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Cornell McRay T'Racing

github.com

11–20 of 46 posts

Re: Cornell McRay T'Racing

#11
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

Re: Cornell McRay T'Racing

#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

Re: Cornell McRay T'Racing

#13
The real time ray tracing is a massive achievement. Tbf I never thought it would be possible to do in my lifetime (and it really isn’t, it’s a lot of impressive smoke and mirrors like reservoir sampling!) but this is really close to a path traced look considering how few samples it really is per pixel.

All that aside, what really stands out with this demo is how nice the dev experience is. Lots of bits and pieces that didn’t exist 10 or 20 years ago. It’s git clone and cargo run. The threshold for tinkering with a repo like this compared to an old C++ equivalent is extremely low. I had to try making the day/night sky dynamic and it was literally a two minute job even though I’m a rust newbie.

Re: Cornell McRay T'Racing

#15
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)

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

Re: Cornell McRay T'Racing

#16

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

Raytracing is emulating photons and thus not only showing reflections, but all visible pixels on the screen. Shadows, light, dark reflections, glow, transparency, glossy, shinny ..everything.

Re: Cornell McRay T'Racing

#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. And there are a few promising signs that it's coming within reach. ML trained on video, applied to gamedev, seems like a matter of time. You could do it right now.

Since the talking point of "We don't want real-looking outputs!" always comes up, I suggest ignoring that detail. It's worth doing, even if nobody wanted it, just to show biology who's boss. And incidentally, you'll want to become familiar with how to run blinded experiments, since you'll realize that your own judgement isn't any good when deciding how "real" something looks. The sole test is whether human observers can distinguish your outputs from real outputs no better than random chance.

Re: Cornell McRay T'Racing

#18

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...

Re: Cornell McRay T'Racing

#19

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 of, IMO. Even CP77, which was supposed to push modern systems to their limit, feels like its ray tracing and GI stuff is janky and tacked-on.

Re: Cornell McRay T'Racing

#20
post #18

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...

The "photorealism" of that ML demo was vastly overstated. A lot of post processing effects in games are there to (somewhat ironically) emulate defects of cameras: vignetting, chromatic aberration, bloom, flares etc.

I think this ML demo got there by effectively emulating a low-res, poorly white balanced, low framerate dash cam. I think those "defects" make people see the image looking more like the output of a real (albeit shitty) camera system.

It would be more interesting to see what kind of output we could get at 4K 60fps and properly white balanced.

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