Rage mods not possible, maybe.

[Dragonlord]

I could definitely see a use for GPUs to accelerate ray tracing since after all you process there pixels independently. Though keep in mind that a good ray traced scene takes many hours to complete.

[xav1r]

I dont see whats so great about ray-tracing. When youre playing a fast online fps game, or a objective based one, the last thing you worry about is how awesome the light reflects on the different areas of the level. :P

[Svartalf]

I could definitely see a use for GPUs to accelerate ray tracing since after all you process there pixels independently. Though keep in mind that a good ray traced scene takes many hours to complete.

Heh... I know this. I used to DO POV-Ray, Vivid, etc. renderings.

However, that's with none of the tricks one can do to speed things up, or with more modern algorithms. They're doing "good" ray traced scenes in 640x480 at 20-30 FPS with current hardware (This doesn't get into the advanced stuff waiting in the wings...).

While I'm still skeptical right at the moment, what Intel's flogging is certainly possible and viable with what might come out of the next generation. If not in the next 6, certainly within the next 12-18.

[Svartalf]

I dont see whats so great about ray-tracing. When youre playing a fast online fps game, or a objective based one, the last thing you worry about is how awesome the light reflects on the different areas of the level. :P

Heh... It's not so much the ray-tracing itself, but the things they're doing with the eye-candy's so complex that it's entertaining. The stuff we're all talking about requires the same class of muscle to accomplish the framerates you're talking about to do with ray-tracing and the ray-tracing uses simpler and easier to follow algorithms. Moreover, an RTRT engine isn't about photorealism, it's more about doing the same operations that the rasterization engine does with simpler algorithms, lower system resources save the CPU/GPU muscle you're fielding. Photorealism is just the cherry on top.

I'm not saying that we've got it in hand right now, but we ARE close now. Is it this year? Maybe, maybe not. Is it next? Possibly. Is it in 2-3? Probably.