Correct me if I am wrong, but PowerVR GPUs seem like a strange place to insert real time ray tracing. I'd imagine they don't span enough of the rendering market to make such a presumably expensive shift in development efforts make sense. Maybe ImgTec was valuing it more as an IP project, either licensing it out or to make their company more valuable in a buyout.
Real time ray tracing is not largely intended for the "rendering market" (it wouldn't hurt them, but I strongly doubt real time tracing can reach their standards of quality anytime soon - on the other hand, however, hardware ray tracing blocks in *professional* GPUs would shave a lot of their rendering hours, which is the bread and butter of VFX studios) but for the gaming market.
Not for the few pre-rendered cinematics but for gameplay - with slightly lower quality than the cinematics (since it couldn't be fully ray/path traced), of course, but still quite better than fully rasterized gameplay. ImgTec did not develop the IP for that ray tracing block themselves but rather got it when they bought the company Caustic Professional that developed it. The hardware block's forefather is quite more powerful and has the form of a dedicated ray tracing card : https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/161074-the-fut...
Raster graphics are essentially a giant pile of hacks. Raytracing is doing it more realistically (more like light actually behaves) and can only get better as the hardware improves.
I am curious if there any plans to use similar technology in professional 3d graphics like Maya, Lightwave and 3D Max. It could saved time when creating photo-realistic scenes and also when rendering.
I don't think OctaneRender 4 has been released. I can't find such an announcement. That's just an article talking about what is supposed to be in OctaneRender 4. And from what I see the stuff in that article was all previously announced in 2015, 2016, or 2017. OTOY is doing all sorts of things. In 2016 they announced OctaneRender 3.1 would be out in 2016 and 4.0 in 2017. Neither of them are out, yet. 3.1 is supposed to include a cross-compiler that allows CUDA code to run efficiently on non-NVIDIA hardware, presumably without much re-optimization. The Imagination Technoligies raytracing partnership you mentioned is supposed to be part of 4.0. (I dunno much about this industry, but how much real-time rendering is going to take place on PowerVR GPUs?) Then they announced some sort of distributed rendering network based on blockchain.
It all sounds interesting but their hands are in multiple pies and they all seem to be the sky variety.
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Hurr Durr - Monday, March 19, 2018 - link
Remedy. What are they working now, I wonder.jabbadap - Monday, March 19, 2018 - link
https://www.remedygames.com/games/codename-p7/tuxRoller - Monday, March 19, 2018 - link
Another one of these?Whatever happened to imgtec's ray traceing engine (https://www.imgtec.com/legacy-gpu-cores/ray-tracin...
Ryan Smith - Monday, March 19, 2018 - link
Sadly it didn't go anywhere. Wizard didn't get any hardware vendor buy-in.Yojimbo - Monday, March 19, 2018 - link
Correct me if I am wrong, but PowerVR GPUs seem like a strange place to insert real time ray tracing. I'd imagine they don't span enough of the rendering market to make such a presumably expensive shift in development efforts make sense. Maybe ImgTec was valuing it more as an IP project, either licensing it out or to make their company more valuable in a buyout.Santoval - Sunday, April 22, 2018 - link
Real time ray tracing is not largely intended for the "rendering market" (it wouldn't hurt them, but I strongly doubt real time tracing can reach their standards of quality anytime soon - on the other hand, however, hardware ray tracing blocks in *professional* GPUs would shave a lot of their rendering hours, which is the bread and butter of VFX studios) but for the gaming market.Not for the few pre-rendered cinematics but for gameplay - with slightly lower quality than the cinematics (since it couldn't be fully ray/path traced), of course, but still quite better than fully rasterized gameplay. ImgTec did not develop the IP for that ray tracing block themselves but rather got it when they bought the company Caustic Professional that developed it. The hardware block's forefather is quite more powerful and has the form of a dedicated ray tracing card :
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/161074-the-fut...
tuxRoller - Tuesday, March 20, 2018 - link
Certainly explains why it's listed as a discontinued tech.Jon Tseng - Monday, March 19, 2018 - link
But same Q as w Larrabee. Given how good raster graphics are nowadays... WHY???shabby - Monday, March 19, 2018 - link
Introducing Minecraft Ray Tracing Edition, playable only on the Nvidia Geforce RTX 1180...evilspoons - Monday, March 19, 2018 - link
Raster graphics are essentially a giant pile of hacks. Raytracing is doing it more realistically (more like light actually behaves) and can only get better as the hardware improves.Friendly0Fire - Monday, March 19, 2018 - link
Just go read up on the film industry's evolution from REYES to path tracing. The reasoning is identical.mooninite - Monday, March 19, 2018 - link
Why is this getting front-page news? Vulkan + raytracing has been a "thing" since 2016. This and the DirectX article smell like ads.nevcairiel - Monday, March 19, 2018 - link
Its a pipeline story, not "front page news", which covers all sorts of press release announcements.HStewart - Monday, March 19, 2018 - link
I am curious if there any plans to use similar technology in professional 3d graphics like Maya, Lightwave and 3D Max. It could saved time when creating photo-realistic scenes and also when rendering.Native7i - Monday, March 19, 2018 - link
So the new gen cards are on the edge??Yojimbo - Monday, March 19, 2018 - link
Who knows... You'd think so, but I can definitely see them allowing that Volta placeholder to remain in place for months.Daffy_ch - Monday, March 19, 2018 - link
There was a second real-time ray tracing engine released today as well: https://venturebeat.com/2018/03/19/otoys-octane-4-...OTOY also collaborated with ImgTec just before Apple dropped them.
Yojimbo - Monday, March 19, 2018 - link
I don't think OctaneRender 4 has been released. I can't find such an announcement. That's just an article talking about what is supposed to be in OctaneRender 4. And from what I see the stuff in that article was all previously announced in 2015, 2016, or 2017. OTOY is doing all sorts of things. In 2016 they announced OctaneRender 3.1 would be out in 2016 and 4.0 in 2017. Neither of them are out, yet. 3.1 is supposed to include a cross-compiler that allows CUDA code to run efficiently on non-NVIDIA hardware, presumably without much re-optimization. The Imagination Technoligies raytracing partnership you mentioned is supposed to be part of 4.0. (I dunno much about this industry, but how much real-time rendering is going to take place on PowerVR GPUs?) Then they announced some sort of distributed rendering network based on blockchain.It all sounds interesting but their hands are in multiple pies and they all seem to be the sky variety.