Tracing Rays Through the Cloud

[Mar 05, 2012, 10:27 am ET] - Share - Viewing Comments

The Intel Software Network has the latest progress on their ongoing experimentation with creating practical applications for ray tracing technology. Though they point out that "most of today’s high-end gaming PCs are unable to render complex, dynamic, fully ray-traced games at high resolutions and frame rates," they offer a counter-intuitive explanation of how it can apply to tablets by way of that cloud everyone is so excited about: "But Intel work to offload complex ray-tracing calculations to the cloud could eventually enable highly realistic games to be played on smaller, more mobile systems." Thanks Ant via Slashdot.

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15.

Re: Tracing Rays Through the Cloud

Mar 5, 2012, 19:16

Cutter

The Cloud is just more overhyped BS.




"Are you crazy? Is that your problem?" - Jack Burton

14.

Re: Tracing Rays Through the Cloud

Mar 5, 2012, 18:59

Rigs

This whole 'cloud' thing just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I've seen too many circle-jerk articles lamenting the future of...EVERYTHING!....is going to the cloud yet as has been previously stated, the US network infrastructure is woefully inadequate and the US based network providers are too busy seeing how many pennies they can squeeze out of the normal wi-fi/3g/4g consumer in ratios and quotas to worry about actually planning ahead far enough to let these massive bandwidth-eatiing techs to mature and prosper.

So that settles it....I'm goin' to South Korea! Who's goin' with me?

=-Rigs-=




*'Now, we gave you a promise and we are bound by that promise and damn you for asking for it! And damn me for agreeing to it! And damn all of us to hell, because that is exactly where we're going!'*

13.

Re: Tracing Rays Through the Cloud

Mar 5, 2012, 18:28

killer_roach

Seems like Intel's trying desperately to get people to buy their chips one way or the other... and it's ironically somewhat their fault. They pushed the mobile trend to gain ground from AMD, only to find people could do small and low power better than them. So now they're trying to position themselves as being glorified remote co-processors for smart phones and tablets. Sad.

12.

Re: Tracing Rays Through the Cloud

Mar 5, 2012, 17:19

HorrorScope

I'm still interested in the ugly wreck I see ahead. One side of the tech sector says "everything online!". The other side that allows you access to it all, the ISP's in America are doing little to enhance your speed and 10x worse they are trying to limit us with caps. I can't be alone... The two don't mesh well.

11.

Re: Tracing Rays Through the Cloud

Mar 5, 2012, 15:14

Dev

Intel: You know there's this little tiny thing called "latency" right? Also, are you going to be paying for all the costs associated with rendering games elsewhere so someone can play on a tablet? Because we have companies that stream games online, and they usually make you pay in some way.

10.

Re: Tracing Rays Through the Cloud

Mar 5, 2012, 10:58

eRe4s3r

You may be right Maybe I am expecting too much too early..

Re: Tracing Rays Through the Cloud

Mar 5, 2012, 10:55

Bhruic

I guess you don't get my point. They work on it from the wrong direction. They clone wolfenstein with a raytracer and try to get 60fps I get your point, I just don't understand where your point is coming from. They didn't simply "clone wolfenstein". Each screenshot you see is clearly labeled as to what effect it is demonstrating (full sniper scope reflection in the first, glass refraction in the second, multiple simultaneous surveillance in the third, etc). The rest of the graphics have nothing to do with the ray tracing, they are there to have something there. When they are done here they have wolfenstein running at 60fps - what they won't have, is an engine that can* look like a frostbite 2 image given enough art-assets* Again, that would only matter if they are making an engine. They are making a proof of concept. They are demonstrating that this works. If it didn't work, it would be a waste of time to put all the effort into making an engine that uses it. You are, to use the car analogy, complaining that they don't have the decals, spoiler and wax job done, when they are busy testing the engine to see if it'll turn over.

Re: Tracing Rays Through the Cloud

Mar 5, 2012, 10:55

eRe4s3r

No they are literally talking about onlive and GaiKai in their press-statement, and how this is the same, just for raytraced games (of which there are so many, you can list them all in the space here -> <-- here ^^

Re: Tracing Rays Through the Cloud

Mar 5, 2012, 10:50

Creston

Are they talking about JUST offloading the ray-tracing, or are they basically jizzing over yet another onLive concept? Creston

Re: Tracing Rays Through the Cloud

Mar 5, 2012, 10:43

eRe4s3r

I am 3D-Render artist (among other things ^^), just fyi.. So i know more about raytracing than I want (because I need to know certain things and its limitations, and what costs render-time in what situation, etc) or i couldn't ever finish a scene. I am not a master of graphics in any sense, but i can crank out a scene a dozen times better looking with current technology, it would not be real-time on my 6 core 3.4ghz AMD cpu but it could be if i had 16 more of them... Now that'd probably be at best 5 fps without optimizations, but thats with pixel perfect result, 1920x1200 with full SINC based 1x4 AA (is very sharp, optimal for LCD screens) I guess you don't get my point. They work on it from the wrong direction. They clone wolfenstein with a raytracer and try to get 60fps.. instead of adding all the features they NEED to match a modern non-rt raytracer engine and then see how they can get it to work in real-time. When they are done here they have wolfenstein running at 60fps - what they won't have, is an engine that can look like a frostbite 2 image given enough art-assets. I mean, they are still missing area shadows and AO .... And these are not "easy" features... which is why we aren't seeing them in their proof of concept. This comment was edited on Mar 5, 2012, 10:53.

Re: Tracing Rays Through the Cloud

Mar 5, 2012, 10:34

Bhruic

All Intel is doing here is trying to create a market that nobody really needs. Where they sell "their" rendering cards, which is really just cards with intel CPU's.. Well, they aren't trying to sell cards, they are trying to sell cloud services. And really, who are you to say that no one needs it? It's probably before its time, but 5-10 years from now, assuming they have it working as well as they claim, it would definitely blow away traditional polygon graphics. Would they show a proof of concept that could best even my lame ass attempts at rendering images i would say, OK i give it a chance. But what they show here is not convincing, not even remotely. It should be quite obvious that the proof of concept is aimed at developers of games, not consumers. As a consumer, your opinion of this isn't really relevant.

Re: Tracing Rays Through the Cloud

Mar 5, 2012, 10:27

eRe4s3r

Ok, but Intel is 20 years too late, nobody needs another rendering approach thats inferior and requires hardware nobody has, and only 1 vendor develops for. (actually an old approach, whose strengths lie in it NOT being real-time, good GI needs a pre-pass and filter optimizations, and we are only talking about -1- bounce, good GI needs 2 bounces or even 3 or 4, something BF3 for example bakes into maps, which is why they are so huge (in file size) All Intel is doing here is trying to create a market that nobody really needs. Where they sell "their" rendering cards, which is really just cards with intel CPU's.. Would they show a proof of concept that could best even my lame ass attempts at rendering images i would say, OK i give it a chance. But what they show here is not convincing, not even remotely.

Re: Tracing Rays Through the Cloud

Mar 5, 2012, 10:16

Bhruic

Proof of concept is just that. What people do with it, once it's been proven to work (assuming it is) is where the "magic" happens.

Re: Tracing Rays Through the Cloud

Mar 5, 2012, 10:05

eRe4s3r

LMAO For the EXOPC Slate (and its native resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels), two Knights Ferry cards were needed. fellow Intel research scientist Ingo Wald are developing a more effective, less compute-intensive method of performing anti-aliasing, one that is applied after the image has been rendered. Fire these people, this instant. They want to clone BLUR AA (MLAA/FXAA) the lame ecuse of AA we get nowadays. MSAA is still dozen times better. And as for the scene they test their renderer in.. i am beyond words. That does not just look ugly but isn't even a proper test-bed for raytracing. Where are soft body clothes, particles of all kinds and area shadows? Where is AO, Where is dynamic SKY, where is sub surface scattering? Why are they testing scaling with an result THAT ugly, when what they really want to reach is still 60 times ABOVE their current attempt. Also why aren't they using normal mapping or displacement (or both)? They don't honestly believe that macro detail (what textures usually have) is actually gonna be ever modeled out for an raytracer, right? And why aren't they cranking up the textures? So they can BARELY run a raytracer engine on wolfenstein base.. how about trying to match BF3 or even Skyrim? Its like they shoot at the lowest hanging fruit, that when they hit it, will make them instantly redundant (can you even imagine how insane BF3 could look with another 500% more GPU power available?) Lod'ing could be ramped up, shadows cast everywhere, dynamic day/light, dynamic rain and snow layers...... all this can be actually done already in a raster engine. The only thing holding us back are the GPU's. This is a huge trolling right? Intel is not really calling this the future of anything? This comment was edited on Mar 5, 2012, 10:21. Ps.: I know the comparison is unfair, frostbite 2 is the most advanced raster engine there is right now, and if you have BF3, you know that its a huge performance hog already with the detail we have (I would even say 128 players is currently impossible at this graphic level). The problem i see here is that Intel is doing something that will lead to a split in engines, and that is a TERRIBLE thing. Also does anyone at Intel actually check how high their power usage and heat generation is just for rendering that scene?

Re: Tracing Rays Through the Cloud

Mar 5, 2012, 09:49

InBlack

Oh the cloud thing....whatever happened to those cloud gaming terminals that were all the rage about a year ago? Did any of that take off anywhere?




I have a nifty blue line!

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