24 ms·

A Collaborative Browser Based Raytracer

41 points by peterbraden 17y ago

smunro 17y ago
Awesome work!
moonbox 17y ago
Great work. This is definitely an exciting step in a new direction of rendering.
thunk 17y ago
This is going to totally re^H^Hinvent social raytracing.
- profquail 17y ago
  Pixar should team up with Facebook and Myspace to render their next movie!
- ramidarigaz 17y ago
  Just out of curiosity, what does ^H^H mean?
  - pwmanagerdied 17y ago
    From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backspace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backspace: Pressing the backspace key on a computer terminal would generate the ASCII code 08, BS or Backspace, which would delete the preceding character. That control code could also be accessed by pressing Control-H, as H is the eighth letter of the Latin alphabet. Terminals which did not have the backspace code mapped to the function of moving the cursor backwards and deleting the preceding character would display the symbols ^H (caret, H — see Caret notation) when the backspace key was pressed. This sequence is still used humorously for epanorthosis by computer literates, denoting the deletion of a pretended blunder, much like overstriking. Example: My slave-dri^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hboss decided to stall the project.
    - ramidarigaz 17y ago
      Thanks!
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    You're showing your age :) Try ctrl-h on your keyboard.
calcnerd256 17y ago
Does it detect poisoning? If not, only good will prevents somebody from goatse-ing the image.
- mrcharles 17y ago
  I'm not sure that would work -- since each person gets the next line in the batch (seems like anyway), the best you can do is poison a few random lines. making a cohesive image out of that would mean you'd have to poison the source data.
- peterbraden 17y ago
  At the moment no - a trust system is on the wishlist. But as has been mentioned, you'd have to poison every line. But yep, that's a current vulnerability.
jrbedard 17y ago
Very cool! it's like the browser version of Autodesk's Backburner network ;)
wmf 17y ago
This fails for the same reason the JavaScript entries failed to make a dent in the Engine Yard contest: When JavaScript is roughly 1000x slower than GPUs, even borrowing other people's browsers isn't enough to make up the difference. Also, real ray tracing generally involves huge source data that would have to be downloaded to each client.
- anigbrowl 17y ago
  It's only a proof-of-concept. Maybe GPU-based raytracing could be shared, with the browser just working as a sort of task brokerage.
- peterbraden 17y ago
  But that's the whole point. Sure javascript is slooow and with the small number of browsers visiting the demo, this isn't even comparable to the performance of a GPU. It's the potential. You have literally millions of computers on the internet right now, capable of running this code. Also, raytracing is only an example. But what large data set do you need for raytracing? I guess if you had a massive mesh then that might add up/
  - calcnerd256 17y ago
    This seems like the beginning of another argument in favor of an idea I've been kicking around for a little while now: combine http with bittorrent in some seamless fashion to really make more of the web better distributed.
    - kragen 17y ago
      Can you elaborate? I've been thinking about how to do that for a few years.
      - calcnerd256 17y ago
        You've been thinking about it longer and probably more in-depth than I have. There was a project awhile back called localhost that made me think about it. It wasn't as transparent as what I would like to see, though. 4chan also made me think about it. The content there has a very high turnover, and many of the users painstakingly mirror the parts of the site that they care about. It would be nice if they had a tool they could use from their browser to share out their mirrors so that those pages never 404. The next step would be to implement the way localhost intentionally allows poisoning (or as I call it, "controversy") or versioning, and a trust network would round out the implementation to deliver the most-probably-preferred version upon the first visit, with the option to choose. I don't know if this would be a browser extension or a new RFC surrounding HTTP and bittorrent, but it's what I think WebDAV should be.

41 points by peterbraden 17y ago

smunro 17y ago

Awesome work!

moonbox 17y ago

Great work. This is definitely an exciting step in a new direction of rendering.

thunk 17y ago

This is going to totally re^H^Hinvent social raytracing.

profquail 17y ago
Pixar should team up with Facebook and Myspace to render their next movie!
ramidarigaz 17y ago
Just out of curiosity, what does ^H^H mean?
- pwmanagerdied 17y ago
  From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backspace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backspace: Pressing the backspace key on a computer terminal would generate the ASCII code 08, BS or Backspace, which would delete the preceding character. That control code could also be accessed by pressing Control-H, as H is the eighth letter of the Latin alphabet. Terminals which did not have the backspace code mapped to the function of moving the cursor backwards and deleting the preceding character would display the symbols ^H (caret, H — see Caret notation) when the backspace key was pressed. This sequence is still used humorously for epanorthosis by computer literates, denoting the deletion of a pretended blunder, much like overstriking. Example: My slave-dri^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hboss decided to stall the project.
  - ramidarigaz 17y ago
    Thanks!
- jacquesm 17y ago
  You're showing your age :) Try ctrl-h on your keyboard.

calcnerd256 17y ago

Does it detect poisoning? If not, only good will prevents somebody from goatse-ing the image.

mrcharles 17y ago
I'm not sure that would work -- since each person gets the next line in the batch (seems like anyway), the best you can do is poison a few random lines. making a cohesive image out of that would mean you'd have to poison the source data.
peterbraden 17y ago
At the moment no - a trust system is on the wishlist. But as has been mentioned, you'd have to poison every line. But yep, that's a current vulnerability.

jrbedard 17y ago

Very cool! it's like the browser version of Autodesk's Backburner network ;)

wmf 17y ago

This fails for the same reason the JavaScript entries failed to make a dent in the Engine Yard contest: When JavaScript is roughly 1000x slower than GPUs, even borrowing other people's browsers isn't enough to make up the difference. Also, real ray tracing generally involves huge source data that would have to be downloaded to each client.

anigbrowl 17y ago
It's only a proof-of-concept. Maybe GPU-based raytracing could be shared, with the browser just working as a sort of task brokerage.
peterbraden 17y ago
But that's the whole point. Sure javascript is slooow and with the small number of browsers visiting the demo, this isn't even comparable to the performance of a GPU. It's the potential. You have literally millions of computers on the internet right now, capable of running this code. Also, raytracing is only an example. But what large data set do you need for raytracing? I guess if you had a massive mesh then that might add up/
- calcnerd256 17y ago
  This seems like the beginning of another argument in favor of an idea I've been kicking around for a little while now: combine http with bittorrent in some seamless fashion to really make more of the web better distributed.
  - kragen 17y ago
    Can you elaborate? I've been thinking about how to do that for a few years.
    - calcnerd256 17y ago
      You've been thinking about it longer and probably more in-depth than I have. There was a project awhile back called localhost that made me think about it. It wasn't as transparent as what I would like to see, though. 4chan also made me think about it. The content there has a very high turnover, and many of the users painstakingly mirror the parts of the site that they care about. It would be nice if they had a tool they could use from their browser to share out their mirrors so that those pages never 404. The next step would be to implement the way localhost intentionally allows poisoning (or as I call it, "controversy") or versioning, and a trust network would round out the implementation to deliver the most-probably-preferred version upon the first visit, with the option to choose. I don't know if this would be a browser extension or a new RFC surrounding HTTP and bittorrent, but it's what I think WebDAV should be.