New graphics algorithm by Williams College and NVidia for photorealism

[thilanliyan]

http://graphics.cs.williams.edu/papers/PhotonHPG09/

 

[MarkLuvsCS]

seems pretty cool. I liked the VGA rendering the initial source, then we raytrace on the CPU the bounce. Seems like if they can implement it, it will allow us to use some of our extra cores. Still in it's infancy but the video was pretty cool .

 

[tviceman]

http://graphics.cs.williams.edu/papers/PhotonHPG09/006.jpg

Wow I wonder how far we are from rendering a game with this kind of quality @ 30-60 fps.

 

[soccerballtux]

http://graphics.cs.williams.edu/papers/PhotonHPG09/006.jpg

Wow I wonder how far we are from rendering a game with this kind of quality @ 30-60 fps.

looks pretty crappy to me

 

[MrK6]

looks pretty crappy to me

I was going to say the same. There are already gaming applications that produce shading effects as good if not better than these, nevermind textures, polygon counts, etc.

 

[rodrigu3]

I think the focus is more on the lighting effects they demonstrate in the videos in the link, which does seem pretty cool.

 

[Acanthus]

The lighting technology is pretty cool. But the scenes and demos they used did not display the effects very well.

The low geometry counts and simple textures are likely because performance would be too low to demonstrate at all on current hardware.

 

[MJinZ]

http://graphics.cs.williams.edu/papers/PhotonHPG09/006.jpg

Wow I wonder how far we are from rendering a game with this kind of quality @ 30-60 fps.

How is that even slightly impressive?

 

[gorobei]

this one is probably more representative of what is more important about this process. typically full raytracing for both reflection, refraction, caustics and ambient occlusion is very expensive render-wise. the soft shading on the dark side of the cow is typically harder to do with just shadowmaps or environment maps. in 3d you have to throw in 3 or 4 fake lights for every motivated light source to fake out radiosity. the bloom on the green wall is a little oddly shaped, but if it is done in realtime then it is impressive.

 

[EnzoLT]

sometimes, it doesnt have to look "good" for it to be impressive. in this case, it was more of an optimization and implementation that is the impressive part.

maybe take a few computer science classes at a university first before judging something you dont know how to judge.

 

[gorobei]

006.jpg is a poor choice and not really that impressive. the point is to highlight the lighting and the shading, you should normally do that without textures on the model if you want avoid distracting the viewer.

 

[EarthwormJim]

How is that even slightly impressive?

The lighting is impressive. This isn't a game engine demonstration, it's simply a demonstration of their nice lighting algorithm.

So don't look at the low texture detail, or low polygon count, look at the highlights and self cast shadows.

 

[rodrigu3]

I especially like the way the light changes color as it reflects off of different objects of different colors - very neat

 

[bobsmith1492]

Interesting, the creature in the foreground looks terrific while the light in the background looks like it's out of Commander Keen:

 

[tviceman]

How is that even slightly impressive?

Looking at the picture again, I was referring specifically to the creature and what is seemingly it's high polygon count. The background does look washed out and very easily to reproduce within today's games.