real time rendering 2004-02-02 - By Shawn Bogart
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So, Steve, what you're telling me then is that ATI has hardware available,
that can pull off, refractive glass shading, at what looks like about
800x600 or so, in real time (so at least 30fps), and can render this out
faster than ANY 3D software package available for ANY platform that is
currently available? So what is the sense in investing in render farms,
Lightwave/Softimage/Maya/Max3D for anything other than modeling? I'm not
doubting what the you've been told, I'm doubting what ATI is selling, cause
if this is the case, then going to film resolution (about 2k vs. 800) would
result in about a 6x increase in render time (I've found that render speed
is fairly linear to increase in render area) or about 5 fps. So that would
mean that I should be able to render say, Babylon 5 in 1/5 real time, on a
high end box of course. (Actually, since tv is only 704x480, then it should
actually do this in real time also.)
The bigger question comes down to this then: If, ATI has some how managed to
pull off doing this in real time, with what looks like 2000 poly plus GLASS
spheres, and I'm basing that on the fact that I can't see any evidence at
all of any kind of "low poly edges", and there are 10 of those spheres, the
why the heck am I bothering with trueSpace at all? Or any of us for that
matter? Or Lightwave or Maya or any of the other 3D programs that are out
there? I'm only asking this because trueSpace at that point is really just
wasting my time, because we still can't get a photo-realistic "preview" when
we're modelling. In fact, I'm not aware of any 3D program that can for that
matter. I may very well be mistaken, but I've yet to see any game that had
anything in it that looked this good, so there must be a reason for that.
Maybe I'm missing something here.
Like I said, I don't doubt you so much as what ATI says that they're giving
us. Last I checked, Carmack wasn't talking about photo-realistic anything in
any upcoming game engine, and if anyone was in a place to know, it would be
him. Of course ATI does have a VERY good PR department. And very possibly me
and the rest of the CG industry has just missed this completely.
I'm not wanting to flame you, I'm just really curious as to how ATI has
managed pulling off putting to shame EVERY single rendering engine that is
currently available in a 3D package.
My humble oppologies if you feel at all slighted by this response, as that's
not my intention.
Sincerely, Shawn Bogart
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