Earlier this week at GTC 2012, Nvidia showed off just a small bit of the power of Kepler, the architecture at work in the 6xx line of Nvidia cards. Apparently Kepler is at the point of graphics processing where it can ray trace light in real-time.
Ray tracing is a method of simulating how light travels and interacts with virtual objects in a scene. It is, for all intents and purposes, the most realistic method of simulating real lighting in a virtual environment.
To put it into perspective, a simple scene like this would take minutes, if not hours to render out a single frame back when I was in high school (about ten years back) and screwing around with 3D Studio Max. To say that technology has come a long way would be an understatement.
If you gave up on the video before they started to add water, then go back and keep watching. It's quite impressive.
Ray tracing is a method of simulating how light travels and interacts with virtual objects in a scene. It is, for all intents and purposes, the most realistic method of simulating real lighting in a virtual environment.
To put it into perspective, a simple scene like this would take minutes, if not hours to render out a single frame back when I was in high school (about ten years back) and screwing around with 3D Studio Max. To say that technology has come a long way would be an understatement.
If you gave up on the video before they started to add water, then go back and keep watching. It's quite impressive.
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