Nicolas Alvarez <nic### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> E.T. wrote:
> > this guy among his demos, has 3 of them ( 8th, 9th and 10th from the top )
> > which implement real time ray tracing which is done in the GPU with very
> > decent frame rates. The ray tracing algorithm is implemented as a pixel
> > shader program. So maybe it's not a far-fetched dream. On my computer (
> > nvidia 6600 ) i got about 13 FPS with the hardwareraytrace2 demo and about
> > 60 fps with hardwareraytrace. So maybe it's very possible to use the GPU
> > and the power of their pixel shaders in order to make pov-ray faster.
>
> All that proves is that it's possible to write a raytracer (from scratch)
> for a GPU, not that a GPU can be used to make POV-Ray faster. It's a
> completely different task to design a raytracing algorithm to fit in the
> limitations of a pixel shader, than to modify an existing (and quite
> complex!) raytracer to be sped up by a GPU.

yes i understand - and thanks for the reply - but is it not worth the effort ?
the speed-up seems to be huge.

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E.T. wrote:
> Nicolas Alvarez <nic### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>>
>> All that proves is that it's possible to write a raytracer (from scratch)
>> for a GPU, not that a GPU can be used to make POV-Ray faster. It's a
>> completely different task to design a raytracing algorithm to fit in the
>> limitations of a pixel shader, than to modify an existing (and quite
>> complex!) raytracer to be sped up by a GPU.
> 
> yes i understand - and thanks for the reply - but is it not worth the
> effort ? the speed-up seems to be huge.

I think by the time you're done modifying POV-Ray to use GPUs, there will be 
80-core CPUs :)

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Nicolas Alvarez <nic### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> E.T. wrote:

> > yes i understand - and thanks for the reply - but is it not worth the
> > effort ? the speed-up seems to be huge.
>
> I think by the time you're done modifying POV-Ray to use GPUs, there will be
> 80-core CPUs :)

....or we'll all have brain cyber-implants that will take what our eyes see, turn
it into POV-Ray code, and instantly "render" a hyper-realistic version of the
world--because *reality* won't be real-enough for us by then!  heh heh

But seriously:  It has taken *however-many-years* to get POV into its present
(and still imperfect) state; the effort required to make such a change would
probably be better-spent elsewhere.

Ken W.

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