[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Ray traced environments

[John Buehler]

Tess Snider writes:

> On 3/19/07, Damion Schubert <dschubert at gmail.com> wrote:

> > The gist was that it is now so easy to do top quality graphics
> with modern
> > GPUs, but it is becoming increasingly harder to replicate what a good
> > GPU & Shader system can do in a package like Maya.
>
> Yeah, I was complaining at work to someone the other day that in their
> effort to remain relevant to both the Hollywood crowd and the game dev
> crowd, the big 3D modeling packages are really starting to fall behind
> our needs.
>
> I'm really with Jeffrey and Mike on the raytracing issue.  I'm not
> sure baseline raytracing is going to get you results that are
> sufficiently better than what we have to even bother.  It is by no
> means a magic bullet.  You don't suddenly get to stop using shaders.
> Even people with vast render farms still have to use "obscure tricks,"
> if you will, because raytracing doesn't get them what they need.
> Raytracing is just another solution to a problem, with some
> advantages, and the disadvantage of being considerably slower.
>
> Look at this scene from Toy Story, using raytracing (and probably some
> material shaders):
> http://media.outnow.ch/Movies/Images/1995/ToyStory/dvd-film.ws/16.jpg
>
> Do we need raytracing to match that scene today?

Clearly not, given that we have 12 years of advances in scanline rendering
to take up the slack.

One thing about raytracing is that it's different from scanline rendering.
It has its own pros and cons.  Today's games are predicated on the strengths
(and weaknesses) of scanline rendering.  If that technique doesn't do
something, you stay away from it.  What would games be like if their
appearance was predicated on the strengths of raytraced rendering?

JB