March 2007
- [ANNOUNCE] Midgard Online Andreas Weidenhaupt
- [ANNOUNCE] Midgard Online Morris Cox
- [ANNOUNCE] Midgard Online Michael Hartman
- [ANNOUNCE] Midgard Online Andreas Weidenhaupt
- [ANNOUNCE] Midgard Online Michael Hartman
- [ANNOUNCE] Midgard Online Mike Rozak
- [ANNOUNCE] Midgard Online Andreas Weidenhaupt
- [ANNOUNCE] Midgard Online Damion Schubert
- [ANNOUNCE] Midgard Online Andreas Weidenhaupt
- [NEWS] Trident Games Prepares New Online Game Using Skotos Engine Shannon Appelcline
- [TECH] MMOG Design List Weston Fryatt
- [TECH] MMOG Design List Lachek Butalek
- [TECH] MMOG Design List Adam Martin
- [TECH] MMOG Design List Mike Rozak
- [TECH] MMOG Design List Weston Fryatt
- [TECH] MMOG Design List Hyrup, Darrin
- [TECH] MMOG Design List Morgan Ramsay
- [BIZ] Unauthorised Publishing of My Work mud-dev-list@jaruzel.com
- [BIZ] Unauthorised Publishing of My Work Lachek Butalek
- [BIZ] Unauthorised Publishing of My Work Sean Howard
- [BIZ] Unauthorised Publishing of My Work David Johansson
- [BIZ] Unauthorised Publishing of My Work Lachek Butalek
- [BIZ] Unauthorised Publishing of My Work David Johansson
- [BIZ] Unauthorised Publishing of My Work Keith Dunwoody
- [BIZ] Unauthorised Publishing of My Work Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] Homogenized MMORPG Engines (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Morris Cox
- [DESIGN] Homogenized MMORPG Engines (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Caliban Darklock
- [DESIGN] Homogenized MMORPG Engines (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Adam Martin
- [DESIGN] Homogenized MMORPG Engines (Was: A rantagainst Vanguard reviews and rants) Craig Huber
- [DESIGN] Homogenized MMORPG Engines (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Morris Cox
- [DESIGN] Homogenized MMORPG Engines (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Jeffrey Kesselman
- [DESIGN] Ray traced environments John Buehler
- [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Jeffrey Kesselman
- [DESIGN] Ray traced environments John Buehler
- [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Damion Schubert
- [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Tess Snider
- [DESIGN] Ray traced environments John Buehler
- [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Adam Martin
- [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Jeffrey Kesselman
- [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Mike Rozak
- [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Jeffrey Kesselman
- [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Jeffrey Kesselman
- [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Jeffrey Kesselman
- [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Acius
- [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Jeffrey Kesselman
- [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Mike Rozak
- [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Chris Richards
- [DESIGN] Ray traced environments John Buehler
- [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Ling Lo
- [DESIGN] Ray traced environments John Buehler
- [ANNOUNCE] Magic Study John Buehler
- [ANNOUNCE] Magic Study Mike Sellers
- [ANNOUNCE] Magic Study John Buehler
- [ANNOUNCE] Magic Study John Buehler
- [TECH] Randomly-generated Faction Names cruise
- [TECH] Randomly-generated Faction Names John Buehler
- [TECH] Randomly-generated Faction Names Johnicholas Hines
- [TECH] Randomly-generated Faction Names Lachek Butalek
- [DESIGN] Ray traced environments John Buehler
- [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Adam Martin
On 20/03/07, John Buehler <johnbue@msn.com> wrote:
> > John Buehler wrote:
> > > Processors are fast. They're getting more numerous per box. We have
> > > graphics coprocessors. Physics coprocessors are also out
> > there. It may
> > > be
> > > time to start talking about raytracing in games.
Problems:
- raytracing is fundamentally non-OpenGL / DirectX, which means all
the API's would need re-doing, and all the engines that interface to
those API's, and all the learning in people's heads
- what raytracing does exceptionally well (curved surfaces,
parametric objects, naturally-deformable terrain/meshes, 3d textures,
infinitely high resolution from one data set, light reflection and
refraction, radiosity) is for the most part no longer much desired in
the industry (thanks to the arrival of and improvements in shader
technology), or is already being simulated "just good enough" by
throwing excessive hardware at the problem in scanlines (e.g. 3d
textures, curved surfaces, and IIRC to a minor extent parametric
objects)
- triangle-processing hardware and raytracing hardware IIRC aren't
particularly similar, and the only commercial manufacturer of
raytracing hardware shot itself in the head years ago and has merely
limped along since, so lots of extra R&D would be needed to get
hardware at an appropriate quality and stability level.
> > - Physics co-processors are still-born.
>
> Agreed. Their existence suggests the desire for one box to do more. Too
> bad for the PhysX guys that Cell and multi-core arrived at the same time.
As someone who works almost entirely in *online* games, I beg to
differ: a deterministic physics coprocessor lets me do networked
physics games which are currently impossible thanks to the
non-determinism of CPU's and lack of software physics that runs fast
whilst emulating the CPU in order to fix that.
>
> > The reason is that ray-tracing is O(pixels), while scan-line tends to be
> > O(polygons) + a small contribution from O(pixels).
>
> Spread the word :)
>
IMHO it's a case of "Yet another technically superior but
fallen-by-the-wayside" alternative. Ten years ago, simplistic
raytracing hardware made triangle renderers look ugly as sin, but for
whatever reason(s) the opportunity wasn't taken by anyone - except the
triangle companies ;).
Personally, I greatly prefer it - it's more powerful (artistically)
and higher quality - but the R&D gap at the moment is, I suspect,
insurmountable - at least on the hardware side. I'm sure we'll see
*some* raytracing software games appear in the near future that are
very impressive (*) - like the handful of software voxel games that
successfullly went head to head with OpenGL games almost 10 years ago
(was it Soldier of Fortune that used voxels to do actual blades of
grass, and fine-grained obstruction of line-of-sight?), but it was
only worth the effort for a narrow range of games.
(*) IIRC there were a few non-commercial ones about 5 years ago that
made extensive use of the "fully deformable meshes at no cost" to make
deformable terrain a fundamental part of the gameplay.
Adam
- [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Adam Martin
- [DESIGN] Ray traced environments Jon Leonard
- [DESIGN] Homogenized MMORPG Engines (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Sean Howard
- [OFF-TOPIC] City of Heroes tangent (was: genre vs creativity) Michael Hartman
- [OFF-TOPIC] City of Heroes tangent (was: genre vs creativity) Jean, Yannick
- [OFF-TOPIC] City of Heroes tangent (was: genre vs creativity) Michael Hartman
- [OFF-TOPIC] City of Heroes tangent (was: genre vs creativity) Damion Schubert
- [OFF-TOPIC] City of Heroes tangent (was: genre vs creativity) Jeffrey Kesselman
- Reasons for Play [was: City of Heroes tangent] cruise
- Reasons for Play [was: City of Heroes tangent] John Buehler
- Reasons for Play [was: City of Heroes tangent] Sean Howard
- Reasons for Play [was: City of Heroes tangent] Michael Hartman
- Reasons for Play [was: City of Heroes tangent] Jeffrey Kesselman
- Reasons for Play [was: City of Heroes tangent] cruise
- Reasons for Play [was: City of Heroes tangent] Jeffrey Kesselman
- [OFF-TOPIC] City of Heroes tangent (was: genre vs creativity) Jeffrey Kesselman
- [DESIGN] Turn Around Time On Experimentation (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Adam Martin
- [ANNOUNCE] What Makes A Next-Gen Game? Morgan Ramsay
- [ANNOUNCE] What Makes A Next-Gen Game? Lachek Butalek
- [DESIGN] Multiplayer interactive fiction Mike Rozak
- [DESIGN] Multiplayer interactive fiction John Buehler
- [DESIGN] Multiplayer interactive fiction Paolo Piselli
- [DESIGN] Multiplayer interactive fiction Mike Rozak
- [BIZ] Austin Game Conference Contacts? Jeffrey Kesselman
- [BIZ] Austin Game Conference Contacts? Daniel James
- [MEDIA] A good, hour-long news segment about Second Life Mike Rozak
- Combat Systems (was: Reasons for Play) Adam Martin
- Combat Systems (was: Reasons for Play) Adam Martin
- Combat Systems (was: Reasons for Play) Hudson, Thomas C.
- Combat Systems (was: Reasons for Play) Jeffrey Kesselman
- Combat Systems (was: Reasons for Play) Kerry Fraser-Robinson
- Combat Systems (was: Reasons for Play) Jeffrey Kesselman
- [Announce] CircumReality - A grahical MUD (kind of) develoment toolkit Mike Rozak
- Importance of emoting (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Hudson, Thomas C.
- Importance of emoting (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Jeffrey Kesselman
- Importance of emoting (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Shannon Sullivan
- Importance of emoting (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Dana V. Baldwin
- Importance of emoting (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Jeffrey Kesselman
- Importance of emoting (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants) Tess Snider
- Importance of emoting (Was: A rant against Vanguardreviews and rants) Richard A. Bartle