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I have not... heard that idea before. Instead, I heard "reality is just 100 million polygons per second" (Jim Clark?), implying that if you can do ray tracing

by dekhn 3y ago

I have not... heard that idea before. Instead, I heard "reality is just 100 million polygons per second" (Jim Clark?), implying that if you can do ray tracing at a high resolution and frame rate, you can fool somebody's optical nerves into thinking they are looking at reality (ignoring the difference between pixel screens and the physics of how human vision actually works). Does anybody have a reliable link to the Whitted quote?

dahart 3y ago
My source for the story is indirect, via Steve Parker, who’s worked with Turner. https://www.youtube.com/live/LUFp6sjKbkE?si=8vcxo-Vp8oeRUnob https://www.youtube.com/live/LUFp6sjKbkE?si=8vcxo-Vp8oeRUnob Scrub to 3:52:19 for the Turner Whitted story. BTW, mostly unrelated, but scrub that video to 5:47:10 for an amazing talk by Ivan Sutherland (“father of computer graphics”) that is not about graphics (he politely refuses to talk about graphics anymore :P), but about the active research he’s been doing (at 85 years old) into Single Quantum Flux circuits (an alternative to CMOS). Also- Jim Clark at 4:48:40 Jim’s idea you mention is still correct & compatible with Turner’s idea. Jim’s point is that we only need to render finite pixels. You might need an x-factor more triangles than pixels because of sampling and depth complexity and secondary lighting, so 100M polys is probably in the ball park, as long as we can quickly pick the right 100M polys in real time… In a way, Turner was talking about a lower bound, while Jim is talking about an upper bound, albeit slightly different things but they are similar, both relate to how much compute is needed for real time rendering.
- dekhn 3y ago
  Thanks for the timestamps. Great to see Ivan breaking ground in another area, his contribution to early graphics and interactive computing is still amazing today.
- jazzyjackson 3y ago
  Offtopic but FYI youtube share links now come equipped with a tracking parameter (si=). You can safely leave the querystring behind if you don't want Google to associate your google account with other places you post online.

by dekhn 3y ago

dahart 3y ago

My source for the story is indirect, via Steve Parker, who’s worked with Turner. https://www.youtube.com/live/LUFp6sjKbkE?si=8vcxo-Vp8oeRUnob https://www.youtube.com/live/LUFp6sjKbkE?si=8vcxo-Vp8oeRUnob Scrub to 3:52:19 for the Turner Whitted story. BTW, mostly unrelated, but scrub that video to 5:47:10 for an amazing talk by Ivan Sutherland (“father of computer graphics”) that is not about graphics (he politely refuses to talk about graphics anymore :P), but about the active research he’s been doing (at 85 years old) into Single Quantum Flux circuits (an alternative to CMOS). Also- Jim Clark at 4:48:40 Jim’s idea you mention is still correct & compatible with Turner’s idea. Jim’s point is that we only need to render finite pixels. You might need an x-factor more triangles than pixels because of sampling and depth complexity and secondary lighting, so 100M polys is probably in the ball park, as long as we can quickly pick the right 100M polys in real time… In a way, Turner was talking about a lower bound, while Jim is talking about an upper bound, albeit slightly different things but they are similar, both relate to how much compute is needed for real time rendering.

dekhn 3y ago
Thanks for the timestamps. Great to see Ivan breaking ground in another area, his contribution to early graphics and interactive computing is still amazing today.
jazzyjackson 3y ago
Offtopic but FYI youtube share links now come equipped with a tracking parameter (si=). You can safely leave the querystring behind if you don't want Google to associate your google account with other places you post online.