Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cornell McRay T'Racing

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 46 posts

Re: Cornell McRay T'Racing

#21

Post by ajmurmann »

carl_dr wrote: post #18
sillysaurusx wrote: post #17

The astute among you will notice that the outputs look more or less indistinguishable from modern video games -- which is to say, they don't look real. It's not to downplay the achievement. It's to say that I hope one of you takes up the task of making truly real, indistinguishable-from-TV videos generated in real time. It may seem like an impossible dream. But so was realtime raytracing, at the start of my career. A…

> ML trained on video, applied to gamedev, seems like a matter of time. You could do it right now. Indeed! Photorealistic GTA V using ML : https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2021/5/12/22432945/int...

not to diminish their work, but it just changes the look of the game too much to look more dreary. I have the suspicion that this happened because the training set seems to be based on Northern European cities whereas the game is set in LA. I wish there was a version trained the engine on LA or at least a city more similar in feel. It certainly would make for a more intuitive comparison.

Re: Cornell McRay T'Racing

#22

Post by h3r2tic »

alkonaut wrote: post #11
keyle wrote: post #6

I don't have a RTX serie so... but I notice on the gif, there is a light leak on that white column, both sides of the base, around 80% of the gif? I thought this was ray tracing but I take it it must still takes shortcuts to do this in real time? Is that a draw distance issue or some other approximation, it reminds me of shadow mapping going wrong.

Here is some higher quality material. It could just be that the spinning cubes are throwing some odd shadows. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2KoLm8ajfo8

That highlight in the gif is indeed just some spinning cubes.

Either way, there definitely are some leaks and other artifacts -- many corners need to be cut for this to run in real-time.

Re: Cornell McRay T'Racing

#23

Post by nicoburns »

caconym_ wrote: post #19
unbanned wrote: post #12

Raytracing is clever. Good for realism. But end of the day, these are games, not simulations. Being blinded by reflective materials periodically doesn't sound like my kinda fun

Real-time ray traced reflections are an impressive trick, but real-time global illumination is where this tech shines IMO. This Digital Foundry video ( https://youtu.be/NbpZCSf4_Yk ) is a good overview of why this is such a huge leap forward for developers and players alike. Metro: Exodus EE (the game discussed in the video) is the only game I've played that really shows what 'RTX' and similar GPU hardware is capable…

Damn, that really makes a massive massive difference. Makes me realise that the reason I can’t see anything in dark scenes in video games is technical limitations not artistic effect!

Re: Cornell McRay T'Racing

#24

Post by caconym_ »

nicoburns wrote: post #23
caconym_ wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real-time ray traced reflections are an impressive trick, but real-time global illumination is where this tech shines IMO. This Digital Foundry video ( https://youtu.be/NbpZCSf4_Yk ) is a good overview of why this is such a huge leap forward for developers and players alike. Metro: Exodus EE (the game discussed in the video) is the only game I've played that really shows what 'RTX' and similar GPU hardware is capable…

Damn, that really makes a massive massive difference. Makes me realise that the reason I can’t see anything in dark scenes in video games is technical limitations not artistic effect!

One of the things that hadn't occurred to me before watching this video is how much easier GI can make environment artists' jobs. Rather than "faking it" with a bunch of artificially placed light sources, they can just light the scene naturally and the effect should be as good as or better than the old techniques.

Re: Cornell McRay T'Racing

#25

Post by mhh__ »

ajmurmann wrote: post #21
carl_dr wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ML trained on video, applied to gamedev, seems like a matter of time. You could do it right now. Indeed! Photorealistic GTA V using ML : https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2021/5/12/22432945/int...

not to diminish their work, but it just changes the look of the game too much to look more dreary. I have the suspicion that this happened because the training set seems to be based on Northern European cities whereas the game is set in LA. I wish there was a version trained the engine on LA or at least a city more similar in feel. It certainly would make for a more intuitive comparison.

They basically made it look like GTA 4

Re: Cornell McRay T'Racing

#26

Post by berkut »

keyle wrote: post #6

I don't have a RTX serie so... but I notice on the gif, there is a light leak on that white column, both sides of the base, around 80% of the gif? I thought this was ray tracing but I take it it must still takes shortcuts to do this in real time? Is that a draw distance issue or some other approximation, it reminds me of shadow mapping going wrong.

There's a lack of shadows at the very base of the white columns, which looks very much like the occlusion rays (used when doing NEE to determine whether the surface point is occluded or not for the light being sampled) have too large a ray epsilon or offset being applied...

i.e. the very base of the white columns is pure white, as a disconnect from the rest of the columns.

Re: Cornell McRay T'Racing

#27

Post by publicola1990 »

krisrm wrote: post #5

I'm sincerely hoping that whoever wrote this is a hockey fan. (for those who aren't, Connor McDavid is arguably the best hockey player alive today)

It is probably a play on Collin McRae. But McRae died under tragic circumstances and to me it felt slightly odd to allude to his name in this manner.

Re: Cornell McRay T'Racing

#28

Post by pixelpoet »

alkonaut wrote: post #15
symmetricsaurus wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most probably is rally driver Colin McRae[0], after whom a popular series of rally games are named[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_McRae [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_McRae_Rally_and_Dirt (edit: formatting)

Indeed and the first part is the first scene done in any ray tracer: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell_box

It's by far not the first scene done in any ray tracer, rather an early test scene for radiosity (diffuse-only global illumination, before path tracing was developed).

Re: Cornell McRay T'Racing

#29

Post by nine_k »

adamredwoods wrote: post #2

https://github.com/EmbarkStudios/kajiya kajiya currently works on a limited range of operating systems and hardware. Hardware: Nvidia RTX series Nvidia GTX 1060 and newer (slow: driver-emulated ray-tracing) AMD Radeon RX 6000 series

What other hardware would be capable enough but is not supported?

Re: Cornell McRay T'Racing

#30

Post by daenz »

I'm not sure people appreciate how many hours of "hacks" are going to disappear nearly overnight when real time ray tracing becomes common place. Things as conceptually simple as "soft shadows" have multiple manifestations and implementations, and require dozens of hacks to pull off believably.
Post reply on HN