

Wasn't Larrabee the hapless assistant to the Chief of Control? Just a weird coincidence I hope.

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Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
If you own the symbolset, you own the mindshare by symbolset · 2009-11-13 17:12 · Score: 1

IBM tried it when they went to OS/2. Suddenly a hard drive was a "Fixed disk" and a motherboard was a "Planar board".
It's a sad game but it's the only one there is. It's fun to watch megacorporations fight to the death over ownership of a word.

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Help stamp out iliturcy.
Re:It takes chutzpah to use the term "RealityServe by Yvan256 · 2009-11-13 17:25 · Score: 1

Hey, don't rain on their parade.