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I would like to see somebody take consumer gear and matrix it to the point where it supports real-time fully photorealistic ray-tracing. Yes, it would be crazy

I would like to see somebody take consumer gear and matrix it to the point where it supports real-time fully photorealistic ray-tracing. Yes, it would be crazy expensive. Yes, it would be impractical. But it would show that a) it is possible to create without inventing anything new, and b) it costs $X dollars. Leave Moore to figure out the rest. The industry could use a benchmark to tell us just how far away this is and a model of how to get there without creating a billion-core CPU. Also, it seems like this would be something that would be amenable to a FPGA system. If so, it might be a lot closer than we realize. Don't know.

ChuckMcM 14y ago
Uh, you mean like this ? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blfxI1cVOzU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blfxI1cVOzU Intel was pushing their Larrabee architecture as the answer for a while.
- DanielBMarkham 14y ago
  Actually no. I've looked at a couple of these videos, and all they show is that current technology can be pushed to somewhat approximate realtime ray-tracing. Here's another example of that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbokPe4_-mY&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbokPe4_-mY&feature=relat... So I'll spec it out. HD video, 30fps, editable with in-world physics. Don't see anything off-the-shelf that's close to that today. My question was if it were possible to hack something together. If so, what did the configuration/cost look like. Perhaps the answer right now is "no". That's cool. Just wondering.
  - ChuckMcM 14y ago
    It is certainly possible to hack something together, the national labs have done this for a while using off the shelf parts to create a 'video wall' that allows them to visualize their simulations. Taking the linked example and applying that technique would suggest you could use somewhere between 12 and 16 'copies' of their setup driving each driving a tile of your HD display. 'in world physics' is well managed by things like the PhysX engine that nVidia sells.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

Uh, you mean like this ? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blfxI1cVOzU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blfxI1cVOzU Intel was pushing their Larrabee architecture as the answer for a while.

DanielBMarkham 14y ago
Actually no. I've looked at a couple of these videos, and all they show is that current technology can be pushed to somewhat approximate realtime ray-tracing. Here's another example of that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbokPe4_-mY&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbokPe4_-mY&feature=relat... So I'll spec it out. HD video, 30fps, editable with in-world physics. Don't see anything off-the-shelf that's close to that today. My question was if it were possible to hack something together. If so, what did the configuration/cost look like. Perhaps the answer right now is "no". That's cool. Just wondering.
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  It is certainly possible to hack something together, the national labs have done this for a while using off the shelf parts to create a 'video wall' that allows them to visualize their simulations. Taking the linked example and applying that technique would suggest you could use somewhere between 12 and 16 'copies' of their setup driving each driving a tile of your HD display. 'in world physics' is well managed by things like the PhysX engine that nVidia sells.