3 ms·

I would argue that VR is the next step like this. Even taking an "old" title like Skyrim drives home that no matter how nice the renderer makes it look on a scr

by cyxxon 8y ago

I would argue that VR is the next step like this. Even taking an "old" title like Skyrim drives home that no matter how nice the renderer makes it look on a screen, it is still flat. With VR you are in the place. Does the raytracing look really, really nice? Yes, definitely. Is it that much better? I don't think so (personal opinion, of course)...

mattnewport 8y ago
Working in VR, I think ray tracing is really going to come into its own with VR. Some of the effects that are mostly just nice visuals on a monitor actually make VR more usable. Accurate contact shadows for example are super important to our brain when picking up and putting down objects off surfaces to help get an accurate sense of distance and are extremely hard to do well with rasterization based techniques but they "just work" with ray tracing (given enough performance). Other things like more accurate reflections and specular effects add more to VR where subtle head movements that don't produce the correct response our brain expects impact immersion even when we're not able to consciously identify why the rendering is not quite right. The additional performance demands of VR mean it will be a while before we really see these benefits realized but I think when it all comes together it will really improve immersion. There are some other potential benefits to basing VR rendering around ray tracing too that might take even longer to realize. For example you can directly compensate for the optics of the lenses when generating rays and avoid the whole post process warping step and foveated rendering is very easy to incorporate naturally.
- dahart 8y ago
  This is a good point I hadn’t thought of that much. Ray tracing is more easily able to get to ‘stereo correctness’ than all the screen space effects and other great tricks that have worked so well for games.
- frigaardj 8y ago
  Presumably the sampling rate can also be limited in places the user isn't looking (with eyetracking etc)?
  - mattnewport 8y ago
    Yeah, that's what I meant by foveated rendering. You can spend your samples where they are most valuable based on where the user is looking among other factors.

by cyxxon 8y ago

mattnewport 8y ago

Working in VR, I think ray tracing is really going to come into its own with VR. Some of the effects that are mostly just nice visuals on a monitor actually make VR more usable. Accurate contact shadows for example are super important to our brain when picking up and putting down objects off surfaces to help get an accurate sense of distance and are extremely hard to do well with rasterization based techniques but they "just work" with ray tracing (given enough performance). Other things like more accurate reflections and specular effects add more to VR where subtle head movements that don't produce the correct response our brain expects impact immersion even when we're not able to consciously identify why the rendering is not quite right. The additional performance demands of VR mean it will be a while before we really see these benefits realized but I think when it all comes together it will really improve immersion. There are some other potential benefits to basing VR rendering around ray tracing too that might take even longer to realize. For example you can directly compensate for the optics of the lenses when generating rays and avoid the whole post process warping step and foveated rendering is very easy to incorporate naturally.

dahart 8y ago
This is a good point I hadn’t thought of that much. Ray tracing is more easily able to get to ‘stereo correctness’ than all the screen space effects and other great tricks that have worked so well for games.
frigaardj 8y ago
Presumably the sampling rate can also be limited in places the user isn't looking (with eyetracking etc)?
- mattnewport 8y ago
  Yeah, that's what I meant by foveated rendering. You can spend your samples where they are most valuable based on where the user is looking among other factors.