Future PS3 games to look even better than Crysis!!?

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PS3 Has Potential to Do Ray Tracing

We all knew that the Sony PlayStation 3 was one hell of a beast in terms of raw processing power.  Every day developers are digging deeper and deeper into what the console is actually capable of pulling off.  It now appears that according to a few sources, the PlayStation 3 is capable of even much more.

The topic of interest here is called Ray Tracing.  For those who do not know Ray Tracing is a lighting technique which uses and depicts models with rays of light.  The rays of light bounce off of the models in the game and the scene causing the object to be reflected and leaving us with movie-like visuals.  The trick here is that for this to be achieved consoles need to be linked together.  That is where the PlayStation 3 comes into play.

Forum Discussion

Hi guys, I'm new here and I just wanted to talk about the possibilities of this particular concept happening for this generation of gaming.


Now that I've seen the PS3's ray traced rendering capabilities on just the cell broadband engine alone. I am fully convinced that it's possible on the PS3 to have something that rivals...not just Crysis, but movies themselves. Granted that it took 3 interconnected PS3's to do it via Ethernet; however, imagine if it were 50 or 50,000..What would the outcome be then? How you ask? Maybe by creating the game to run on some type of broadband grid of PS3's or Cell processor based servers (PS3s/servers that will share cell computing power for rendering the game or games). Perhaps, it can even be utilized for other applications that can benefit from this technology (ex. Folding@Home). I mean research like this has been going on since 2001. Hey, who knows....with ray tracing maybe something far beyond "Crysis" will come about. The Benefits from this technique can yield phenomenal results. All we need now is a developer with deep pockets to step out of the shadows. Check out these links for more info:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLte5f34ya8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lr-R4bUZIQw

For reference of "Research like this has been going on since 2001" and the grid I was referring to check this link out:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1470225.stm

More info on Ray Tracing:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6457951.stm

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=334&type=expert&pid=1

I think the PS3 is even closer to extremely real looking graphics then I ever thought before. This might just completely justify the purchase of a $600 console even more. What do you guys think?

One of our loyal forum posters ChildofGod made mention of this in our forums.  You can check his post out by going to the link at the bottom of the news story.  The post has included in it YouTube videos which show off the technology in action.  It is amazing to see this all work as the technology is not brand new stuff.  Research has been going on since 2001 meaning that the potential is truly here for this to be put into motion.  Only time will tell to see if Sony and developers put it to use this generation or the next.  It is mind-boggling though to think about and is truly an interesting concept.  That $600 PlayStation 3 could potentially do a lot more than it is capable of under the hood if the technology is tapped into and put to work.

"Film studio Pixar uses ray-tracing to produce the images for its cartoons and Peter Jackson used the technique in the Lord of the Rings to make special effects look convincing."

"It gives much higher image quality in shadows and reflections," said Mr Pohl. "You can even do reflections on reflections on reflections."

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6457951.stm

and Crysis looks Awsome. omg :| .. but still. (not to make anyone mad or anything) i still think PC's are in the lead of what they can handle and all that stuff. but that's just imo. zeforgotten

in the lead but cost 2000$ to get near ps3 quailty and proformence 

Don't get your hopes up.

Because as of right now, the ps3 graphics don't look as good as 360 yet. Take it one step at a time.

What do you people care about this for? Rejoice when games release that look any better than the competition.. Till then its just the same ole same ole hype machine. Fanboys scour the internet for any info to try and justify their purchase... Cellien

I don't remember anyone trying to "justify" their purchase.... I for one don't need to "justify" my purchase of the PS3 cause I'm very satisfied with my purchase.... 

so future games will looks almost real?61913

You'll bet. :D

[QUOTE="zeforgotten"]and Crysis looks Awsome. omg :| .. but still. (not to make anyone mad or anything) i still think PC's are in the lead of what they can handle and all that stuff. but that's just imo. Crazy87

in the lead but cost 2000$ to get near ps3 quailty and proformence 

man i was thinking about this this could be a master plan from sony

you know they said the ps3 will be a 10 year plan 

now they just do it with the components inside the ps3 6 years later the new xbox720 comes out by then the ps3 should be $300 in that year when microsoft launches their new console BAM sony release a new firmware that unlocks the 8th spu at the same time they will announce a super huge cell based server that connect us to eachother for this ray tracing thing...

*stopped dreaming*

and Crysis looks Awsome. omg :| .. but still. (not to make anyone mad or anything) i still think PC's are in the lead of what they can handle and all that stuff. but that's just imo. zeforgotten

i totally agree. i think devs know how to harness the pc. just the prob with pcs is you have to constantly update things and it tends to be spendy 

wow -- lets talk about something that will never happen. PS3s being networked together for ray-tracing in games.

maybe if the ps3 had enough physical memory it would be able to produce better images by itself. 

wow -- lets talk about something that will never happen. PS3s being networked together for ray-tracing in games.

 

maybe if the ps3 had enough physical memory it would be able to produce better images by itself.

3picuri3

ps3 dont need 100000 mb of ram its a closed system for 1 purpose games

its not like a pc where it needs to run 1000 things in the background + 10001 bottlenecks 

can't wait till devs get the hang of it.

yeah, when the developers get the hang of it.  I'll buy a PS3 when they actually parallel their value with their cost, which they haven't done yet.  When they do, those dust covered units stored away in stores across the nation will finally sell.

 And I'll be buying one of them, for cheaper cost, or possibly maybe an upgraded format I hope (won't keep my fingers crossed though, this is $ony).

I wouldn't pay too much attention to that ray-tracing demo, it was really just demostrating how well the Cell works in parallels, the reason this won't really apply to at-home gaming, the ray-tracing demo wasn't even using the RSX it was all Cell.  In order for this to have any impact on home gaming these things would have to happen:

1. Everyone would need an extremely high-speed-low-latency broadband connection in their house (like fiber optics)

2.  Everyone would need to leave their PS3 on at all times to donate their processor when they're not playingso other people can get better graphics

Basically it's not going to happen but it's neat for fun.