FPGA Hardware Acceleration for Visualization with Use of the Ray Tracing Algorithm

Liberios VOKOROKOS,Viktor RUSKA,Branislav MADOŠ

doi:10.15546/aeei-2014-0010

Abstract

This paper deals with the issue of hardware acceleration of photorealistic visualization with use of ray tracing technique in real time. First part of the article briefly introduces ray tracing and presents existing hardware architectures that are accelerating computations with aim to bring real time ray tracing; second part of the article introduces the implementation of the designed solution that represents two modules implemented with use of the VHDL language and the FPGA technology. Modules are accelerating the part of ray tracing algorithm that according to the research requires the most system resources. This part consists of computation needed to find the ray-object intersection. The first module computes ray – sphere intersection, and the second computes ray – triangle intersection. Both modules are composed of number of components, which were optimized and parallel computing was applied in highest possible measure.

Highlights

It is possible to define the ray tracing as the technique used in the computer graphics to produce images with a very high degree of visual realism by calculating the trajectory of the ray of light that is entering imaginary observer’s eye
Ray tracing is able to simulate a wide variety of optical effects as the scattering, and dispersion, for example the chromatic aberration
First group includes architectures that are designed from scratch for the ray tracing

Summary

INTRODUCTION

It is possible to define the ray tracing as the technique used in the computer graphics to produce images with a very high degree of visual realism by calculating the trajectory of the ray of light that is entering imaginary observer’s eye. Ray tracing is able to simulate a wide variety of optical effects as the scattering, and dispersion, for example the chromatic aberration It can produce images with mirrors, shadows and transparent surfaces with great results. Computational complexity is the reason why this technique is best suited for applications where time or computing power does not play the key role, and the image can be rendered slow It is ideal for example in production of still images or visual effects and tricks for movies, and is not suited for real-time applications such as the video-games, or different kind of visualizations that are performed in real-time. Opportunities for its use can be found in the entertainment industry, in computer games, as well as in the engineering industry, in CAD and other applications where it is necessary to achieve the very high degree of visual realism

REAL TIME RAYTRACING

SOLLUTION AND RESULTS

Parallelization of the ray - triangle intersection computations

Hardware optimalization of the ray - triangle intersection computations

CONCLUSIONS