everyone knows raytracing performance is much less dependant on polycount, much more on resolution

so throw 1600x1200 at it and cry 

build ray tracers: Way to embarrass yourself, speeds:

http://www.flipcode.com/archives/Raytracing_Topics_Techniques-Part_4_Spatial_Subdivisions.shtml

The last scene from the previous article (the one with the sphere grid to show off the new refraction code) took almost 9 seconds to render on my pimpy 1.7Ghz Toshiba laptop with 1600x1200 screen (I know resolution has nothing to do with it, but I thought I would mention it anyway). And that's just for simple stuff. Later on we will add area lights, and to test the visibility of those, we will need lots of rays � for each pixel, that is.  

Because AFAIK, speeds is right: Every pixel adds one ray to be traced, so raytracing complexity is very much dependent on resolution. Can someone explain this? 

logarithmic means the time grows slower. It still goes to infinity when the polycount goes to infinity. 

of the advantage in size and speed you obtain when you use vector graphics as opposed to bit map graphics in web apps. The advantage comes from the fact the image is a sheer calculation that scales perfectly with the resolution whereas the bit map is a an indexed means of storage.

The advantage of ray tracing is similar:

http://www.iss.rwth-aachen.de/Projekte/grace/raytracing.html

The results are based upon sheer calculation whereas rasterization relies on spans of texturized pixels. The advantages will be more apparent when mega units of polygons are rendered with surfaces represented by polies instead of textures.

Rather old, but still relevant:

http://graphics.cs.uiuc.edu/~jch/papers/rtqjs.pdf 

are wrong, hence the first site I linked. It does have something to do with it, but that becomes less relevant with larger data streams. 

before I crawl into bed, this is what Bikker has been up to of late:

http://igad.nhtv.nl/~bikker/ 

smooth lighting with raytracing.
I mean if you trace from the eyes and not from the light sources, once you hit the first surface, your beam splits to a million different directions. And then again for the next bounce and then for the next. How much until the ray dies or goes to the sky?
It's a very hard problem and results in ugly and unphysical hacks that produce very stupid looking images. 

Rasterisers texture very quickly because the inner loop is a good match for hardware. Triangles go through the pipeline and wind up on the screen as scanlines, basically two endpoints with some associated attributes (texcoords, vertex colour, etc). Texturing the scanline is just a matter of interpolating those attributes between their two known values, which is very fast. Cache coherency is also good, since two adjacent pixels will be located close in the same texture (mipmapping ensures this).

In comparison when you fire off a ray, the hardware has no idea how that pixel will need to be shaded. 

http://code.google.com/p/quake-gamecube/ 

but that's a large part of raytracing optimisation, making things run in a way that you can use coherency between rays. And, yeah, as long as we don't have gpu like computing power for raytracing... 

Now I ain't much good at the internets, like some of you whizzkids, but does all this technologistic hocus-pocus mean that dem computering games goan be mighty purdy? 

Gameplay'll still suck some dem balls tho. 

"Gameplay'll still suck some dem balls tho."

Well, ray tracing doesn't really affect gameplay unless you're going to argue visibility of enemies in a unified lighting scheme or something. 

Thats cool Spirit!! The screenshot is too dark tho....

Totally ruins everything in my life.... 

but atm raytracing stands no chance for realtime rendering vs "raseterizing", cause the later been advanced by the whole software and hardware industy for the last 10+ years and its not stopping. I think Carmack ok Sweeney, said that, not my words really.

tere is a joke that goes "Ray tracing is the technology of the future and it always will be!"
and in the future we`ll have a nice blend both
but so far there is no reason to get any excited 

It's nice to see research into other areas, that's all. It's not time wasted if something of value is learned - even if that something is that ray tracing isn't currently viable or what-have-you.

Pushing more and more triangles through the pipeline will likely reach a point of diminishing returns. 

being skeptical of the benefits of raytacing. Sweeny seems more interested in the idea as far as I can tell from the interviews I've read.

////WARNING - BUZZ WORDS IN USE UP AHEAD////

There is is an interesting correlation, at least in my mind, between the scalability raytracing offers and what is shown to occur with very high end theoretical languages like Haskell. Haskell is so theoretical versus practical a language that the designers had to apply monadic math theory just to achieve an interface for Input/output.

However, what research is showing these high level languages are performing better
at mega data sets than relatively low level languages like C++. The extra rigorous application of mathematics to their design makes their comparative performance more stable under stress tests. 

is way easier on multicore, as is raytracing. 

That Creature Creator is magic. Pure magic.

LOOOOOOOOOOVE 

I would never object to an honest attempt to advance the field. But this isn't research, this is a commercial for Intel's new hardware. 

http://us.rd.yahoo.com/games/promotions/spore/uk/*http://h.yimg.com/jh/content/p/1/1220360/spore_creature_creator_yahoo617.exe

^^
yahoo has a version of it up 

link 

to our aguirRe.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/17/healthscience/17mund.php 

very fascinating, HeadThump.
Without Hitler and Stalin fucking up Europe, where would we be now?