Film quality graphics on the way

A new startup, Caustic Graphics, plans to use a technique called ray-tracing that generates movie-quality three-dimensional images. Ray-tracing is a mainstay of Hollywood studios, but hasn’t seen use in video games. Ray-tracing a single image can take hours to generate; rendering a film can take months on hundreds of server systems. However, Caustic has developed new technology that speeds up this rendering by a factor of 20. They hope to have the technology to be 200 times faster as early as next year.

Computer games and other PC software typically rely on a technology called rasterization. Though the results keep getting more realistic, developing an interactive form of ray-tracing has been a longtime quest in the computer industry. Armed with the technology, Caustic executives say, designers who now work with the software equivalent of stick figures could manipulate realistic designs — without having to stop to render their images periodically.

What this means for the average video game player would be game images that are movie-quality in realism.  Currently, only cinematic cut scenes and game introductions get somewhat close to film quality. Now imagine playing an entire game that looks that good. New video cards and software to take advantage of the new technology could be available as early as 2010. Caustic also faces competition as well-known chip maker, Nvidia, which also plans to develop their own ray-tracing technology.

Via Wall Street Journal

Images via Caustic

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