Ray Tracing IL2

[IckyATLAS]

A lot has been said on the upcoming Volta graphics GPU, and mainly about its capability for generating real time ray tracing scenes. In fact it is not yet really there.

I was wondering. Let's suppose if tomorrow maybe say four or five years from now comes on the market a GPU able to effectively generate 4K Ray traced images at 60 fps, how complicated, easy or difficult it would be to convert the IL2 graphics engine into a raytraced  version, and for the devs to develop maps planes etc. Today all is polygons. Would it be a simple step or the whole content creation, modeling , everything would have to be change for full ray traced animation. Any clues ?

 

[coconut]

I would guess it's a big change to the engine, and not much change to the models and textures. Ray tracing works with a number of geometric primitives, including polygons.

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Rewriting the renderer for ray tracing, although entirely possible, would be a monumental task comparable to the upgrade to d3d11. Ray tracing would function with the existing assets, but likely not very well. The textures provided by Il-2 would be quite limiting; ray tracing wouldn't have much information to use. You'd essentially need to make a new game for optimal ray tracing. 

Edited June 1, 2018 by Mitthrawnuruodo

[WheelwrightPL]

Ray tracing wouldn't help much until more pressing and glaring engine deficiencies are addressed such as low-detail buildings, on-off destruction animations for ground vehicles, lack of environment destructibility (except for trees). If ray tracing is implemented it would only make those things even more jarring.

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

3 hours ago, WheelwrightPL said:

glaring engine deficiencies are addressed such as low-detail buildings, on-off destruction animations for ground vehicles, lack of environment destructibility (except for trees).

 

Most of those aren't really 'engine deficiencies'; they're conscious design decisions. Il-2 could have 4K textures, destructible objects, etc. everywhere. Whether that would be a wise use of resources is questionable.

 

However, I do agree that ray tracing would not add much to the game in its current state. Like the original game in the series, Il-2 currently shines thanks to its pleasing art style rather than any technical wonders.

[BeastyBaiter]

A traditional graphics engine uses all sorts of cheats and work arounds to reduce the computation required per frame. This results in less than photo realistic graphics, but they can be run real time on consumer grade hardware. Ray tracing does not make any such concessions. It is actually the simplest and most obvious way to render graphics, but it is totally devoid of the CPU/GPU saving cheats a traditional graphics engine uses. The "ray tracing" Nvidia and AMD are now touting are extremely limited in nature. They use a few rays for certain types of objects and then apply the results to the rest of that object. I can see it improving graphics in BoX, most notably by introducing proper refraction. But it's definatley not  something we will see applied to everything in game any time soon. We're talking about computational power many orders of magnitude greater than what even the 8700k and 1080 Ti can bring.

 

Cute little video on ray tracing by Disney here:

 

 

And for the overly ambitious among you, here's a multi-threaded ray tracer you can compile and run in Visual Studio: https://github.com/glenwilliams7/MultiThreaded-Ray-Tracer

 

It takes my i7-8700k 98 seconds to render this crappy default scene, though I was watching the video above while rendering (set for 6 threads):

 

[Ehret]

Today 3d real-time graphics is not a pure rasterization, anymore. Many types of "hacks" are utilized through the shaders GPU's capabilities with some rays here and there, probably. We still need frame-rates in few dozens and I'm personally glad that I can run the game on a cheap HW. Eventually, even a ray-tracer has to be "hacked" to support the wave-like behavior of the light as pure rays can not render everything.

Edited June 1, 2018 by Ehret

[IckyATLAS]

Nice video the Disney one. Okay, let's wait about another 15 years and maybe we will have enough computing power on a GPU, for interactive real time ray tracing.

In between we will make with what we have.?

[CAPSLOCK_ON]

Not very savvy in game programming, but would such news make Il-2 closer to real time ray tracing?

 

https://wccftech.com/crytek-neon-noir-ray-tracing-demo-amd-rx-vega-56-30fps-1080p-nvidia-rtx-boost/amp/

 

 

 

Edited May 10, 2019 by CAPSLOCK_ON

[kstab]

Does anyone know if Ray tracing is planned to be implemented in Il-2?