In article <Xns### [at] 204213191226> , Alessandro 
Falappa <don### [at] nessunoit>  wrote:

>> The main question is this. Is a raytracer simply too complicated to
>> compile/run on a GPU?
>
> No, and in fact it has been already done even if we are currently at a
> research stage with no practical application. In my opinion hardware
> ray-tracing will not overcome standard software ray-tracing, it will
> complement it instead. Anyway see:
> http://graphics.stanford.edu/~tpurcell/
> for current research status.

No, you got fooled by the style the paper is written in.  If you read it
carefully, you will notice they only talk about a simulation.  They have not
actually implemented it, they just wrote a simulator that shows it could be
possible.  All their figures are based on that simulator!

So, in essence they have shown absolutely nothing new.  In theory you can
also implement a word processor this way.  That doesn't imply it would make
sense or work well! ;-)

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

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