Sorry for this resend, but I didn't want it to get hidden under,
"POV-Ray 3.1 to other file format.." thread.

Simon> thanx, but the reason I want to use ray tracing is for the
realisium, if virtual reality mean triing to trick the participant into
believing he is in a different env., then ray tracing just seems
right(since it models light rays and all),  Also I realise that
computers are just not fast enough today, but they will be in the maybe
not so distance future(Intel's P4, to be released this year, will be
1.5GHz+). Plus you can also make dedicated hardware, and software
improvments. But hey, thanx anyways, I will read up more on openGL.


///////////////////////////////////////////

Hey all,

what is up?? My name is Abe Heckenbach, and I am a newbie to these
newsgroups.
I have only recently(past 3 months) gotten into ray tracing, and I think
is is
awesome(Who doesn't??). I am particularly interested in real-time ray
tracing
for the purpose of virtual reality.  Seems impossible... I know, but
maybe its
not, hardware is getting faster every day, and I'm sure there are
software
speed-ups that haven't been figured out yet(in fact I have a few ideas
myself!)

I'm interested in joining the POV-team to discuss ray tracing
techniques, and
help develop povray(I'm kinda new the C programming also, but I catch on
quick,
actually my first C program was a ray tracer to test one of my ideas,
but I
have been programming other languages for years, like java(and before
that
perl,basic,unix shell scripts,ect.))

I would like to start a group, website and corresponding newsgroup, to
discuss
virtual reality, (everything necessary to a finished VRE Setup(hardware
and
software requirements), but completely from a theoretical point of view)
If anyone is willing to host something like that let me know. If anyone
is
interested in any of this let me know, I would like to discuss it with
people).

Later,
    Abe H.
    abe### [at] vrmlk12laus

Post a reply to this message

> Simon> thanx, but the reason I want to use ray tracing is for the
> realisium, if virtual reality mean triing to trick the participant into
> believing he is in a different env., then ray tracing just seems
> right(since it models light rays and all),  Also I realise that
> computers are just not fast enough today, but they will be in the maybe
> not so distance future(Intel's P4, to be released this year, will be
> 1.5GHz+). Plus you can also make dedicated hardware, and software
> improvments. But hey, thanx anyways, I will read up more on openGL.

In a not so <great> distant future??
Look here I got a PII@433Mhz and I get One frame of Povray for a Minimum of "A
few seconds" some time "A few minutes" and rarely but it happens "A few hours or
so..."
The eye perceive about 30 frames per second...  which means you would have to
render every frame in 1/30 seconds...  that is if you divide the speed of my
computer (433) for let say a 1 second render of povray by (1/30) you get the
computer of your dream and it's probably not a Pentium since it should have
12990Mhz!!! (<currentSpee>/(1/<fps>)) = (433/(1/30)) = 12990Mhz!
And a one second render of povray with my 433 isn't worth looking at...  You
need at least a minute to about what you could get with OpenGL...
(<dreamMhz>*<secs> = 12990Mhz * 60 = 779400Mhz....)

This... is... INSANE!
We won't be living in that dream future!

Believe me for your Virtual Reality, OpenGL is the thing...  but I like adding
Povray textures, povray light effects into OpenGL...  yeah, it's a fake, but I
can't even see the difference when it's well programmed!

I hope I didn't scare you tho,
  Keep trying,
	Simon

PS:  Mmmm  779400Mhz  8P~~~~~~

Post a reply to this message

On Sat, 12 Aug 2000 12:16:13 -0700 Abe Heckenbach <abe### [at] vrmlk12laus>
wrote:

>Sorry for this resend, but I didn't want it to get hidden under,
>"POV-Ray 3.1 to other file format.." thread.

  Hi, Abe. Welcome to the POV-Ray news server. This thread, and the
previous one posted by you, belongs in povray.general group, which is
for general discussion.

  We suggest that you read the messages posted in the
povray.announce.frequently-asked-questions group, and specifically the
post entitled, "Welcome To the POV-Ray News Groups".

  Thanks for your participation. Follow-ups to povray.general.

-- 
Alan - ako### [at] povrayorg - a k o n g <at> p o v r a y <dot> o r g
http://www.povray.org - Home of the Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer

Post a reply to this message

Alright, so you have a good point, but I still think it would be a cool
thing to discuss with interested people! And I didn't mean to imply that
it could run a single 1.5Ghz P4(I just said that to show how quickly CPU
power is increasing),
but maybe in say, 5 years(imagine 20 10Ghz P10 processors running on a
linux cluster(200,000Mhz) plus possible software improvements, and/or
specialized hardware(like maybe multiple PCI cards that could act as
addition Floating.point power).

To quote my original message,
"I would like ... to discuss virtual reality, (everything necessary to a
finished VRE Setup(hardware and software requirements), but completely
from a theoretical point of view)"
by this I meant not that a VRE setup would use ray tracing, just that it
would be cool to discuss different issues concerning it.

PS: And I didn't mean to be rude or anything.. sorry if it seemed that
way.

	 Abeh


Simon Lemieux wrote:
> 
> > Simon> thanx, but the reason I want to use ray tracing is for the
> > realisium, if virtual reality mean triing to trick the participant into
> > believing he is in a different env., then ray tracing just seems
> > right(since it models light rays and all),  Also I realise that
> > computers are just not fast enough today, but they will be in the maybe
> > not so distance future(Intel's P4, to be released this year, will be
> > 1.5GHz+). Plus you can also make dedicated hardware, and software
> > improvments. But hey, thanx anyways, I will read up more on openGL.
> 
> In a not so <great> distant future??
> Look here I got a PII@433Mhz and I get One frame of Povray for a Minimum of "A
> few seconds" some time "A few minutes" and rarely but it happens "A few hours or
> so..."
> The eye perceive about 30 frames per second...  which means you would have to
> render every frame in 1/30 seconds...  that is if you divide the speed of my
> computer (433) for let say a 1 second render of povray by (1/30) you get the
> computer of your dream and it's probably not a Pentium since it should have
> 12990Mhz!!! (<currentSpee>/(1/<fps>)) = (433/(1/30)) = 12990Mhz!
> And a one second render of povray with my 433 isn't worth looking at...  You
> need at least a minute to about what you could get with OpenGL...
> (<dreamMhz>*<secs> = 12990Mhz * 60 = 779400Mhz....)
> 
> This... is... INSANE!
> We won't be living in that dream future!
> 
> Believe me for your Virtual Reality, OpenGL is the thing...  but I like adding
> Povray textures, povray light effects into OpenGL...  yeah, it's a fake, but I
> can't even see the difference when it's well programmed!
> 
> I hope I didn't scare you tho,
>   Keep trying,
>         Simon
> 
> PS:  Mmmm  779400Mhz  8P~~~~~~

Post a reply to this message

actually, alternative computers such as quantum computers may achieve
such high speeds in the not-so-distant future once they leave the
academia stage and can be put to real uses.

Abe Heckenbach wrote:
> 
> Alright, so you have a good point, but I still think it would be a cool
> thing to discuss with interested people! And I didn't mean to imply that
> it could run a single 1.5Ghz P4(I just said that to show how quickly CPU
> power is increasing),
> but maybe in say, 5 years(imagine 20 10Ghz P10 processors running on a
> linux cluster(200,000Mhz) plus possible software improvements, and/or
> specialized hardware(like maybe multiple PCI cards that could act as
> addition Floating.point power).
> 
> To quote my original message,
> "I would like ... to discuss virtual reality, (everything necessary to a
> finished VRE Setup(hardware and software requirements), but completely
> from a theoretical point of view)"
> by this I meant not that a VRE setup would use ray tracing, just that it
> would be cool to discuss different issues concerning it.
> 
> PS: And I didn't mean to be rude or anything.. sorry if it seemed that
> way.
> 
>          Abeh
> 
> Simon Lemieux wrote:
> >
> > > Simon> thanx, but the reason I want to use ray tracing is for the
> > > realisium, if virtual reality mean triing to trick the participant into
> > > believing he is in a different env., then ray tracing just seems
> > > right(since it models light rays and all),  Also I realise that
> > > computers are just not fast enough today, but they will be in the maybe
> > > not so distance future(Intel's P4, to be released this year, will be
> > > 1.5GHz+). Plus you can also make dedicated hardware, and software
> > > improvments. But hey, thanx anyways, I will read up more on openGL.
> >
> > In a not so <great> distant future??
> > Look here I got a PII@433Mhz and I get One frame of Povray for a Minimum of "A
> > few seconds" some time "A few minutes" and rarely but it happens "A few hours or
> > so..."
> > The eye perceive about 30 frames per second...  which means you would have to
> > render every frame in 1/30 seconds...  that is if you divide the speed of my
> > computer (433) for let say a 1 second render of povray by (1/30) you get the
> > computer of your dream and it's probably not a Pentium since it should have
> > 12990Mhz!!! (<currentSpee>/(1/<fps>)) = (433/(1/30)) = 12990Mhz!
> > And a one second render of povray with my 433 isn't worth looking at...  You
> > need at least a minute to about what you could get with OpenGL...
> > (<dreamMhz>*<secs> = 12990Mhz * 60 = 779400Mhz....)
> >
> > This... is... INSANE!
> > We won't be living in that dream future!
> >
> > Believe me for your Virtual Reality, OpenGL is the thing...  but I like adding
> > Povray textures, povray light effects into OpenGL...  yeah, it's a fake, but I
> > can't even see the difference when it's well programmed!
> >
> > I hope I didn't scare you tho,
> >   Keep trying,
> >         Simon
> >
> > PS:  Mmmm  779400Mhz  8P~~~~~~

Post a reply to this message

In article <399676FC.344E3B22@yahoo.com>, ryan constantine 
<rco### [at] yahoocom> wrote:

> actually, alternative computers such as quantum computers may achieve
> such high speeds in the not-so-distant future once they leave the
> academia stage and can be put to real uses.

Actually, when quantum computers are seriously working, we are probably 
going to have to find a new way of measuring processing power. They 
probably won't have a MHz rating, though there may be some sort of 
sample rate for transferring data. There will probably be a rating for 
number of simultaneous operations, and minimum operation time.
From what I understand of them, they are just too different to use the 
same units we use today, like MHz or even megaflops(or petaflops, for 
that matter).

-- 
Christopher James Huff - Personal e-mail: chr### [at] maccom
TAG(Technical Assistance Group) e-mail: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
Personal Web page: http://homepage.mac.com/chrishuff/
TAG Web page: http://tag.povray.org/

Post a reply to this message

well duh!  the point is they may be fast enough!

Chris Huff wrote:
> 
> In article <399676FC.344E3B22@yahoo.com>, ryan constantine
> <rco### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> 
> > actually, alternative computers such as quantum computers may achieve
> > such high speeds in the not-so-distant future once they leave the
> > academia stage and can be put to real uses.
> 
> Actually, when quantum computers are seriously working, we are probably
> going to have to find a new way of measuring processing power. They
> probably won't have a MHz rating, though there may be some sort of
> sample rate for transferring data. There will probably be a rating for
> number of simultaneous operations, and minimum operation time.
> From what I understand of them, they are just too different to use the
> same units we use today, like MHz or even megaflops(or petaflops, for
> that matter).
> 
> --
> Christopher James Huff - Personal e-mail: chr### [at] maccom
> TAG(Technical Assistance Group) e-mail: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
> Personal Web page: http://homepage.mac.com/chrishuff/
> TAG Web page: http://tag.povray.org/

Post a reply to this message

Simon Lemieux wrote:

> (<dreamMhz>*<secs> = 12990Mhz * 60 = 779400Mhz....)
>
> This... is... INSANE!
> We won't be living in that dream future!

Moore's Law...
It'll happen.

--
David Fontaine     <dav### [at] faricynet>     ICQ 55354965
Please visit my website: http://www.faricy.net/~davidf/

Post a reply to this message

David Fontaine <dav### [at] faricynet> writes:

> Simon Lemieux wrote:
> 
> > (<dreamMhz>*<secs> = 12990Mhz * 60 = 779400Mhz....)
> >
> > This... is... INSANE!
> > We won't be living in that dream future!
> 
> Moore's Law...
> It'll happen.

Are you sure? The light has a speed of 300.000 km per second. So a signal
with the speed of light travels in one cycle of such a processor
3*10^8 / 7.794*10^11 m which makes approximately 0.38 mm. If you assume
that a signal should be able to traverse a processor in one cycle, the
whole processor must be smaller than 0.38 mm.

On the other hand the manufacturers are already getting quantum effects,
because the conductor paths are so small. Decreasing their size is
limited.

That's why I expect the market share of parallelism to increase.

The first steps in this direction are already done: Current Intel processors
have several FPUs and video and sound cards take over parts of the main
processor duties.

Thomas


-- 
http://www.thomas.willhalm.de/ (includes pgp key)

Post a reply to this message

Wasn't it Simon Lemieux who wrote:

>In a not so <great> distant future??
>Look here I got a PII@433Mhz and I get One frame of Povray for a Minimum of "A
>few seconds" some time "A few minutes" and rarely but it happens "A few hours 
>or
>so..."
>The eye perceive about 30 frames per second...  which means you would have to
>render every frame in 1/30 seconds...  that is if you divide the speed of my
>computer (433) for let say a 1 second render of povray by (1/30) you get the
>computer of your dream and it's probably not a Pentium since it should have
>12990Mhz!!! (<currentSpee>/(1/<fps>)) = (433/(1/30)) = 12990Mhz!
>And a one second render of povray with my 433 isn't worth looking at...  You
>need at least a minute to about what you could get with OpenGL...
>(<dreamMhz>*<secs> = 12990Mhz * 60 = 779400Mhz....)
>
>This... is... INSANE!
>We won't be living in that dream future!

Be aware that the Sony Emotion Engine chip, under Linux, runs the POVRay
benchmark image (skyvase.pov) about 5 times faster than a 933 MHz
Pentium III, so that probably means that it's over 10 times faster than
your 433 MHz PII.

Sony are currently developing a workstation that runs a number (I don't
know how many) of Emotion Engine chips in parallel. Theoretically, such
a machine with 128 such chips would be capable of rendering scenes
nearly as complex as skyvase at 30 fps.

Such a workstation will be quite expensive when it first comes out, but
in a decade or two we'll have home computers that are this fast.

-- 
Mike Williams
Gentleman of Leisure

Post a reply to this message

Thomas Willhalm wrote:

> Are you sure? The light has a speed of 300.000 km per second. So a signal
> with the speed of light travels in one cycle of such a processor
> 3*10^8 / 7.794*10^11 m which makes approximately 0.38 mm. If you assume
> that a signal should be able to traverse a processor in one cycle, the
> whole processor must be smaller than 0.38 mm.

Processors can do more and more per cycle as they evolve, too. So you wouldn't
actually need an 800Ghz chip.

--
David Fontaine     <dav### [at] faricynet>     ICQ 55354965
Please visit my website: http://www.faricy.net/~davidf/

Post a reply to this message

---Maybe the newest release of Myst- realMYST?
This could be considered a realtime raytraced world?
---
"Abe Heckenbach" <abe### [at] vrmlk12laus> wrote in message
news:3995A27D.570FDB04@vrml.k12.la.us...
> Sorry for this resend, but I didn't want it to get hidden under,
> "POV-Ray 3.1 to other file format.." thread.
>
> Simon> thanx, but the reason I want to use ray tracing is for the
> realisium, if virtual reality mean triing to trick the participant into
> believing he is in a different env., then ray tracing just seems
> right(since it models light rays and all),  Also I realise that
> computers are just not fast enough today, but they will be in the maybe
> not so distance future(Intel's P4, to be released this year, will be
> 1.5GHz+). Plus you can also make dedicated hardware, and software
> improvments. But hey, thanx anyways, I will read up more on openGL.
>
>
> ///////////////////////////////////////////
>
> Hey all,
>
> what is up?? My name is Abe Heckenbach, and I am a newbie to these
> newsgroups.
> I have only recently(past 3 months) gotten into ray tracing, and I think
> is is
> awesome(Who doesn't??). I am particularly interested in real-time ray
> tracing
> for the purpose of virtual reality.  Seems impossible... I know, but
> maybe its
> not, hardware is getting faster every day, and I'm sure there are
> software
> speed-ups that haven't been figured out yet(in fact I have a few ideas
> myself!)
>
> I'm interested in joining the POV-team to discuss ray tracing
> techniques, and
> help develop povray(I'm kinda new the C programming also, but I catch on
> quick,
> actually my first C program was a ray tracer to test one of my ideas,
> but I
> have been programming other languages for years, like java(and before
> that
> perl,basic,unix shell scripts,ect.))
>
> I would like to start a group, website and corresponding newsgroup, to
> discuss
> virtual reality, (everything necessary to a finished VRE Setup(hardware
> and
> software requirements), but completely from a theoretical point of view)
> If anyone is willing to host something like that let me know. If anyone
> is
> interested in any of this let me know, I would like to discuss it with
> people).
>
> Later,
>     Abe H.
>     abe### [at] vrmlk12laus

Post a reply to this message

Simon Lemieux wrote:
> 
> The eye perceive about 30 frames per second...  which means you would have to
> render every frame in 1/30 seconds...  that is if you divide the speed of my
> computer (433) for let say a 1 second render of povray by (1/30) you get the
> computer of your dream and it's probably not a Pentium since it should have
> 12990Mhz!!! (<currentSpee>/(1/<fps>)) = (433/(1/30)) = 12990Mhz!

MHz is hardly the only thing affecting render speed. Other important factors
are, for example, increased parallelism and faster memory subsytems.
A typical 600 MHz PIII system is far in excess of 600 times faster than a
typical 1 MHz XT system.

-- 
Margus Ramst

Personal e-mail: mar### [at] peakeduee
TAG (Team Assistance Group) e-mail: mar### [at] tagpovrayorg

Post a reply to this message

> ---Maybe the newest release of Myst- realMYST?
> This could be considered a realtime raytraced world?

I've not seen MYST but you might have? Do you need a 3dfx to play it? If so, it
uses OpenGL... can also use raytracing for rendering new textures and then show
them with OpenGL.. I don't know....  but I'm sure it's not a pure raytracer
behind that...

IMHO,
  Simon

-- 
+-------------------------+----------------------------------+
| Simon Lemieux           |         http://connect.to/666Mhz |
| lem### [at] yahoocom  | POV-Ray, OpenGL, C++ and more... |
+-------------------------+----------------------------------+

Post a reply to this message

hey all,

 I just got home from the 1st day of the geek fest(aka linux_expo), and
I have to say it was damn cool to see a compaq beowolf cluster, running
pov-ray at about 4 secs. a frame. ah yes.. the future is near my
friends... 

BUT the really interesting thing is that the CPU meters usually didn't
reach top speed.. anyone  know why??

if your interested, i believe it was 16 nodes, each running at
433Mhz.     linuX cool!

Abe
abe### [at] vrmlk12laus

Post a reply to this message

Abe Heckenbach wrote:
> 
> hey all,
> 
>  I just got home from the 1st day of the geek fest(aka linux_expo), and
> I have to say it was damn cool to see a compaq beowolf cluster, running
> pov-ray at about 4 secs. a frame. ah yes.. the future is near my
> friends...
> 
> BUT the really interesting thing is that the CPU meters usually didn't
> reach top speed.. anyone  know why??
> 

5% of the system recources are reserved for root. This for memory,
harddrives, CPU, anything. When I'm running povray I cannot give it more
then 95% of my CPU, unless I'm running it as root, but that's evil.

Remco Poelstra

Post a reply to this message

David Fontaine wrote:
> 
> Thomas Willhalm wrote:
> 
> > Are you sure? The light has a speed of 300.000 km per second. So a signal
> > with the speed of light travels in one cycle of such a processor
> > 3*10^8 / 7.794*10^11 m which makes approximately 0.38 mm. If you assume
> > that a signal should be able to traverse a processor in one cycle, the
> > whole processor must be smaller than 0.38 mm.
> 
> Processors can do more and more per cycle as they evolve, too. So you wouldn't
> actually need an 800Ghz chip.

	All the years of improvement and finally the 100MHz buss appeared, up
from 75. The new 2GHz from Intell will include a 400 MHz buss chipset.
So we get a cylindrical buss like a Cray ... 

	Maybe I am old fashioned but I've always had this idea the CPU and buss
should be the same speed. Fetch ahead is an amusing but uninteresting
hack. 

	But at 2 GHz just what possible reason is there for hardware cards? I
think I can spare 100 Mcycles to emulate them. 

	So I have this 3x3 inch card with a couple gigs of RAM, the CPU and a
couple USB ports. The USB port feed the conversion cards to video,
serial, parallel, keyboard, rat and such. This card plugs into my 100
Gig HD. Most data paths are less than one inch. The longest is from the
CPU to the R/W head on the HD. 

	If I am making my point correctly, we can give up a little of this new
processor speed in exchange for throwing away the buss and all the cards
that now sit on it. 

	The new USB standard is over 400 Mbs. 

-- 
Girls vote for male candidates for their looks.  
Men, Get out and vote.
	-- The Iron Webmaster, 35

Post a reply to this message

In article <39AA1B46.2138F7D9@ij.net>, matt giwer <jul### [at] ijnet> 
wrote:

> 	So I have this 3x3 inch card with a couple gigs of RAM, the CPU and a
> couple USB ports. The USB port feed the conversion cards to video,
> serial, parallel, keyboard, rat and such. This card plugs into my 100
> Gig HD. Most data paths are less than one inch. The longest is from the
> CPU to the R/W head on the HD. 
...
> 	The new USB standard is over 400 Mbs.

I think you would be better off with Firewire for the high-bandwidth 
applications like video, and USB for lower bandwidth applications like 
keyboard, mouse, and audio...Firewire already supports 400Mbs and will 
support more in the future, and has many peripherals available for it, 
like cameras, hard drives, etc.

-- 
Christopher James Huff
chr### [at] maccom, http://homepage.mac.com/chrishuff/

<><

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