Re: I think it's time for Realsoft to go from Raytracing to Scanline rendering with 3D videocards and or consoles

[David Coombes]

I don't think the RS3D quality would need to be sacrificed on the whole. I think they could maintain the existing quality. I'm not creating realtime or raytracing engines myself, so I may be off on some points, but coupling a surface rasterizer and shader from a GPU with raytracing algorithms seems very doable to me. VSL is great and at it's time, the only option. SM3.0 GPUs now allow similar programmable shader performance but at 1000x the speed of the classic desktop CPU. Where they're lacking branching, adapting to the Cell in a Cell Linux graphics application would be ideal. From an application created specifically for PS3, you could subdivide and tesselate meshes on Cell, shade and texture on the GPU, and ray-trace as need for composition and Ambient Occlusion passes. Would PS3 in itself offer a suitable market though? Quite possibly not. As a business you'd have to target the PC too, but you should still be able to achieve a lot on the GPU and use those same techniques across platforms.   To be honest, I think if RS3D doesn't try to lever this performance, someone else certainly will. And when they're producing pics at 10-100x the speed, other applications are going to have real trouble competing. The toolsets aren't a place a differentiate anymore as they're all fully-featured.   David Coombes [EMAIL PROTECTED]   ... You said that No one replied to RS on PS3,  I did many times. Maybe the Realsoft users on this list are sleeping or just keeping the last CPU power for their rendering and not for e-mail. Yes, Yes now I remember, Real3D was 100 times faster than Imagine or Sculpt4D. It was the first also to feature "Real 3D displacement Textures" It's ironic that realsoft is now one of the slowest with Strata. Realsoft has the best quality, but what a cost? Can it balance a little bit. GI implementation is "second tough or temporary" and it's too slow to really use it. I would like to know David if you think that photoreal is to ugly for Raytracing. Realsoft could make a much faster restricted renderer, I don't care I will find ways to bypass the limitations. How many people vote for a faster RealsoftRenderer and at the cost of Quality? What is quality if only 0.001% of people see it. People think renderman is king. Renderman is ... blurred and low in contrast. In my experience Hybrid(scanline / raytracing only when needed) renderer is best. Jean-Sebastien Perron www.neuroworld.ws