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3D Graphics For Firefox, Webkit
angry tapir writes "A group of researchers plans to release a version of the Firefox browser that includes the built-in ability to view 3D graphics. They've integrated real-time ray tracing technology, called RT Fact, into Firefox and Webkit. Images are described using XML3D, and the browser can natively render the 3D scene." The browser will be released within a few weeks, the researchers say, and they are checking with the Mozilla Foundation about whether they can call it Firefox.
Ahh, the day that comes...
Believe it or not, it's already landed on trunk - at least for Firefox running on Windows 7.
np: Autechre.ws Webcast (02.03.2010)
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
Flash problem. But 2 days ago Firefox 3.7 Alpha 2 was released with out-of-process plugins. Flash can no longer crash FF.
RTFact is based on a research paper from the University of Saarland. The paper describes the implementation of a generic real time ray tracing framework with source code in C++. The goal or objective is an interactive real-time ray tracer.
From the different implementations I researched (Manta from MIT, OpenRT, Arauna, RTSL, plus many more), RTFact is by far the most legitimate implementation. There are a million papers out there on interactive ray tracing, but only a few really take into consideration some of the major problems. I played around with OpenRT, but the amount of artifacts and aliasing really take away from the interactive experience. I have not played around with it recently, so maybe they now have an improved adaptive anti-aliasing solution, so my comments may be outdated.
The base code for RTFact is supposed go open source, but I have been waiting around for a long time without even a remote tidbit of information until this post. They actually even went backwards as they removed the paper from public distribution. Whenever it does go open source, it will be posted here.
http://www.rtfact.org/
Now the generic ray tracing api/framework is RTFact, but from the sounds of the article posted above, they are actually integrating the scene graph RTSG into WebKit, which has also been developed by the university of Saarland. This is only speculation and I could be completely wrong.
If you want some info on RTFact, check out:
http://tiny.cc/gHMrW
For info on RTSG, check out:
http://tiny.cc/3ezO8
If you want the original paper, the only link I could find from Google seems to be broken, but it may be due to the servers being overloaded by downloads after the announcement. I have the paper somewhere here on one of my drives, but it would take me a while to find, so if you want me to spend the time looking for it, you would need to give me some incentive by proving to me that you are in fact doing research.
In regards to your question, without a doubt, rasterization will eventually be replaced by ray tracing. Just look at Pixars evolution into photorealism. When the frame rates improve with better hardware for the general public, the framework will begin to be used in game engines, and not just scene graphs. The reasoning is aesthetic as much as it is technical. Ray tracing is truer to the physics of light than rasterization, so even though you can "fake" effects, the graphics will always be more appealing being rendered backwards than forwards. I do numerical simulation (with a background in CS from UW, where my heavy graphics knowledge comes from, plus a few years in real-time simulaton), and the true physics of the problem always gives a better solution than assumptions, approximations, correlations, and correction factors. It is a comment that my prof continually reiterates. For example, caustics will never look as good rastered as they do ray traced, since the ray tracer will map the full motion of the photons.
I could go on for hours, but I will leave it at this....