Watch out, Larrabee: Radeon 4800 supports a 100% ray-traced pipeline using DirectX 9

[Sylvanas]

San Francisco (CA) ? It appears that the buzz about 3D graphics has been focused on a feature that is not even integrate din today?s games ? ray-tracing. Intel is beating the RT drum for its upcoming cGPU, which is still 18 months away. But it appears that Intel may be defeated in its own game, as AMD?s graphics chips are supporting a 100% ray-traced pipeline, TG Daily learned.

During AMD's recent Cinema 2.0 event, we met with representatives of a company that is currently considered to be the "it company" in Hollywood?s special effects (FX) industry. JulesWorld is plugged into the video production process of an unnamed movie studio and adopted components that are standard in the FX industry (AMD Opteron + Nvidia Quadro). Ray-tracing was an early focus of the company and we were told that JulesWorld started experimenting with a 100% ray-traced pipeline on a GPU with the arrival of ATI?s R600 (2900XT) chip. And the results are impressive.

Jules Urbach is the founder and CEO of JulesWorld, a small company that is making huge advancements in the world of movie production, harnessing the horsepower of graphics processors. And it looks like JulesWorld has a promising technology ? a GPU ray-tracer and a wrap-around application for movie production.

JulesWorld will be releasing OTOY and LightScape, two distinctive technologies that could shape the future of movie and games production. The company developed a ray-tracer that uses elements of the DirectX 9 API as well as its own high-level code that uses Tessellation and anti-aliasing algorithms. Urbach told us that ray-tracing in real time became a reality with the Radeon 2900XT ? which was used for a series of trailers for last summer's hit-move Transformers.

Source

I doubt by the time Ray-Tracing becomes a reality we will be using it on the GPU's of today, but it is welcome news that vendors do have the capability for such technology.

 

[chewietobbacca]

It seems like every day some new "feature" of RV770 is unveiled lol. How much more did they hide in that tiny die of theirs we don't know...

 

[Atreus21]

What is ray-tracing?

 

[brandonb]

Originally posted by: Atreus21
What is ray-tracing?

I typed up a paragraph or two but then I found this.

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=334

 

[heyheybooboo]

Originally posted by: Atreus21
What is ray-tracing?

Check out POV-Ray, download the program and build your own

You could see this coming from miles away. Future algorithms will only refine the render, emulate high-quality ray-traced shadows & reflections and improve efficiency and visual quality immensely - without having to throw dozens of cpu cores at it.

It's still a 2-d representation of 3-d reality no matter how you look at it.

 

[Munky]

I was under the impression that Intel was using RT to promote it's cpu's. RT is fine for cinema effects and such, but if Intel wants Larrabee to succeed as a gaming platform, then it better be good at rasterization too, because RT is not replacing rasterization in the gaming industry anytime soon.