GPU Ray-tracers, start your engines.. NVidia has just officially released the OptiX CUDA-based Real-Time Interactive Ray Tracer on their website, free. Announced back at SIGGRAPH, there have been numerous demonstrations on various conferences and venues, but now you can try it for yourself.
Jeff Brown, NVIDIA’s GM for Professional Solutions, explains why OptiX is invaluable: “This opens the door to a new level of interactive realism. Ray tracing’s inherent parallelism makes it a perfect fit for GPU computing. The OptiX engine makes it easy for developers to exploit that power to create an exciting new class of applications. It enables critical design tasks — such as examining reflections, refractions and shadow – to be performed now in real-time.”
Of course, they claim it’s the “World’s First”, but I think the guys at Caustic, Intel‘s Larrabee , and Fryrender would argue that claim.
Go download it in the NVidia Developer’s Zone.
