I CAN IMAGINE IN A DISTANT FUTURE SOMEWHERE, RAY
TRACING WILL BE THE STANDARD IMAGE GENERATING MODEL
WITH EVEN THE MOST BASIC PORTABLE DEVICES HAVING
ENOUGH COMPUTING POWER TO RENDER LIFE LIKE IMAGERY.
course - to pull off anything close
to RTRT (Real-Time Ray-Tracing).
Finally, after all this time, it really is
possible to do this.
That which propelled or pushed
raster based computer graphics
so far, was the inability to do RTRT,
which necessitated advancement
elsewhere. However, it’s finally
possible and everything learned
while advancing rasterization has
inadvertently contributed and helped
get to this point. Progress here,
pushed computational power to the
extent, where we finally have enough
of it to not only the pose the question
but to answer it with
a resounding yes! One can imagine
in a distant future where ray tracing
will be the standard image
generating model with even portable
devices having enough computing
power to render life like imagery.
That day is inevitable, however it
isn’t now. Right now, we’ve just
begun to ask the questions
pertaining to what can be done with
such hardware capabilities. With the
supporting APIs and software stack.
It’s as if we were back in 1999 at the
advent of the GPU. At the time, I
doubt if anyone was even thinking
that this piece of silicon would
eventually make possible what
seemed ridiculous to even postulate.
Yet here we are at the end of 2018
with a graphics processor that has
this capability. This alone is worth
celebrating and an achievement
which will benefit not only end users,
but the industry as a whole.
In light of all this, it makes little to
no sense to confine these GPUs and
their technological milestone down
to one, two or even three software
titles used to demonstrate the
graphics fidelity which can be
achieved via leveraging the RTRT
capabilities of said GPUs. Essentially
how X, Y or any other title perform
right now or even in the future, is of
little to no relevance in relation to
the importance of these GPUs. At the
very least that is a separate
conversation from the technical
achievement which these processors
represent.
Why this is so I would think obvious
if considers for example, that few
Issue 45| 2018 The OverClocker 17