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There's nothing about raytracing as a technique that puts a hard ceiling on efficiency/cost reduction. Any new technology is going to be expensive at first, and

by _bxg1 8y ago

There's nothing about raytracing as a technique that puts a hard ceiling on efficiency/cost reduction. Any new technology is going to be expensive at first, and then presuming there's demand, will be made exponentially cheaper. Quake 2 has already been made to ditch rasterization altogether and use only raytracing: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/quake-ii-rtx-ray-tracing-vulkan-vkray-geforce-rtx/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/quake-ii-rtx-ray-t... It was the rasterization state of the art 22 years ago. So I'd say it will take a maximum of another 22 years to render today's AAA geometries in real-time with raytracing. Though given how much more money there is today in the gaming industry, plus the way AI augments that curve, I would take a guess that it'll be closer to 5 years.

Dylan16807 8y ago
On any particular card it's still a tradeoff. If you can bake lighting in to 90% of the scene and get a much more complex visual at the same framerate, you'll do that no matter how fast the card is. (Unless the game is very low-spec or you really can't spare the time.)
- _bxg1 8y ago
  It depends where the development resources are allocated. Game studios have a huge incentive to support the progression of raytracing technology, because achieving today's visuals without it requires an insane rat's nest of hacks and special-case smoke and mirrors. It's hard to overstate how much cheaper AAA games will become to produce when all of that can be circumvented. The fact that games will also look better is just a bonus.
  - Dylan16807 8y ago
    Considering how much time is spent right now adapting broken code to broken drivers, I'm not going to hold my breath about people saving money by avoiding insane rat's nests.
fwip 8y ago
Chips aren't getting better as fast as they were 22 years ago. Raytracing has been "just around the corner" for at least a decade. Remember Quake Wars? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_Wars:_Ray_Traced https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_Wars:_Ray_Traced
- dTal 8y ago
  Eh, so was VR. Sooner or later, "just around the corner" actually arrives. I actually think the speed plateau is going to make life very interesting. If we want to keep seeing improvements, we need to become smarter. It's getting more and more worthwhile making dedicated silicon to accomplish tasks, rather than just waiting a few years. We're probably near the peak of what we can do with traditional graphics - we've used every trick in the book and we're running out of transistors to throw at the problem. We need new approaches.

by _bxg1 8y ago

Dylan16807 8y ago

On any particular card it's still a tradeoff. If you can bake lighting in to 90% of the scene and get a much more complex visual at the same framerate, you'll do that no matter how fast the card is. (Unless the game is very low-spec or you really can't spare the time.)

_bxg1 8y ago
It depends where the development resources are allocated. Game studios have a huge incentive to support the progression of raytracing technology, because achieving today's visuals without it requires an insane rat's nest of hacks and special-case smoke and mirrors. It's hard to overstate how much cheaper AAA games will become to produce when all of that can be circumvented. The fact that games will also look better is just a bonus.
- Dylan16807 8y ago
  Considering how much time is spent right now adapting broken code to broken drivers, I'm not going to hold my breath about people saving money by avoiding insane rat's nests.

fwip 8y ago

Chips aren't getting better as fast as they were 22 years ago. Raytracing has been "just around the corner" for at least a decade. Remember Quake Wars? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_Wars:_Ray_Traced https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_Wars:_Ray_Traced

dTal 8y ago
Eh, so was VR. Sooner or later, "just around the corner" actually arrives. I actually think the speed plateau is going to make life very interesting. If we want to keep seeing improvements, we need to become smarter. It's getting more and more worthwhile making dedicated silicon to accomplish tasks, rather than just waiting a few years. We're probably near the peak of what we can do with traditional graphics - we've used every trick in the book and we're running out of transistors to throw at the problem. We need new approaches.