The Future of 3D Graphics Technology:Will the Movies Maintain Their Lead on the Desktop?George R. DickerSTS 145March 18, 2003Introduction:Creating cinema-quality graphics on desktop computers has always been a dream,but in the years up to and including 2003, it has become a task within reach. A parallelbetween the video game industry and Hollywood has always existed, with Hollywoodgenerally having the render-time and money to deliver technologies first. A movie maytake years to render, but current graphics cards are getting close to delivering "movie-quality" graphics in real-time. This case study attempts to answer some questions aboutthe history and future of dedicated three-dimensional computer graphics hardware. Willmovie technology continue its lead on consumer level 3D, always raising the bar for whata "cinema quality" game would require or will the two become indistinguishable? Thepaper will focus on game technology but will also talk about movies as points ofreference. For a desktop computer game to be interchangeable with a Hollywoodcreation, what takes hours for movies to render will need to be nearly instantaneous on aPC. The problem with the topic of fast moving technology is that it can easily be out ofdate in six months. To avoid that limitation, this paper will concentrate on the currentstate of the art technology, but assume that the next technological advancement will bedrastically different and hard to predict. The paper will also include information aboutfuture technologies and their possible ramifications.Early Graphics History:The history of three-dimensional computer graphics begins before it becameavailable to the public through the movies or later in video games. In the late sixties andearly seventies a number ofsmall research projects beganat government fundedlaboratories and universities.Most notably, the Universityof Utah founded its ComputerScience Department in 1965and started one of the veryfirst Computer Graphics departments soon after. Over the years a number of keytechnologies and graphics players came out of this department. While at Utah in 1974,Ed Catmull, who would later go on to work at Lucasfilm and found Pixar, developed z-buffering and rendering of curved surfaces, technologies which were crucial in the questfor photorealism (Carlson). Around the same time and also at the University of Utah,Gouraud (1971) and Phong (1975) were inventing their shading methods that wouldmake rendering of three dimensions possible. Later, Catmull, while still at Utah, wouldinvent texture-mapping, allowing for much more complicated textures and pictures to bemapped and transformedaround the surfaces ofobjects in a scene (Carlson).As a point of reference, thiswork in 3D computergraphics occurred at thesame time Microsoft wasfounded on the business oftext-based computing in 1975.In 1977, the general publicsaw the first 3D generatedscene in a movie with thewire-frame (meaning onlyoutlines, and no shading)flight sequence in Star Wars:A New Hope. Lucas requested a full 3D test sequence of five X-Wing fighters flying information, but chose to use traditional models instead when he was not impressed withthe rendering technology of the time (Yaeger). At the dawn of the eighties, people sawmore complicated 3D graphics in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn (1982), where Pixarused the first "particle rendering system to achieve its fiery effects" in the Genesissequence (Yaeger). Eighties band Dire Straights soon opened the door for (cablesubscribing) pop-culture with the 1984 video Money for Nothing, featuring "a low-detail,but very engaging animated CGI character" (Yaeger). Each of these rendering examplestook days to complete and were done on hugecomputers with processors that were notspecialized to handle the kinds of matrix andfloating-point mathematics that graphicsrequires. In 1986, however, Intel came outwith the 82786 graphics coprocessor chip andTexas Instruments introduced TMS34010Graphics System Processor, beginning the revolution of dedicated 3D graphics hardware(Carlson). But 3D games on the home computer or video game console were still yearsaway and required very expensive workstations from SUN Microsystems or SiliconGraphics (founded by James Clark, another University of Utah graduate) (Shoaff). In1989 an alien with a water-like appearance that mimicked people was created for TheAbyss, a long way from the effects used in Star Trek II or Money for Nothing. Bothleading 3D design firms of the time bid on the project, and Industrial Light and Magic(ILM) beat out Pixar, but still used Pixar Software to create the alien (Farley, et al). Thedecade closed with 3D graphics beginning to bloom on the big screen but still quite farfrom the home computer.The Nineties and the Dawn of Desktop 3D:While SUN and Silicon graphics battled in the workstation market, very littleoutside of the high-end occurred in3D graphics. Around 1994 very early3D graphics started to make it toconsumer-level video games. A gamecalled Starfox for the Super Nintendoput a RISC number cruncherdeveloped by Argonaut into thecartridge that normally only containedROM to create a very low polygon environment for the game (pcparadox.com). AfterSony set out alone to make PlayStation and the PC manufacturers caught site of it, theyrealized they were behind in the 3D realm and began to move fast. Early playersincluded nVIDIA and ATI, but also a number of other companies including Matrox and3Dfx (with their popular VooDoo line). The early nineties also saw an amazing in-fluxof 3D graphics on screen. As the technology trickled down to the consumer level, it wasbeing displaced at the top by more and more powerful (albeit expensive) hardware andsoftware. In 1994 ILM brought dinosaurs to life for Jurassic Park, melding live-actionbackgrounds with animated herds of dinosaurs. Only a year later, in 1995, Pixar uppedthe ante with a fully 3D animated movie, Toy Story. Toy Story was 4 years in the makingand was the first 3D animated feature length film (Farley, et al). 1994 also brought thefirst real first-person-shooter, JohnCarmack's Doom, which despite usingthe CPU instead of dedicated graphicschips to do the rendering rendering, wasstill the beginning of 3D gaming on
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