The holy grail of computer graphics

When it comes to serving up high-quality graphics on a computer, we’ve come a long, long way indeed. From the days of Pong, Atari and the Commodore 64, we now have supercomputing-class boxes in our very home in the form of devices like the PlayStation 3. Even computers, with their graphics card containing fancy components like stream processors that boast of delivering realistic graphics in games and visualization applications, there doesn’t seem to be any slowdown in the pace of innovation in this exciting sector of computing. Computer graphics bigwigs like ATI and Nvidia continue to pursue the honor of being top-dog graphics company by creating more powerful graphics processors, more transistors and ever higher clock speeds.

The story so far
All 3D scenes are composed of little ‘facets’ called polygons—the greater the number of polygons to build a 3D model, the greater the detail. Faster processors enable faster polygon processing, resulting in more detailed scenes that can be rendered quicker. Simple, right? However, this approach is not necessarily one that is extensible, especially given that these days chip fabrication processes are pushing the 55 nanometer range (which is very close to atomic dimensions). So physically, there’s every possibility of running into a stone wall in the near future—it is not possible to fabricate at sub-atomic dimensions. Unless of course scientists make massive leaps in practical quantum physics. But that doesn’t look likely.

The game changer
So along comes a self-taught enthusiast from Australia called Bruce Dell, who proposes a completely different graphics rendering paradigm called Unlimited Detail. He suggests that polygon-processing capabilities should no longer be the baseline of graphics computing prowess. The idea is to treat every point of light on your monitor (yes, the pixels) as the prime element in the 3D scene. In the 3D world, these discrete points are called voxels (many of which make up point clouds). With Unlimited Detail, Dell claims that the rendering engine now acts much like a search engine that basically just decides which points of light to show on the screen, depending on the particular view that needs to be displayed in that 3D scene, the resolution of the screen and other such factors. This approach can drastically cut down the amount of processing power required, as the rendering engine only concerns itself with showing what a user sees. The net result? Hyper-realistic 3D imagery that can be rendered completed in software, with no special hardware support required. I know, it does sound too good to be true. It’s still early days for this technology, but this proof-of-concept demo of Unlimited Detail here provides a compelling argument indeed.

Unlimited Detail - an explanation

There’s another video from the creator of this technology, where he provides a more narrative explanation of how this technology contrasts to the current-day approach.

If this technology does take off, I can’t wait to see God of War 4 in Unlimited Detail. Wow.

Mobile gaming: Augmented reality with the Nvidia Tegra

These days, consumers increasingly want to take their experiences with them—be it gaming, movies, music, or the Internet. Devices like the Sony PSP, the iPod, multimedia cellphones, and video-capable portable media players do just this—they provide entertainment no matter where you are. But when it comes to portable devices, there are several invisible yet real barriers to a good experience—battery life and processing power. Manufacturers are grappling with these very issues while developing the next funky cell phone or portable gaming device. The Holy Grail lies in the ability to integrate console-class graphics capabilities with day-long battery life. And it looks like Nvidia (a leader in the development of processors for gaming and visualization) is very close to that elusive goal. With the launch of their Tegra processor, they can now offer phone and handheld game device manufacturers the ability to play high-definition movies and desktop class games on portable devices. If you’re a gamer, think Doom 3 class graphics on a handheld device. If you’re movie buff think watching 1080p-class high-definition video on a ultra-crisp portable OLED screen.

It gets better—when you marry the inherent portability of devices like cell phones and Mobile Internet Devices with the fact that they have fairly high-resolution cameras, something amazing happens. Check out the video below of a portable device powered by the Tegra processor, and how developers have been able to ‘augment’ the game on screen with the real word as seen through the mobile camera. Very, very cool.

Augmented reality enabled by the Nvidia Tegra processor

 
Imagine owning a phone in the near future having this kind of capability, and running around a table-top map with friends in a multiplayer game, or even taking the game outside the house and augmenting the undead into your quiet neighborhood—sounds trippy! Only problem I see is gamers of the future having to grapple with the inability to detach themselves from their virtual world, and get back into the here and now. But hey, it’d be a fun ride before that.

Marketing folks have already jumped onto the augmented reality bandwagon—check out this cool marketing campaign by Ford UK, to promote the launch of the Ford Ka.