6 ms·

HT&L is a great analogy. For those who weren't around during the first wave of hardware 3D acceleration (circa 90s), there was a huge amount of "X brand only a

by ethbro 8y ago

HT&L is a great analogy. For those who weren't around during the first wave of hardware 3D acceleration (circa 90s), there was a huge amount of "X brand only accelerates this and that game." Nowadays, with DirectX and OpenGL (somewhat) winning the API war, a GPU is a GPU for all games. It seems entirely reasonable raytracing hardware and game support follow the same path. Supported in some hardware, supported in some games. If the market likes it, over time we see fewer and fewer games that don't use it. * Caveat: Things are a little different this time since DirectX 12 supports Ray tracing today, as far as I can tell. And Microsoft doesn't really care who wins between Nvida and AMD (aside from keeping suppliers in competitive bidding for XBox GPUs).

Wowfunhappy 8y ago
That caveat makes the entire analogy wholly inapplicable. nVidia is using standard graphics technologies that AMD + Intel will eventually be able to implement in their own hardware, down the road. Games that support raytracing on rtx cards today will also support raytracing on future AMD cards.
- ethbro 8y ago
  Assuming Nvidia didn't lay down a patent minefield behind their implementation.
  - RantyDave 8y ago
    Exactly. The question at this point is: what's their patent situation like? They may be able to stop competitors from implementing the same technologies - which would clearly be a pretty worthwhile thing. I wonder if Intel are about to have deep pockets?
briffle 8y ago
Heck man, in the 90's, the most popular card [0] was a 3d only card. you still needed a regular video card for 2d. And yeah, apps had to be custom written to work with it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3dfx_Interactive#Voodoo2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3dfx_Interactive#Voodoo2
- derefr 8y ago
  It made sense at the time: everyone's computer already came with a 2D card (since integrated video wasn't a thing yet. Everything was cards.) There was no pressing need to replace your 2D card, and in fact you might actively dread it (drivers were finicky back then—replacing your 2D card was signing up for a process not dissimilar to that of building a Hackintosh today.) And computers back then had a lot of room and a lot of spare PCI slots. So why not buy a separate card just for 3D, leaving your existing 2D card intact? Smaller change to worry about.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
    > drivers were finicky back then—replacing your 2D card was signing up for a process not dissimilar to that of building a Hackintosh today. Hmm, certainly in the 80s and maybe very early 90s but by the time Voodoo cards came along things were much better. Still not up to the "plug and play" level of today, however.
derefr 8y ago
> If the market likes it, over time we see fewer and fewer games that don't use it. You can use accelerated lighting even in a 2D game, but I'm unclear on what casual games would be using ray-tracing for. Have a particular vision of the future you'd like to share?
- brandonjm 8y ago
  If you are developing a AAA title with "hyper-realistic graphics" or a more artistic, cinematic game you can use raytracing to achieve effects which are otherwise 'faked', give you unique effects, or just to get more dynamic lights in scenes. Indies and less realistic or more "casual" games may not bother with it, just as many of them don't bother with things like parallax mapping and some don't even bother to use textures at all. The features are there and easy to use but developers opt in and out of the different rendering options based on their artistic styling.

by ethbro 8y ago

Wowfunhappy 8y ago

That caveat makes the entire analogy wholly inapplicable. nVidia is using standard graphics technologies that AMD + Intel will eventually be able to implement in their own hardware, down the road. Games that support raytracing on rtx cards today will also support raytracing on future AMD cards.

ethbro 8y ago
Assuming Nvidia didn't lay down a patent minefield behind their implementation.
- RantyDave 8y ago
  Exactly. The question at this point is: what's their patent situation like? They may be able to stop competitors from implementing the same technologies - which would clearly be a pretty worthwhile thing. I wonder if Intel are about to have deep pockets?

briffle 8y ago

Heck man, in the 90's, the most popular card [0] was a 3d only card. you still needed a regular video card for 2d. And yeah, apps had to be custom written to work with it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3dfx_Interactive#Voodoo2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3dfx_Interactive#Voodoo2

derefr 8y ago
It made sense at the time: everyone's computer already came with a 2D card (since integrated video wasn't a thing yet. Everything was cards.) There was no pressing need to replace your 2D card, and in fact you might actively dread it (drivers were finicky back then—replacing your 2D card was signing up for a process not dissimilar to that of building a Hackintosh today.) And computers back then had a lot of room and a lot of spare PCI slots. So why not buy a separate card just for 3D, leaving your existing 2D card intact? Smaller change to worry about.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  > drivers were finicky back then—replacing your 2D card was signing up for a process not dissimilar to that of building a Hackintosh today. Hmm, certainly in the 80s and maybe very early 90s but by the time Voodoo cards came along things were much better. Still not up to the "plug and play" level of today, however.

derefr 8y ago

> If the market likes it, over time we see fewer and fewer games that don't use it. You can use accelerated lighting even in a 2D game, but I'm unclear on what casual games would be using ray-tracing for. Have a particular vision of the future you'd like to share?

brandonjm 8y ago
If you are developing a AAA title with "hyper-realistic graphics" or a more artistic, cinematic game you can use raytracing to achieve effects which are otherwise 'faked', give you unique effects, or just to get more dynamic lights in scenes. Indies and less realistic or more "casual" games may not bother with it, just as many of them don't bother with things like parallax mapping and some don't even bother to use textures at all. The features are there and easy to use but developers opt in and out of the different rendering options based on their artistic styling.