I was just watching the demonstration video for OctaneRender, a GPU assisted unbiased renderer, and it got me thinking about what's changed in the past 20 years or so I've been doing this stuff.
 Sometime in the 90's I remember digging (very) deep to buy a HUGE 16 meg AccelPRO OpenGL graphics card. I thought I was on top of the world. The proverbial "bee's knees". It was, of course, quickly made redundant by the release of 3DLabs (cheap) Permedia 2 based cards. I've never bought at the top of the market again and I swear my wallet still bears the scars.
Now we're moving up to "real-time" GPU assisted unbiased rendering but no matter, as demands increase with available power, that "rush" from a influx of new hardware and software will soon loose it's glow...
"A stereoscopic 4k unbiased floating point project? Um, sure. Yeah. No problem".
How did we get here again?
 It's unfortunate that the rest of society hasn't quite kept up though. 20 years ago I could be seated in a restaurant, order and be sipping a expresso in short order. Now, of course, that's just the length of the lineup to order one. To be produced after the staff is finished preparing a long list of high-calorie blended drinks.
Oh dear, Flay is ranting again... |
