Interesting. I have 64GB of RAM and yet this page managed to kill the tab entirely.
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Simulating fluids, fire, and smoke in real-time
81–90 of 174 posts
Re: Simulating fluids, fire, and smoke in real-time
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Guess the requirements in computer graphics are more inclined towards making something that looks right instead of getting the physics right. The first rule of real-time computer graphics has essentially always been "Cheat as much as you can get away with (and usually, even if you can't)." Also, it doesn't even have to look right , it just has to look cool! =)
“Everything is smoke and mirrors in computer graphics - especially the smoke and mirrors!”
This was the big realization for me when I got into graphics - everything on the screen is a lie, and the gestalt is an even bigger lie. It feels similar to how I would imagine it feels to be a well-informed illusionist - the fun isn’t spoiled for me when seeing how the sausage is made - I just appreciate it on more levels.
Re: Simulating fluids, fire, and smoke in real-time
#83If you need a refresher on diff eq... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly4S0oi3Yz8
Re: Simulating fluids, fire, and smoke in real-time
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m pretty sure CPUs destroy GPUs at sequential programming and most programs are written in a sequential style. Not sure where the 90/10 claim comes from but there’s plenty of cloud servers with no GPU installed whatsoever and 0 servers without a CPU.
Yup, and until we get a truly general purpose compute GPU that can handle both styles of instruction with automated multi-threading and state management, this will continue. What I've seen shows me that nVidia is working very hard to eliminate this gap though. General purpose computing on the GPU has never been easier, and it gets better every year. In my opinion, it's only a matter of time before we can run anything…
AI is different. Those servers are set up to run AI jobs & nothing else. That’s still a small fraction of overall cloud machines at the moment. Even if in volume they overtake, that’s just because of the huge surge in demand for AI * the compute requirements associated with it eclipsing the compute requirements for “traditional” cloud compute that is used to keep businesses running. I don’t think you’ll see GPUs running things like databases or the Linux kernel. GPUs may even come with embedded ARM CPUs to run the kernel & only run AI tasks as part of the package as a cost reduction, but I think that’ll take a very long time because you have to figure out how to do cotenancy. It’ll depend on if the CPU remains a huge unnecessary cost for AI servers. I doubt that GPUs will get much better at sequential tasks because it’s an essential programming tradeoff (e.g. it’s the same reason you don’t see everything written in SIMD as SIMD is much closer to GPU-style programming than the more general sequential style)
Re: Simulating fluids, fire, and smoke in real-time
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
“Everything is smoke and mirrors in computer graphics - especially the smoke and mirrors!”
This was the big realization for me when I got into graphics - everything on the screen is a lie, and the gestalt is an even bigger lie. It feels similar to how I would imagine it feels to be a well-informed illusionist - the fun isn’t spoiled for me when seeing how the sausage is made - I just appreciate it on more levels.
At some point every render-engine builder goes through the exercise of imagining purely physically-modeled photonic simulation. How soon one gives up on this computationally intractable task with limited marginal return on investment is a signifier of wisdom/exhaustion.
And, yes, I've gone way too far down this road in the past.
Re: Simulating fluids, fire, and smoke in real-time
#86it blows my mind that cfd is a thing we can do in real time on a pc
I remember reading about finite element tire models and how complicated they were, they can now run in real time give or take a bit.
Re: Simulating fluids, fire, and smoke in real-time
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
This was the big realization for me when I got into graphics - everything on the screen is a lie, and the gestalt is an even bigger lie. It feels similar to how I would imagine it feels to be a well-informed illusionist - the fun isn’t spoiled for me when seeing how the sausage is made - I just appreciate it on more levels.
At some point every render-engine builder goes through the exercise of imagining purely physically-modeled photonic simulation. How soon one gives up on this computationally intractable task with limited marginal return on investment is a signifier of wisdom/exhaustion. And, yes, I've gone way too far down this road in the past.
Not being a graphics person, is this what hardware ray tracing is, or is that something different?
Re: Simulating fluids, fire, and smoke in real-time
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Guess the requirements in computer graphics are more inclined towards making something that looks right instead of getting the physics right. The first rule of real-time computer graphics has essentially always been "Cheat as much as you can get away with (and usually, even if you can't)." Also, it doesn't even have to look right , it just has to look cool! =)
Why not cheat? I'm not looking for realism in games, I'm looking for escapism and to have fun.
It's kinda cool when it feels real enough to be used a gameplay mechanism, such as diverting rivers and building hydroelectric dams in the beaver engineering simulator Timberborn: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/deep-dive-timberborn-s-...
Re: Simulating fluids, fire, and smoke in real-time
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Something I’ve never understood, if these effects are to run in a game, isn’t the GPU already busy? Short answer: No, it's not "already busy". GPU's are so powerful now that you can do physics, fancy render passes, fluid sims, "Game AI" unit pathing, and more, at 100+ FPS. Long answer: You have a "frame budget" which is the amount of time between rendering the super fast "slide show" of frames at 60+ FPS. This give…
In theory it's perfectly possible to do all you describe in 8ms (i.e. VR render times). In reality we're 1. still far from properly utilizing modern graphics APIs as is. Some of the largest studios are close but knowledge is tight lipped in the industry. 2. even when those top studios can/do, they choose to focus more of the budget on higher render resolution over adding more logic or simulation. Makes for superficia…
Simulation is often already done. Except it’s done offline and then replayed in the game over and over.
Re: Simulating fluids, fire, and smoke in real-time
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
At some point every render-engine builder goes through the exercise of imagining purely physically-modeled photonic simulation. How soon one gives up on this computationally intractable task with limited marginal return on investment is a signifier of wisdom/exhaustion. And, yes, I've gone way too far down this road in the past.
Not being a graphics person, is this what hardware ray tracing is, or is that something different?
Even the ray tracing / path tracing is half-fake these days cause it's faster to upscale and interpolate frames with neural nets. But yeah in theory you can simulate light realistically