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Real-Time, Movie-Quality CGI For Games

Posted by kdawson on from the we-can-animate-it-for-you-wholesale dept.

An anonymous reader writes "An Intel-owned development team can now render CGI-quality graphics in real time. 'Their video clips show artists pulling together 3D elements like a jigsaw puzzle (see for example this video starting at about 3:38), making movie-level CG look as easy as following a recipe.' They hope that the simplicity of 'Project Offset' could ultimately give them the edge in the race to produce real-time graphics engines for games."

5 of 184 comments (clear)

  1. Re:As long as Moore's law holds by binarylarry · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Unfortunately, the faster the processors get, fancier rendering features become possible in the offline space as well.

    Realtime rendering will never be on par with offline rendering of the same vintage.

    --
    Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
  2. "Movie-Quality" by nitehawk214 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Movie-Quality" is basically a worthless statement. Which movie? Avatar, Final Fantasy, Toy Story, Tron? The quality of digitally produced movies, and the quality of game graphics power are constantly moving targets.

    --
    I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
    1. Re:"Movie-Quality" by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is basically what I was going to say. The latest crop of "funny fuzzy animal" movies have graphics about as good as the best video games — the secret to making games look as good as movies is apparently to make movies look shitty. I just can't sit through a movie that doesn't look as good as playing a game. I also can't sit through a movie with a worse plot than nethack, but that's a separate issue. Unfortunately, the aforementioned movies suffer from both of these failings.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  3. Re:Who will write the software for the bird? by PotatoFarmer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    At what point will the hardware capabilities exceed the software we can write?

    Never. More hardware means programmers can get away with writing less efficient code.

  4. define movie quality by poly_pusher · · Score: 3, Insightful

    As stated by other posters, "film quality" is misleading. Primarily it refers to resolution and remember many cameras record at up to 4k, so the ability to render in real time at ultra-high res is definitely sought after.

    Currently, the big push in 3d rendering is towards physically based raytrace or pathtrace rendering.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_tracing
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_tracing_(graphics)
    Physically based rendering produces a much more accurate representation of how light interacts with and between surfaces. It has always taken a long time to render using physically based techniques due to the huge amount of calculations necessary to produce a grain free image. This has changed somewhat recently with multi-core systems and with GPGPU languages such as CUDA and OpenCL we are about to experience a big and sudden increase in performance regarding these rendering technologies.

    While this game looks great, the engine is by no means going to be capable of rendering scenes containing hundreds of millions of polygons, ultra-high res textures, physically accurate lighting and shaders, and high render resolution. We are still pretty far away from real-time physically-based rendering, which is the direction film is currently headed. So that would have to be what "Movie-Quality CGI" is defined as and this game does not live up to that definition.