SDF/Voxel GI-Reflections Not Worth the Tradeoff
A new rendering technology promises realistic reflections at 120FPS but denoising slows down render speeds significantly - making it difficult for developers to justify using this solution over other options available on the market today.
Jan. 06, 2023 2:22AM
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A laptop displaying a realistic reflection from an object on its screen with an accompanying caption reading "SDF/Voxel GI-Reflections - Too Slow for Realism?"
Despite the recent announcement of a new rendering technology that promises to deliver realistic reflections at 120 frames per second, it appears that the tradeoff may not be worth it. The denoising process required to make these reflections noise-free slows down render speeds to 30-40 frames per second. The new technology, called SDF/Voxel GI-Reflections, was developed by a team of engineers and is currently being tested on Apple's M1 MacBook Pro. It utilizes WebGL and raytracing with ThreeJS and RTXON for high quality reflections. While this could potentially revolutionize game development and indie development, the current results suggest that the cost in terms of render speed may be too great for most developers to accept. In addition, there are still some issues with the full range of roughness values supported by this technology. This means that while some aspects of realism can be achieved, others may still need to be simulated or faked in order to achieve desired results. Until these issues are addressed, it seems unlikely that SDF/Voxel GI-Reflections will become widely adopted as a rendering solution.