Title :
RTfact: Generic concepts for flexible and high performance ray tracing
Author :
Georgiev, Iliyan ; Slusallek, Philipp
Author_Institution :
Univ. of Saarland, Saarbrucken
Abstract :
Thanks to more than a decade of research and the fast evolution of computer hardware, ray tracing is likely to become a commodity choice for adding complex lighting effects to real-time rendering engines. Nonetheless, interactive ray tracing research has been mostly concentrated on few specific combinations of data structures and algorithms. In this paper we present RTfact - an attempt to bring the different aspects of ray tracing together in a component oriented, generic, and portable way, without sacrificing the performance benefits of hand-tuned single-purpose implementations. RT-fact is a template library consisting of packet-centric components combined into an efficient ray tracing framework. Our generic design approach with loosely coupled algorithms and data structures allows for easy integration of new algorithms with maximum run-time performance, while leveraging as much of the existing code base as possible. The efficiency of templates allows us to achieve fine component granularity and to incorporate a flexible physically-based surface shading model, which enables exploitation of ray coherence. As a proof of concept we apply the library to a variety of rendering tasks and demonstrate its ability to deliver performance equal to currently existing optimized implementations.
Keywords :
data structures; interactive systems; ray tracing; real-time systems; rendering (computer graphics); software libraries; surface fitting; RTfact interactive ray tracing template library; computer hardware; data structure; fine component granularity; flexible ray tracing; high performance ray tracing; loosely coupled algorithm; maximum run-time performance; packet-centric component; physical-based surface shading model; real-time rendering engine; Algorithm design and analysis; Computer graphics; Data structures; Hardware; Layout; Libraries; Pipelines; Ray tracing; Rendering (computer graphics); Runtime; I.3.7 [Computer Graphics]: Three-Dimensional Graphics and Realism—Raytracing;
Conference_Titel :
Interactive Ray Tracing, 2008. RT 2008. IEEE Symposium on
Conference_Location :
Los Angeles, CA
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4244-2741-3
DOI :
10.1109/RT.2008.4634631