Ray traced polygon rendering is quite an expensive task on a CPU. But real time point cloud rendering can be done on it quite well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-ATtrImCx4 Yes its a bit cheesy, but that's because Bruce Dell doesn't have a marketing budget. This video is rendered in real time on a single core CPU, although it is only rendering at like 800x600, if the algorithm had some parallelism, maybe even have it developed for GPUs/hardware specialization. Then it would certainly be able to render large amounts of detail at a higher resolution. Although it doesn't have any advanced shading, it is still quite interesting to see such a complex static environment drawn with a single CPU thread. Of course there are huge computational and memory issues with bone animation, shading, transparency etc. So don't think you will see this in the next 5 - 10years. -------------------------------------------------- From: "Jonathan Murphy" <nuclearfri...@gmail.com> Sent: Saturday, June 19, 2010 12:31 AM To: "Discussion of Half-Life Programming" <hlcoders@list.valvesoftware.com> Subject: Re: [hlcoders] Source Engine 2!!! > Katrina, you might be interested in reading up on Real Time > Raytracing, which is an alternative to rasterisation (GPU) based > rendering and is/has been extensively researched and even implemented. > > http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_tracing_(graphics) > http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_Wars:_Ray_Traced > > At the moment though it seems GPUs are going to stay very mainstream. > > On Saturday, June 19, 2010, joshua simmons <simmons...@gmail.com> wrote: >> Oh yeah I understand. There is only very rudmentry 3d support, in no way >> capable of supporting any game. My point was more on the radical rate at >> which they are evolving in comparison. Even the purely reverse engineered >> open source NVIDIA driver is out doing the proprietary one in terms of >> 2d. >> Now I of course realise there is a big jump from that to capable 3d, but >> considering (iirc) amd have developers working on the open source driver, >> I >> see it as mainly a matter of time before it becomes a viable alternative. >> >> On 18 Jun 2010 22:01, "Bob Somers" <magicbob...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> Katrina, I'm not giving lectures on computer graphics here. Google has >> all the information you asked for. If you'd like, I can also recommend >> some graphics textbooks which would clear things up. Also, saying a >> Linux system running on a 100 MHz machine is comparable to Windows >> running on a 2 GHz machine is a ridiculous overstatement. They are not >> that radically different. If you're so convinced you can make the >> words best software renderer, by all means go do it. I'm sure at the >> very least you can wave your SIGGRAPH paper in our faces when you're >> done. >> >> Josh, I'm not sure you can call it better Linux support if their 3D >> support is... well... really bad. They may have opened up their >> hardware spec so that the free drivers can get rolling (I have tried >> the new drivers in Fedora 13 and they are quite good so far), but the >> free drivers are at least a year behind their Windows counterpart in >> terms of supporting the full features of the cards. There is virtually >> zero shader support in the free drivers at this point. nVidia's >> drivers, on the other hand, may be proprietary, but at least you can >> get decent 3D performance out of the machine on a current distro. The >> proprietary ATI driver has decent support and performance, but it >> won't run on anything newer than Fedora 11. (Sorry if I keep >> referencing things in terms of Fedora versions, it's my distro of >> choice.) >> >> I'm all for free software, don't get me wrong. I would love for >> nothing more than to have free alternative drivers for ATI and nVidia >> cards, but if gaming is really going to be commercially viable on the >> Linux desktop it's the performance that matters. No publisher is going >> to bother trying to ship a game for Linux where the poor driver >> support is going to cause them support headaches all day long. >> >> --Bob >> >> >> >> >> >> On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 4:38 AM, joshua simmons <simmons...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >>> Actually to be h... >> >>> To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, >> please visit: >>> http://list... >> _______________________________________________ >> To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, >> please visit: >> http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, > please visit: > http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders > > > > No virus found in this incoming message. > Checked by AVG - www.avg.com > Version: 9.0.829 / Virus Database: 271.1.1/2945 - Release Date: 06/18/10 > 04:35:00 > _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
