I just thought of an amazing idea that could revolutionize video game graphics

[SnakeDoctor]

ray tracing engines aren't feasible because at high resolutions they eat too much v ram.

but what if a game engine were to render its environment without shadows or lighting effects at 768 x 1366, and then render a raytraced frame at 360 x 568. then overlay the raytraced frame over the regular with 50% opacity. you would get ray traced reflections shadows and more without half the power.

is this possible?

[darthviper107]

ray tracing isn't an issue due to resolution, it's processing power.

[SnakeDoctor]

the lower the resolution the less power it uses.

[darthviper107]

Yes, but it's not anything to do with video memory, it just has to process less.

Anyway, it wouldn't make it much faster, raytracing is still much more intensive than other methods.

[Solid Snake]

Up sampling a low resolution render would look awful.

[Angel_Mapper]

Just think of it this way. There are thousands of people who come into work every day whose job is to figure out ways to make games look better and run faster. If this idea made sense, ran fast and looked good they'd be doing it right now or already have it planned for future hardware.

[Phopojijo]

Up sampling a low resolution render would look awful.

Doesn't stop console developers, lol.

Yeah -- they're right though -- idea isn't really viable from what I can tell... and I think you meant 1/4 of the performance (half the resolution in each dimension = 1/4 the resolution total)


There is merit to reducing the number of samples depending on where you are -- and that is done semi-frequently (just look at render-to-textures). An overlay is not the right way to do it though.

One of the main problem with raytacing, however, is it is much more difficult to compute with triangles than with Voxels and the like.

... and don't go begging that UDK go and abandon triangular meshes... just no.

[SnakeDoctor]

@angel mapper i disagree, if steve jobs or any number of small time people who made it big had that attitude where would we be? i'm not comparing myself to those people i'm just saying that sometimes the little guy knows best.

[darthviper107]

Steve Jobs was insane

[gaobobuq]

nice idea I will say, but I don't like part of "overlaying of 50%". however, some one could try to achieve this using photoshop, then we can check wat it will look like. e.g.

get a photo at 1024 768
resize it to 512 334 as a new layer above
set transparency to 50%

I get a feeling it won't be very nice.

[WedgeBob]

Keep in mind that I do have the Extended version of PS CS5, so that effect could even be done with a 3D layer, supposedly, and not just a half-size photo with a half-transparency. Let's see how THAT works out in raytracing terms.