NV30 Screenshots...EDIT: added a link to the thread that started the rumor

[Random Variable]

http://www.nvnews.net/#1027825580

EDIT: http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1840

BTW, Exluna was very recently acquired by nVidia.

 

[Booster]

These pics are surely impressive. But to come to think of it... They're rendered. But were they real-time rendered, that is the question! I'm pretty sure that any modern video card could render such pics, the differences would only lie in time required to do it. If it's real-time rendering then photo-realistic gaming is right around the corner!

 

[Adul]

is the nv30 even taped out yet?

 

[Trevelyan]

Basically all I can say is "So what?"

If they were rendered in real-time, then that's something to be proud of... but if it's just rendered, then big freakin' deal...

 

[kami]

You guys honestly think those are just regular rendered images in some 3D app? Something a $10 video card could do (since the processor is what does all the rendering)?

Of course it's real time!!

If it wasn't it would be pointless to show that....think about it.

And did you guys see this?

Although it wasn't an announcement per se, nVidia nonetheless divulged some details about their upcoming NV30 GPU, due to ship in volume this October. Here's what nVidia made public in its presentations at SIGGRAPH:

-Vertex Shaders beyond DirectX 9 with up to 1024 static instructions, up to 65536 instructions executed in loops, branches and subroutines
-Pixel Shaders beyond DirectX 9 - up to 1024 instructions
-Long programs for both pixel shading and vertex shading
-Support for OpenGL and DirectX HLSL via NVIDIA's Cg
-OpenGL extensions that support long pixel and vertex shaders programs
-128-bit floating point color precision
-High bandwidth
-Support for high-speed DDR2 memories
-8X AGP
-Built on 0.13-micron process technology

 

[andreasl]

Hmmm that 3rd picture sure looks like a POVRAY rendered picture I've seen once. In fact all 3 look like ray-traced to me.

 

[bjc112]

Originally posted by: andreasl
Hmmm that 3rd picture sure looks like a POVRAY rendered picture I've seen once. In fact all 3 look like ray-traced to me.

Just curious, whats Ray-Traced?

 

[Soccerman]

raytracing is when you take a light source and use reflections of that light off of objects to get soft shadows (which is what every shadow in real life pretty much is). it simulates real life light just like Aureal's A3D 2.0 simulated reflections off of walls to get proper environment effects and reverb. you might have an object between you and the sound source but you'll still hear the sound source, only slightly quieter and possibly with some effect added due to the material the sounds bouce off of to get to you.

as for those pics, to me the look almost Toy Story like in quality. I mean it's obvious they're not real, just like almost everything in Toy Story.

 

[VBboy]

Originally posted by: Soccerman
raytracing is when you take a light source and use reflections of that light off of objects to get soft shadows (which is what every shadow in real life pretty much is). it simulates real life light just like Aureal's A3D 2.0 simulated reflections off of walls to get proper environment effects and reverb. you might have an object between you and the sound source but you'll still hear the sound source, only slightly quieter and possibly with some effect added due to the material the sounds bouce off of to get to you.

as for those pics, to me the look almost Toy Story like in quality. I mean it's obvious they're not real, just like almost everything in Toy Story.

That's not entirely correct. Ray tracing does more than just render the shadows. It actually determines what objects to draw, and which not to. It's helps decide which object is "in front of" another object. For more info, here:

Ray-Tracing explained

So yeah, my 286 could have rendered these NV30 pictures (it would probably have taken 30 years to do so...)

 

[Dean]

Actually those pictures are a big lie!! Its Nvidia pulling at straws as those pictures have been out for a long time using this software!!

go look at these picturesExluna

 

[DeschutesCore]

Actually, They aren't necessarily lies. I can render those images with MAX all day long and say it's rendered on GF4, GF3, or even Rage 128, and I wouldn't be lying. The question they haven't answered is "real time" or "displayed on". Anyone can take those same models and either use software to render them, or they can send the mesh to the GPU and render it in real time.

What's important is if it's the later that's happening. They did the same thing on the GF3 with the 3d Studio MAX alloy wheel / ansiotropic lighting demo. For the longest time it took minutes or longer to render in MAX, then the GF3 came along and it ran in real time. If you look on the back of the Asus GF3 boxes you'll see the one I'm talking about.

DC

 

[kuk]

Rumors are that they're fake ... take a look under "NV30 Pics NOT!" @ HardOCP.

Kuk

 

[Cat]

Real-time ray-tracing on the GPU is possible, you can read about it in one of the SIGGRAPH papers. It's really quite clever.

 

[Czar]

Originally posted by: kuk
Rumors are that they're fake ... take a look under "NV30 Pics NOT!" @ HardOCP.

Kuk

rather pathetic of nvidia to do this

 

[SexyK]

Originally posted by: Czar

Originally posted by: kuk
Rumors are that they're fake ... take a look under "NV30 Pics NOT!" @ HardOCP.

Kuk

rather pathetic of nvidia to do this

My guess is nVidia had nothing to do with this, and it's all just a big fraud by some internet site looking for hits. Why would they take images from a pubic website and say "hey look at what we did!!!". Obviously they arent that stupid.

Kramer

 

[Adul]

ha i knew it. Damn fanboy site

 

[nortexoid]

i mean, the pictures themselves gave it away....

this thread is pathetic...i toss it to the dogs.

 

[CrazySaint]

Well, at least one of those images (the one with the watery teapot sitting on the wood table, figure 4.) was actually used in the CineFX PDF (hosted now by Spanky007 since nvidia pulled it off their side) that nVidia released.

 

[kazeakuma]

Originally posted by: CrazySaint
Well, at least one of those images (the one with the watery teapot sitting on the wood table, figure 4.) was actually used in the CineFX PDF (hosted now by Spanky007 since nvidia pulled it off their side) that nVidia released.

I thought I recognised it. For all the people slamming Nvidia on this, couldn't this be an example of using the GPU to render images in Professional 3D apps. We've all heard about it's going to happen. And ATI have also demoed similar stuff. And if Nvidia recently bought Exluna they could be planning to do something with that software. Anyways, I'm going to take a wait and see rather than run my mouth and look like a fool a few months later.

 

[jbond04]

Okay...I can't help myself. I must respond to this thread. :disgust:

Those pics were rendered!

Of course they were. They were rendered by the NV30. Now that the R300 and the NV30 have super programmable pixel shaders, they can be used via a plugin to 3D software to act as a hardware rendering device. In other words, the rendering is done straight from the software to the graphics card, instead of using the CPU.

Those pics were raytraced!

Great! That means that finally raytracing (which used to be an incredibly computationally intensive CPU task) has finally made its way down to graphics cards. What nVIDIA is showing is that instead of paying tens of thousands of dollars for a rendering farm, you can buy a $400 graphics card (that is probably faster) instead.

HardOCP says they're fake!

I don't think HardOCP knows what they're talking about this time. None of those pictures are very computationally complex. Mental Ray (a high end raytracer) and a fast CPU wouldn't take very long to render those at all. Since both the R300 and the NV30 (especially the NV30) will be able to render 3D scenes several orders of magnitude faster than a CPU, I don't think it's too far fetched for either card to render those scenes about 30 fps. Some programmers at Stanford have even figured out how to raytrace using a GF3/GF4. You can check the news story here. The story also contains a link to the whitepaper that the students wrote. For all you animators out there, it's a good read. Very impressive demonstration of the power of highly parallel graphics cards!

And btw, those pictures aren't particularly impressive from a 3D animation standpoint. The motorbike has nice modeling, but that's about it.