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Question: If even most PC gamers are pretty take it or leave it, on the whole real time raytracing thing in AAA PC games, it being more of a flex rather than a

Question: If even most PC gamers are pretty take it or leave it, on the whole real time raytracing thing in AAA PC games, it being more of a flex rather than a must have, then what's the point of having this tech on a phone for iOS games? I don't game on my phone, so am I missing something wild here where seeing raytraced reflections on a six inch screen would be the ultimate game changer and have everyone rush out to upgrade their phones?

Larrikin 4y ago
Machine learning and AR are far more interesting applications of the GPU than high resolution traditional games on a tiny cell phone screen.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  What does this have to do with raytracing or lack thereof on a iphone GPU?
Pulcinella 4y ago
In my mind it would basically be UI skeuomorphism 2.0, this time with photo-realistically rendered materials, lighting, and shadows.
bpye 4y ago
I wonder if they might be applications for accelerated raytracing in augmented reality applications? There have been a handful of publications suggesting it for a while, such as https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6297569 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6297569 . This demo video is pretty convincing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2MEwVZzDaA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2MEwVZzDaA - looks like it was part of a PhD thesis https://www.peterkan.com/download/kan_phd_thesis.pdf https://www.peterkan.com/download/kan_phd_thesis.pdf
klausa 4y ago
You're missing the fact that Apple uses the same building blocks for their chips across all of their devices. The M1/M2 are "just" a bunch of the same CPU cores found in A14 and A15. They do the same with the GPU blocks — the GPUs in M1/M1 Pro/M1 Max/M1 Ultra (and presumably M2/3/4 etc. iterations of those chips) also have the same GPU cores, "just" more of them (and probably clocked differently, not sure on that). So missing the RT hardware for iPhone 14 Pro is probably not a huge deal. Missing it for A16 tape-out, which if the pattern holds, means it'll also be missing in M3-generation of chips, is a much bigger one.
1123581321 4y ago
I don't think your premise is true. PC games look great on RTX cards. People like it; they just have trouble affording cards that support it. So there is limited appetite for developers to support ray tracing below AAA. Getting the tech on iPhones would change that.
- gmueckl 4y ago
  It's a bit more complex than that. Hardware raytracing is still so slow that it requires sophisticated ray allocation and denoising schemes to look good. These are where the real implementation effort goes in all contemporary hardware accelerated raytracing implementations. Nvidia has DLSS as a very good and rather versatile denoiser, but it's not generally available. You need to go through an application process and considered worthy (by whatever criteria they have). So the bottom line is that not a lot of developers can afford to tackle hardware raytracing as a feature at that point. It's too expensive to get right for them.
  - 1123581321 4y ago
    I agree. Metal's new upscaling is Apple's answer to DLSS, but of course a) it's only just arriving now, b) Apple will never offer optimizations customized to individual games the way Nvidia works with developers. So, we should expect no application process as they keep rolling out better hardware and software, but less drastic results in exchange for that. And the same story will be with improved ray tracing capabilities, except in that case I'm more confident that Apple will release a GPU that can do a certain amount of it usefully for the usual reasons (known hardware to support, lower resolutions.) Nvidia should also be doing that right now, but they've chosen quite a different pricing/availability strategy than Apple has in the last few years of GPU development.
    - dwaite 4y ago
      > Apple will never offer optimizations customized to individual games the way Nvidia works with developers. My understanding is that Metal (and Vulcan) are really meant to be about _not_ doing this, and instead exposing something much closer to the underlying hardware. So it would instead be, Nvidia developer relations working with a game studio to optimize the studio's engine code for Nvidia cards.

Larrikin 4y ago

Machine learning and AR are far more interesting applications of the GPU than high resolution traditional games on a tiny cell phone screen.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
What does this have to do with raytracing or lack thereof on a iphone GPU?

Pulcinella 4y ago

In my mind it would basically be UI skeuomorphism 2.0, this time with photo-realistically rendered materials, lighting, and shadows.

bpye 4y ago

I wonder if they might be applications for accelerated raytracing in augmented reality applications? There have been a handful of publications suggesting it for a while, such as https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6297569 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6297569 . This demo video is pretty convincing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2MEwVZzDaA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2MEwVZzDaA - looks like it was part of a PhD thesis https://www.peterkan.com/download/kan_phd_thesis.pdf https://www.peterkan.com/download/kan_phd_thesis.pdf

klausa 4y ago

You're missing the fact that Apple uses the same building blocks for their chips across all of their devices. The M1/M2 are "just" a bunch of the same CPU cores found in A14 and A15. They do the same with the GPU blocks — the GPUs in M1/M1 Pro/M1 Max/M1 Ultra (and presumably M2/3/4 etc. iterations of those chips) also have the same GPU cores, "just" more of them (and probably clocked differently, not sure on that). So missing the RT hardware for iPhone 14 Pro is probably not a huge deal. Missing it for A16 tape-out, which if the pattern holds, means it'll also be missing in M3-generation of chips, is a much bigger one.

1123581321 4y ago

I don't think your premise is true. PC games look great on RTX cards. People like it; they just have trouble affording cards that support it. So there is limited appetite for developers to support ray tracing below AAA. Getting the tech on iPhones would change that.

gmueckl 4y ago
It's a bit more complex than that. Hardware raytracing is still so slow that it requires sophisticated ray allocation and denoising schemes to look good. These are where the real implementation effort goes in all contemporary hardware accelerated raytracing implementations. Nvidia has DLSS as a very good and rather versatile denoiser, but it's not generally available. You need to go through an application process and considered worthy (by whatever criteria they have). So the bottom line is that not a lot of developers can afford to tackle hardware raytracing as a feature at that point. It's too expensive to get right for them.
- 1123581321 4y ago
  I agree. Metal's new upscaling is Apple's answer to DLSS, but of course a) it's only just arriving now, b) Apple will never offer optimizations customized to individual games the way Nvidia works with developers. So, we should expect no application process as they keep rolling out better hardware and software, but less drastic results in exchange for that. And the same story will be with improved ray tracing capabilities, except in that case I'm more confident that Apple will release a GPU that can do a certain amount of it usefully for the usual reasons (known hardware to support, lower resolutions.) Nvidia should also be doing that right now, but they've chosen quite a different pricing/availability strategy than Apple has in the last few years of GPU development.
  - dwaite 4y ago
    > Apple will never offer optimizations customized to individual games the way Nvidia works with developers. My understanding is that Metal (and Vulcan) are really meant to be about _not_ doing this, and instead exposing something much closer to the underlying hardware. So it would instead be, Nvidia developer relations working with a game studio to optimize the studio's engine code for Nvidia cards.