We are using the current card from rtviz - the
VolumePro 500 - for medical applications. It's a PCI card that can fit into
PC (NT), Sun, or SGI systems. It can render 256^3
volumes at about 20 fps (it can handle larger volumes with slower framerates). To put this in perspective, that is faster than a low end SGI
infinite reality! Keep in mind that the card
costs only $4k (maybe 4-5% of the cost of IR) and you can see why this is a boon for those who need it (medical, geophysical, etc).
Furthermore, the quality is very good. It supports
some things you cannot easily do on SGI hardware, like high-quality per-voxel lighting with no
performance penalty.
On the down side, there are some limitations in the
current card: no perspective projection (needed
for applications like virtual endoscopy) and
no way to mix surfaces with volume data (needed
for surgical simulation, etc). That's why this
news is exciting for us medical folks.
As far as the rest of you (gamers, etc), my
feeling is that if you build it, they will
come. When it gets to the point that voxel
data and surface data are handled by the same
chip on a $200 video card with 1gig of memory,
the game makers will use it.
Not sure, but I would doubt it. I think it
is interesting that the stores they mention
are all stores which normally have high
prices for CD's. Who would shop at a musicland anyway? Often smaller independent
stores (or even smaller chains like NC)
have lower prices.
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On the down side, there are some limitations in the current card: no perspective projection (needed for applications like virtual endoscopy) and no way to mix surfaces with volume data (needed for surgical simulation, etc). That's why this news is exciting for us medical folks. As far as the rest of you (gamers, etc), my feeling is that if you build it, they will come. When it gets to the point that voxel data and surface data are handled by the same chip on a $200 video card with 1gig of memory, the game makers will use it.
Not sure, but I would doubt it. I think it
is interesting that the stores they mention
are all stores which normally have high
prices for CD's. Who would shop at a musicland anyway? Often smaller independent
stores (or even smaller chains like NC)
have lower prices.