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More Ray Tracing GPU news from MWC 2016

Some of the top Engines have been doing Ray-Tracing on mainstream GPU's to one degree or another for a while now.

Granted mainstream GPU's don't have dedicated Tracing engines but i'm not sure they need it, todays CPU's are more than powerful enough to crunch the numbers without a noticeable latency.

Of course its different from mobile platforms which don't have that muscle.
 
Pottsey said:
Not sure I understand what you mean and I think you might have missed the point of those demos.
Click to expand...

I think most will Pottsey. - And not a fault of thier own.

The problem with most of the videos Imagination post is that whilst they may represent a impressive technical achievement. The way they are presented isn't the greatest imo.
We are somewhat spoilt with the presentations and demo's done with raster engines wizardry and workarounds that have been done to hide the shortcomings over the years. They are very mature and incredibly clever.

Maybe Imagination demo's are not yet aimed at the end user.
Maybe a small development team producing such presentations.
Maybe the lack of maturity in the tech allowing leveraging of nifty psycho-visual enhancements.
Maybe the lack of a creative well thought out demo, maybe it's technicians not artistes creating them.
Maybe a combination of the above.

I hope when the time is right and they feel they are ready, the effort will be made to put a demo up to really show how good ray-tracing can be. Not just from a technical standpoint, but from a pleasing visual one.
 
Blackbadger said:
I think most will Pottsey. - And not a fault of thier own.

The problem with most of the videos Imagination post is that whilst they may represent a impressive technical achievement. The way they are presented isn't the greatest imo.
We are somewhat spoilt with the presentations and demo's done with raster engines wizardry and workarounds that have been done to hide the shortcomings over the years. They are very mature and incredibly clever.

Maybe Imagination demo's are not yet aimed at the end user.
Maybe a small development team producing such presentations.
Maybe the lack of maturity in the tech allowing leveraging of nifty psycho-visual enhancements.
Maybe the lack of a creative well thought out demo, maybe it's technicians not artistes creating them.
Maybe a combination of the above.

I hope when the time is right and they feel they are ready, the effort will be made to put a demo up to really show how good ray-tracing can be. Not just from a technical standpoint, but from a pleasing visual one.
Click to expand...

Perhaps more shader based Tracing?

The thing is people have been using Texture based reflections for years, reflecting solid objects on surfaces isn't anything new, you can fake that sort of tracing with Environment Probes.
What you can't trace without true Ray Tracing is Shader based Lighting and Shading, because there is no Texture.

So having an environment reflect off car paint is nothing new, which also begs the question: just how much Ray Tracing is demonstrated here?

Its very difficult to show someone reflections in action, pepole will say "well i have seen that in _____ and _____ and......" then you have to tell them: no... actually because and we are not using Probe Texture overlays....
 
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humbug said:
“So having an environment reflect off car paint is nothing new, which also begs the question: just how much Ray Tracing is demonstrated here?”
Click to expand...
All the reflections, lights and shadows are ray traced. No special assets or programming was done for the shadows and reflections which was the point of the demo. I agree the none ray traced parts of the demo are not that great but the demo was to show how ray tracing can simplify content creation for developers while saving memory bandwidth, memory & giving a speed increase all for better quality lights and shadows.
 
Pottsey said:
All the reflections, lights and shadows are ray traced. No special assets or programming was done for the shadows and reflections which was the point of the demo. I agree the none ray traced parts of the demo are not that great but the demo was to show how ray tracing can simplify content creation for developers while saving memory bandwidth, memory & giving a speed increase all for better quality lights and shadows.
Click to expand...

Yeah i get that :)

I was just emphasizing Blackbadge's point.
 
humbug said:
Its very difficult to show someone reflections in action, pepole will say "well i have seen that in _____ and _____ and......" then you have to tell them: no... actually because and we are not using Probe Texture overlays....
Click to expand...

What benefit does probe texture overlays have for gamers over the current way?
 
sanaxe1 said:
What benefit does probe texture overlays have for gamers over the current way?
Click to expand...
There are a number of benefits depending on how it’s used. At the moment the most common benefit is for developers to use it to simplify content creation. This means the developers can spend a lot less time on getting the shadows, lights, refractions how they want and spend more time on other parts of the game. Or parts of the game they just wouldn’t have had time or money to do good shadows, lights, refractions can now have that applied for very little work. In short a developer no longer needs to spend anywhere near as much time or money on a team artists doing lots of lights and reflections all over the map. Ray Tracing does all that automatically for you.

The other benefit is if you have Ray Tracing hardware in your device and the game supports it you get a performance boost with better quality lights, shadows, refractions and better power usage. Ray Tracing is far better suited to do certain effects and you an do those effects in Ray Tracing for far less compute power then the more common ways of running games.
 
I would prefer people to start adding 3D environment based sound with first order reflections and diffractions before ray tracing light sources. The sound in games is so bland and unrealistic now days.

Sound plays just as big if not a bigger part of the immersion compared to graphics.
 
Mauller said:
I would prefer people to start adding 3D environment based sound with first order reflections and diffractions before ray tracing light sources. The sound in games is so bland and unrealistic now days.

Sound plays just as big if not a bigger part of the immersion compared to graphics.
Click to expand...

That I fully agree with sound has taken a giant step backwards in the past years.
 
What Pottsey said

Voxel Global Illumination, its achieved by global Ray Tracing, tho there is a performance hit if used globally, about 10ms render time on a GTX 980 or overclocked GTX 970, that equates to about 10FPS in 70, so 70 FPS is reduced to 60. it also depends at what level and distance rendering the developer chose to set it at.

A couple of examples.

These two images demonstrate the lighting and reflections, in the first image VXGI is active, Ray Tracing is bouncing the light around the environment, the result is where in real life you would have light reflecting off objects to illuminate a shaded area, often with the colour of the object:
You can see the shaded wall is illuminated and the red from the paving is also reflected off the wall.

In the second image the wall is dark in the shadow and the light that should be reflected off surrounding objects is not there.

VXGI on


VXGI off



More examples, see the stone on the right, first image the dark side is illuminated from the ground, it has a slight green tint to it.

Second image its plain dark.

VXGI on


VXGI off


A couple more.... see the difference between the first and second images. the lighting quality.

VXGI on



VXGI off




Using Probe Overlay textures, first part of this video i used a texture from a local Environment Probe to overlay on the water, to give it a reflection effect.
this works but its very static and very inaccurate.

In the second part i used Ray Traced reflection, that is accurate and real time.

The third part is a crude pool that i knocked up to show the live streamed reflections on the water, the moving balls are reflected in real time, you may recognise this sort of thing from the OP videos.

 
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humbug said:
For you Pottsey.

Some Real Time Ray Tracing on my GTX 970.

Click to expand...
Thank you. It’s a fun little hybrid ray tracing demo that show the possible potential of Ray tracing but it has its flaws. I could never get anything but a tiny amount of the screen in focus. Everything outside the tiny section is blurred. Someone please correct me if there is a way around the blur but as far as I can see they only ray tracing a tiny part of the screen then blur everything else out. It’s a nice trick but not that practical. EDIT: Looks like the blur can be removed with the insert key. Nice will have to have a better look tomorrow.

Still it shows the benefits of hybrid ray tracing which I believe is the way forward over full ray tracing.

Don’t think I posted this one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxE2SYDHFtQ my complaint about this one is the lack of motion. All the light sources and objects are too static. Very nice background lighting but can it hold up with motion?
 
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Pottsey said:
Thank you. It’s a fun little hybrid ray tracing demo that show the possible potential of Ray tracing but it has its flaws. I could never get anything but a tiny amount of the screen in focus. Everything outside the tiny section is blurred. Someone please correct me if there is a way around the blur but as far as I can see they only ray tracing a tiny part of the screen then blur everything else out. It’s a nice trick but not that practical. EDIT: Looks like the blur can be removed with the insert key. Nice will have to have a better look tomorrow.

Still it shows the benefits of hybrid ray tracing which I believe is the way forward over full ray tracing.

Don’t think I posted this one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxE2SYDHFtQ my complaint about this one is the lack of motion. All the light sources and objects are too static. Very nice background lighting but can it hold up with motion?
Click to expand...

One thing most people miss or fail to appreciate with Ray Tracing is the HDR colour range and lighting, illustrated actually very well in both yours and my Youtube links, one may need an IPS screen to fully appreciate it tho, Beautiful, really just stunning. :)

i have to say tho as nice as that kitched demo is its not running more than 15 FPS.

Ok, if you want to see Ray Tracing in a 3D environment why not run my own little Demo https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=29519529&postcount=49
 
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