Photorealistic VR (Path Tracer)

[Kazioo]

http://brigade3.com/oculus-rift/



EDIT: They removed the blog post. There was a brief information about working Oculus Rift support and upcoming video that would show it.
It's especially interesting because of the optical distortion based directly on the path tracing algorithms, instead of post-processing.

[cybereality]

That page gives a 404 error.

[cgp44]

WOW octaneRender and Brigade makers OTOY say their parallel many GPU card system
has reversed the ray-tracing versus rasterisation competition. Now they say
rasterisation cannot compete with billions of polygons etc. IT looks like they have finally
made a GPU utilisation rendering system that can use many GPU cards together without
silly high fps and without the sli constraints.

So I downloaded the demo. The package itself is wonderfully in the right price
range (less than 800 bucks), being us$200 approx.

However the demo has no example scenes! I am trolling the resources section
of the forums but it is a pain. This is poor marketing.

Also they claim about 50fps but there is always a noise fog that clears after a few seconds
when you move the camera. Is this truely interactive?

[realyst2k]

always a noise fog that clears after a few seconds
when you move the camera.

That would be it waiting for sufficient photons to make it to the camera, meaning it's not generating enough, randomly or otherwise. Might be adjustable, but obviously performance will drop significantly the more of those rays are generated. Would be why they were using dual Titans for their tech demos.

[geekmaster]

... IT looks like they have finally made a GPU utilisation rendering system that can use many GPU cards together without silly high fps and without the sli constraints. ...

Actually, OTOY announced at GCD2014 that they moved their focus away from GPU computation and into the Amazon EC2 Cloud for distributed computation:

... Brigade is now a cloud-enabled application that works in Amazon's EC2 cloud, enabling you to get much better instantaneous performance, regardless of your hardware. ... While I'm not entirely sure that all game development and such will be done through Brigade in the cloud, having the ability to plug into Amazon's EC2 Cloud does enable someone to be able to take their work with them wherever they go. They could work in the cloud from anywhere in the world and show it to anyone anywhere in the world. Not to mention all of the horsepower it should enable them to utilize that they might not have in their own computers.

Although multiple GPUs will continue to be supported, some new "high-computation" features may only exist in the cloud.

[realyst2k]

Man, are MMOs about to get a whole lot crazier?

[cgp44]

Obviously cloud based rendering is not 60fps interactive.
Good for film making, no good for VR.

However for the VR enthusiast could say $6k spent on several
top end GPU cards bring reasonably noise-fog-less interactive
environments with billions of polygons (mostly instances).

[cgp44]

The thing about the top end GPU cards is they put in the
same GPU chips, extra memory and then treble the price!

The dualopoly needs to be cleaned up. There is the high price
market mentality that persists. The global marketplace are
tight-assed. Always you could explode your revenues by reducing
top end prices by at least three times, possibly four.
Apple could have had the whole pc market. Any pc clone would have
been seen as rubbish and died off. The cause of this were the stockholder
representitives on boards who never knew this basic market fact.

Its the same situation with the new VR marketplace. Will it grow
out of the 100k niche sized enthusiasts? Massive GPU power is going to
be needed at the tight-arse price. Forget about smartphones on goggles,
their content will be rubbish, other than cartoon rendered games.

[Mystify]

There is the high price
market mentality that persists. The global marketplace are
tight-assed. Always you could explode your revenues by reducing
top end prices by at least three times, possibly four.
Apple could have had the whole pc market. Any pc clone would have
been seen as rubbish and died off. The cause of this were the stockholder
representitives on boards who never knew this basic market fact.

Bold claims. Can you back that up?

[cgp44]

mstyified, why don't you counter rather than just dissing me, If you
have anything to say.

[Mystify]

You are asserting that completely changing the pricing scheme for these things would magnify their revenue enormously, yet they are just too stupid to realize it. What do you know that everyone else doesn't?
It seems likely to me that there are several types of people in regards to buying a graphics card.
the first want the biggest and baddest, and can afford it, and so they will get the top of the line cards (possibly in multiples)
the second want the biggest and baddest, but can't afford it, but will settle for whatever they can afford.
the third don't care at all, and will just take whatever comes in their computer.

the first group is best exploited by having expensive high end cards
the second group is best exploited by having cards at lower prices, spread out across the price range, so they have something to spend their budget on, while still feeling like they could have spent more
the third group won't care what is going on with the prices

What group is suddenly going to be spending a ton more money on graphics cards because they are cheaper at a given price point? Are there a ton of people going "I don't care about graphic cards enough to spend more money on them, but if I could get the top end one for $100 I'd go for it"?

[geekmaster]

You are asserting that completely changing the pricing scheme for these things would magnify their revenue enormously, yet they are just too stupid to realize it. ... It seems likely to me that there are several types of people in regards to buying a graphics card. ... What group is suddenly going to be spending a ton more money on graphics cards because they are cheaper at a given price point? ... if I could get the top end one for $100 I'd go for it ...

5 Psychological Studies on Pricing That You Absolutely MUST Read:
http://blog.kissmetrics.com/5-psychological-studies/

My mobo supports quad-SLI. I would buy quad Titans if they were $100 each.

[Mystify]

You are asserting that completely changing the pricing scheme for these things would magnify their revenue enormously, yet they are just too stupid to realize it. ... It seems likely to me that there are several types of people in regards to buying a graphics card. ... What group is suddenly going to be spending a ton more money on graphics cards because they are cheaper at a given price point? ... if I could get the top end one for $100 I'd go for it ...

5 Psychological Studies on Pricing That You Absolutely MUST Read:
http://blog.kissmetrics.com/5-psychological-studies/

My mobo supports quad-SLI. I would buy quad Titans if they were $100 each.

And how much are you spending on graphics cards now?

[geekmaster]

You are asserting that completely changing the pricing scheme for these things would magnify their revenue enormously, yet they are just too stupid to realize it. ... It seems likely to me that there are several types of people in regards to buying a graphics card. ... What group is suddenly going to be spending a ton more money on graphics cards because they are cheaper at a given price point? ... if I could get the top end one for $100 I'd go for it ...

5 Psychological Studies on Pricing That You Absolutely MUST Read:
http://blog.kissmetrics.com/5-psychological-studies/

My mobo supports quad-SLI. I would buy quad Titans if they were $100 each.

And how much are you spending on graphics cards now?

Damn near $400 (perhaps more with tax) on my last card, and it was not even all that special, and I still have empty slots waiting for 3 more cards.

Regarding $100 Titans:

[cgp44]

Apple could have made macs the same price as PCs. They didn't. Hence their market share
was 5 per cent. The PCs whatever their problems, people like me tolerated all the BS.
I well remember Win98 software installation where you install something, reinstall another that
now don't work, and finally reinstall the original operating system. It was the most
challenging game on the box.

The named brands aways were scared to go low in pricing. It is either unbelief in their product
(only a few will go for it) or a lack of understanding that 90 per cent are tight-arsed, that is they
will go for the lowest price possible regardless of quality. Quality is a hoped for bonus.

[Mystify]

I was talking about graphics card pricing.

[cgp44]

If they priced their top of the line by 1/3. Had just a few cards per generation.
Main point is not to put similar chips and a few extra $20 memory chips in
vastly different priced cards. They are over pricing, showing that the actual
costs have nothing to do with their marketing price strategies.
They all round have a niche market, maximum price tolerated corporate strategy.
If a third party came along with a tight-arsed customer strategy we would not be in the
performance plateau of the recent years.

[Mystify]

another company undercutting them would shake things up, sure, but without that I think their current pricing scheme is doing a near-optimal job of wringing people's money.

[cgp44]

their current pricing scheme is doing a near-optimal job of wringing people's money.

that is precisely my point, only a tight-arsed customer pricing strategy builds general markets.
The market is not niches such as professional designers. If they offered pricing near to
manufacturing costs who knows their revenues. Anything other than this is unbelief in your
own product. I mean come on it PCs. Perhaps the PC market has indeed died.

[Mystify]

They don't have a product that is useful in and of itself. They have a product that is useful for other people's products. PC gamers already buy them. Housewives are not suddenly going to drool over next-gen graphics because the price is lower. People who have an interest in graphics cards already buy as much as their budget allows, making it cheaper is not going to make them spend more, and its not going to make people interested. I mean, you can get what used to be a top of the line graphics card for virtually nothing now; it doesn't make people go "oh, I can get this awesome card for free and play stuff from 5+ years ago with amazing performance". Their entire market is on a sliding scale.There might be some segement of the market that goes" I can't afford to make my PC a gaming PC, so I won't even try", but I don't see that exploding their profits when they cut out their $1000 top end cards

[realyst2k]

The notion that Apple could have dominated the market had they lowered the prices of their hardware is absolute nonsense and completely ignores the history of that company.

Apple's initial failure when faced with the PC market mainly had to do with a combination of factors including existing business relationships with IBM, the emergence of "IBM PC Compatible" hardware, a number of strategic partnerships with Microsoft, numerous incentive programs and the fact that the PC was simply 'good enough' for the main function of an office computer at the time. There simply was no incentive to pay more for an Apple product(which had to cost more given the lack of the same economies of scale and the requirements of a much more power-hungry OS) than a 'good enough' PC which every other computer was also using, allowing sharing of technology, expertise and interoperability.

In fact, Apple's near death in the mid to late 90s was due to them attempting to do that which you suggest, with beige boxed Apple clone licenses. Apple's resurgence at the start of the century was once Jobs re-entered the company and refocused on making the brand a 'premium' one where they'd stop focusing on a race to the bottom, but instead started adding cost and branding it as a form of status symbol.

There are numerous examples of 'premium' brands or items which, often times for no reason other than branding, succeed not only despite their high price tag, but BECAUSE of it. Macy's. Ferrari. Hilton, etc...

[Mystify]

The notion that Apple could have dominated the market had they lowered the prices of their hardware is absolute nonsense and completely ignores the history of that company.

Apple's initial failure when faced with the PC market mainly had to do with a combination of factors including existing business relationships with IBM, the emergence of "IBM PC Compatible" hardware, a number of strategic partnerships with Microsoft, numerous incentive programs and the fact that the PC was simply 'good enough' for the main function of an office computer at the time. There simply was no incentive to pay more for an Apple product(which had to cost more given the lack of the same economies of scale and the requirements of a much more power-hungry OS) than a 'good enough' PC which every other computer was also using, allowing sharing of technology, expertise and interoperability.

In fact, Apple's near death in the mid to late 90s was due to them attempting to do that which you suggest, with beige boxed Apple clone licenses. Apple's resurgence at the start of the century was once Jobs re-entered the company and refocused on making the brand a 'premium' one where they'd stop focusing on a race to the bottom, but instead started adding cost and branding it as a form of status symbol.

There are numerous examples of 'premium' brands or items which, often times for no reason other than branding, succeed not only despite their high price tag, but BECAUSE of it. Macy's. Ferrari. Hilton, etc...

Yes. I was not familiar with the specifics of how apple worked so I couldn't argue this myself, but it makes sense. The notion that making things cheaper to expand sales is the best way to go is.... overly simplistic. It works in some cases, fails in others, and the people actually running the companies would be much more in tune with all of the complications than some random guy on the internet saying they did it wrong

[Libertine]

Conclusion: the free market system is an exploitable, inefficient, inequality inducing mess, unresponsive to the needs of the poor that needs to go the way of the dodo.

Lets lift the reigns off of automation and bring on the Resource Based Economy please... (aka The Venus Project, aka Zeitgeist )

[Mystify]

Conclusion: the free market system is an exploitable, inefficient, inequality inducing mess, unresponsive to the needs of the poor that needs to go the way of the dodo.

Lets lift the reigns off of automation and bring on the Resource Based Economy please... (aka The Venus Project, aka Zeitgeist )

I wouldn't write it off, we managed to create a system where even those in poverty have tvs, computers, and smartphones.

[cgp44]

Apples near death was because it was seen as an overpriced box for design professional
niche market. Panic price reductions couldn't save it. It was already too late.
PCs were completely dominant in all aspects mainly to do with addons etc.
Obviously, any manufacturing has to be completely up to date
with its competition. It was simply the openness and hence market driven price reduction
of the PC clones components. I started with a 8088 clone in 1987.
Apple could easily compete by simple price sticker reduction. It didn't and the PC market exploded,
Apple stood still.

So Jobs saved the day with fantastic design AND PRICE reduction. I got my first mac as a mac mini,
and just recently I got a large PC box with gtx670 because of the Rift developer kit.
You see now Apple competes at the same price points with its competition. Early on it didn't, hence
the tight-arsness of the global market killed it. Notice the market for workstations died as well as PC chips
got better. This market then was for name brands rather than the top ended specs today.

Yes we have many different priced and spec'ed machines today. But yesterday it was the whole brand
at two to four times the alternative.

[Mystify]

You see now Apple competes at the same price points with its competition.

Wat. A mac costs several times what a properly built PC does for the same specs, and is absurdly more expensive when you take all the optional upgrades.

[realyst2k]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-pre ... 47308.html

Cook’s thoughts echoed those of his predecessor, Steve Jobs, whose strategy for Apple had four pillars:

Offer a small number of products.
Focus on the high end
Give priority to profits over market share
Create a halo effect that makes people starve for new Apple products

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Apple_Inc.

Apple's retail resellers like Sears and CompUSA often failed to sell or even competently display these Macs. Compounding matters was the fact that, although the machines were cheaper than a comparable PC (when taken into account all the components built-in which had to be added to the 'bare bones PC'), the poor marketing gave the impression that the machines were more expensive.

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/premium- ... -1107.html

. For example, according to BetaNews, Apple now has 91 percent of the market in computers costing $1,000 or more. Thee company has used premium pricing to capture the market for high-end, high-quality computers.

Under the Influence special "The Marketing Genius of Steve Jobs"
http://www.cbc.ca/undertheinfluence/sea ... -part-1-1/
http://www.cbc.ca/undertheinfluence/sea ... art-two-1/

Under The Influence episode "The Psychology of Price"
http://www.cbc.ca/undertheinfluence/sea ... f-price-1/