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Real-Time, Movie-Quality CGI For Games
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."
They've discovered the hidden secrets to rendering Academy Award winning films such as "Gears of War" and "Crysis."
Congrats Intel dev team!
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Now maybe they can get to work on shipping on-board graphics cards that can actually play games released within the past couple of years...
now there we have an accurate statement: "Computer Generated Imagery" quality graphics
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!
4 or 5 years ago, it was basically comparable to Unreal 3. The motion blur was probably the best feature I saw. Fine graphics, but nothing really mind blowing. Having said that, I have not seen what they've done since Intel bought them, but I'm guessing its basically support for Intel's research projects.
As a developer of modern console and PC games, My Professional Opinion is that there's nothing new to see here.
Not sure, but I can tell you that we're nowhere near rendering state of the art movie CGI in real time. Vertex and pixel shaders have enabled a class of effects that were previously impossible in real time, but those are all direct lighting effects or crude approximations of indirect lighting. Shadows are not really smooth, they're just blurred. Realistic smooth shadows depend on the size of the light source and are computationally prohibitive on current hardware under real time constraints. Movie-quality CGI includes a class of light interactions which is currently impossible in real time, for example caustics: A caustic is light which is reflected or refracted onto a surface which reflects diffusely. Light being refracted by the surface of a swimming pool is an effect which can be faked but not simulated in real time. Render farms use an algorithm called Photon Mapping to simulate this and other complicated light interactions. This algorithm is conceptually related to Raytracing but even more computationally intensive. It does not map well to the hardware which is currently used in the real time rendering pipeline.
Never. More hardware means programmers can get away with writing less efficient code.
I think those are Mike & Ike's...
I hate it when people hate on people hating on something they hate just to get karma points just to get karma points.
It's almost as bad as people hating on people hating on people hating on something they hate just to get karma points just to get karma points just to get karma points.
Grammar works like nesting things, right?
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Actually, that's how the characters in the older Myst games worked (except that they used this great new technology called "video camera" to get moving pictures into them).
This was fine in those games, because the viewpoint was always fixed. That's a restriction you don't want to have in current games.
I read a really great short story once about a future where all films are made completely on computers, with AI actors. Then one guy starts filming movies with a real girl in them, just with computerized scenery, and doesn't tell anyone. It blows people away just how "real" his films feel compared to normal movies.
Anyone else read that? It was pretty good.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
FINALLY we can have CGI-quality in computer games!
It was such a pain, when computers couldn't achieve the quality of COMPUTER GENERATED IMAGES
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes