i dont understand....if a ray is passed through every pixel on the screen in front of the eye... and the light and reflections are calculated that part is fine....but what about the objects in geographical proximity behind the eye, which also casts shadows and/or are a source of illumination on the objects in front of the eye....the rays are only traced from the eye...so are they catered for??

i wonder when games will start using this and i cant wait im so sick of ugly triangles man, this is guna be sweet.

that article FIRMLY confirms that PS3 is the most powerful piece of equipment on earth. ray tracing is done in GT5 real-time. 4D rendering also conformed on a previous article here in N4G by company i guess called 4dFX? 4D rendering is only possible on PS3 or upscale PC rig. and BTW ray tracing and 4D rendering don't need that redicouls amount of memory (256/256) is more than enough. so for all doubters "sony said PS3 is next gen PERIOD". day after day all doubters will be flushed at a toilette nearest u.

Open your eyes mate.

I remember producing raytraced 'video' on my Atari 520 ST...used to take about 20hours per frame!

Good times.

http://www.atarimagazines.c...

http://www.q4rt.de/videos/q...

This made all bad thing better...like wanting FFVII remake know and XIII.

knowing they come later they will have ray tracing... unfortunately ray tracing aint gonna be is ghalo 3

Seems more like the next marketing hype coming up. After 5GHz (which never happened) and now multicore (where the 2+ core idles around for 90% of the time) they need another reason to let people upgrade their PCs in 2-3 years. Well, could work. I'd like AMDs coming triple core cpu, which could be a great test bed to simulate an 360 environment.

And then they, Intel, weren't the first on that one (raytracing) either. I'm curious. A next gen CELL could simply blow the socks out of Intels solution. But they are hard trying - and will probably be successful (the 68k was a hell lot better cpu as the i386, but we know how that ended).

I'd also be curious, how they will define a common ray tracing API to utilize this in a general purpose environment - without breaking DX or OpenGL. - ah OK, they have something like OpenRT (Open Ray Tracing).

None of the current (gaming) machines is fast enough for raytracing, maybe the PS3 uses bits and pieces here or there, but all the examples (which are indeed amazing) used multiple CELLs (Blade has 2 cpus, the PS3 example ran 3 PS3s). To really use that in games, you have 2 or 3 PPU cores and 12-24 (double precision) SPUs. Something which could see the light of day in 6-8 years, IMO. Sure, then there could be ray traced games.

The funny thing is, it makes sense in game consoles only, not for PCs, a machine which is 90% used for non gaming applications. Image processing could be another use case. They'll push hard to establish the PC as the main gaming platform, I'd suppose. The market seems big enough to re-align the focus onto.

Seeing Intels love for gaming, I am wondering, why didn't they care to equip at least one console with Intel CPUs ? The original xbox had a Celeron. They missed that opportunity.

for all doubters, PS3 is FUTURE proof. here's the proof: " http://gametomorrow.com/blo...
ADD to this PS3 is scalable, i.e. sony can build PS3 clusters to do massive computations like ray tracing, so my PS3 can use any of the SPE of those clusters and do the computations, so this is the answer to the people who said how the AI, physics etc, will be handled. that's how, using PS3 clusters. BTW that's sony's plan in the future. the future is sony, MS will be crushed by sony in the next couple of years. Be patient guys!!!

is already doing ray tracing.

but as i said,if i'm wrong,then let me know.

i think ken k.,sony,ibm and toshiba are much smarter than we give them credit for.and they are giving you a taste of what ps3 is only capable of doing.and i'll try to prove it but make it short.

what did ken k. talk about since ps1?he talked about computer entertainment,cybercities and allowing you to jack into the matrix.i'll use this site for crazy comments:
http://boardsus.playstation...

sounds far fetched doesn't it?but look at what sony is delivering.not that they are doing this now or working on it,but they are showing us right in front of our faces it can be done.

what can ps3 do?it can act as a server,it can act as a computer calculating numbers,it can work in parallel with other ps3s,it can be logged into by psp,deliver content to anywhere in the world.no other system can do this right now.so what am i leading to?this......

i'm going to give you all the pieces

a 1080p tv
a ps3
a psp
an ibm setup of blades of cell processors.thousands.hundreds of thousands.a million.doesn't matter.
and a program that ditributes the code across all cells.

what does psp do?it can log into ps3.what does ps3 do?it allows remote play through psp.we have seen it first with lair,and videos streamed.psp just has low resolution but controls the game or video.but it shouldn't end there.sony could theoretically create a game,something like GTA.a cybercity on those blades of cell processors.not just ps3 by itself rendering a game.but ps3 logs into the game online using broadband.

so,the ps3 logs into this cyber world city.it could be raytraced,deferred rendered,whatever.but it looks REAL.i mean REAL or at least beyond FFVII ADVENT CHILDREN or APPLESEED graphics.ps3 is now remote playing a game that in not running on the ps3 hard drive or a bluray disc.the graphics are streamed and kept at a high framerate from all those cells working together just like folding home.

is psp powerful enough to have lair created on it?no.but it can display lair coming from ps3.what makes you think ps3 can't log into something else more powerful that it to display a game on a 1080p tv?see how it starting to work?it goe beyond conventional thinking.wii can't do it.360 can't do it.

i'm not saying this game would come out tommorrow or next year.but let's say 4-6 years into ps3's life and this game is being worked on now.the graphics level would floor everyone.and what if it's not just one game.what if there are five?a racing game,a flying game,an open city,something that looks like AFRIKA,or something way off the radar.

but don't limit yourselves to 512 of ram.psps ram is alot less but is displaying lair and high def movies.i would think a ps3 and a 1080p tv would display something awsome beyond our imagination.

THOUGHTS?or am i crazy like ken k.?

......................mag lev super train...................

Raytracing is nothing new. I remember buying shareware programs 15 years ago that did raytracing in standard VGA. I realize that as technology has become more sophisticated so have raytracing algorithms, but I wonder what it is that makes it so difficult for the current generation of consoles? Is it that the games are raytracing in realtime instead of using texture-mapped polygons?

raytracing is oldschool...
And I don't see why you would want it in a game, as it produces overly sharp and unrealistic images. Plus you'll need another lighting model alltogether to cope with the diffuse part, since raytracing doesnt handle it. The only use I could see for it is complicated refractions.
It's not worth the rendering time.