Nvidia Raytraces the Moon Landing

[TacticalSquid]

But can they raytrace on the dark side of the moon?

 

I've been really pleased seeing a lot of the content that various entities have been releasing to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. Nvidia is no exception. Nvidia has taken the task of iterating on the footage of the moon landing with raytracting to spice things up (though the tomshardware article mentions using actual footage, this may be just for reference and not raytracting actual footage). Additionally, commentary has been provided by some of the illustrious heroes of the space program i.e. Buzz Aldrin. Apparently, this project has been worked on for 5 years with the latest version using raytracing.

 

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/apollo-11-moon-landing-anniversary-nvidia-ray-tracing,39980.html

 

Original article from Nvidia sans tomshardware thoughts:

https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2019/07/19/real-time-ray-tracing-apollo-11-turing/
 

[RejZoR]

NVIDIA had this lunar tech demo several years ago for one of their graphic cards.

[Mira Yurizaki]

On another note, they showcased VXGI using the same subject matter for the GeForce 900 series:

Though in the case of that demo, everything was static except for the lighting.

[RollinLower]

Just now, RejZoR said:

NVIDIA had this lunar tech demo several years ago for one of their graphic cards.

i wondered why it looked off, those graphics in the animation are nothing special at all.

i guess the RTX effects are kinda nice, but that's it. nothing special by today's standards.

[Fakmykak]

Here come all the people who gonna start claiming NASA faked the moon landing.

[RejZoR]

Just now, RollinLower said:

i wondered why it looked off, those graphics in the animation are nothing special at all.

i guess the RTX effects are kinda nice, but that's it. nothing special by today's standards.

Frankly, even with ray tracing it looks pretty bad. There are elements whose light is totally off and god those blue-ish valves on the suite look worse than from a game in 2005...

[TacticalSquid]

But raytracing didnt exist back then.

[RollinLower]

1 minute ago, TacticalSquid said:

But raytracing didnt exist back then.

ofcourse it did, just not publicly.

that being said, you could take anytech demo from years past and add RTX functionality in hindsight.

[Mira Yurizaki]

2 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Frankly, even with ray tracing it looks pretty bad. There are elements whose light is totally off and god those blue-ish valves on the suite look worse than from a game in 2005...

I mean those valves were pretty colorful:

 

 

( from https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/pressure-suit-a7-l-armstrong-apollo-11-flown  )

[TacticalSquid]

3 minutes ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

I mean those valves were pretty colorful:

 

 

( from https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/pressure-suit-a7-l-armstrong-apollo-11-flown  )

Thats a pretty legit picture, gotta try this on my oled devices for a wallpaper.

[RejZoR]

5 minutes ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

I mean those valves were pretty colorful:

 

 

( from https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/pressure-suit-a7-l-armstrong-apollo-11-flown  )

I wasn't commenting on the color of the valves, I was commenting absolutelly horrendous lighting and reflections of them. It's like they didn't even have any kind of shading or real time reflections, just some generic cubemap reflections we used to see on things back in early 2000's...

[Mira Yurizaki]

2 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

I wasn't commenting on the color of the valves, I was commenting absolutelly horrendous lighting and reflections of them. It's like they didn't even have any kind of shading or real time reflections, just some generic cubemap reflections we used to see on things back in early 2000's...

They also don't look like they have a glossy finish, so specular lighting off them is going to look bland.

 

Also: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealityIsUnrealistic

[RejZoR]

No. They stick out of suite like a sore thumb, reflections and lighting is all wrong, they have zero self shadowing despite being these thick chunky things, it's just bad no matter how you turn it.

[Sauron]

Too bad the models look awful.

[BuckGup]

26 minutes ago, TacticalSquid said:

But raytracing didnt exist back then.

 

24 minutes ago, RollinLower said:

ofcourse it did, just not publicly.

that being said, you could take anytech demo from years past and add RTX functionality in hindsight.

Raytracing was first explained in 1969 publicly and has been in use for a long time. It's just real time ray tracing hasn't been possible until around 2013.

[TacticalSquid]

dude, what happened to your sig lol

[Mira Yurizaki]

15 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

No. They stick out of suite like a sore thumb, reflections and lighting is all wrong, they have zero self shadowing despite being these thick chunky things, it's just bad no matter how you turn it.

Much of the point of the first tech demo was to show that a strong enough light bouncing off material would light objects that are not directly in the light source. It was to poke at the conception the Apollo landing deniers say that there was no way Buzz Aldrin could be lit up the way he did in an iconic photo (https://www.startalkradio.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/as11-40-5866_Buzz-Aldrin-about-to-set-foot-on-the-moon-taken-by-Neil-Armstrong-7-20-69_Credit_NASA_sm-800x800.jpg) because he wasn't in direct sunlight and the only way for him to show up would be to have studio lights lighting him up.

 

I mean if you want to prove they should be "self shadowed" using source material, by all means, go ahead and show me.

[FezBoy]

Bruh, this isn't impressive.  NASA did it WAAAYYY better in '69.

[Jito463]

1 hour ago, TacticalSquid said:

But raytracing didnt exist back then.

Raytracing has been around for decades, in both film and video games.  It's just that it was always pre-rendered previously.

[Aimi]

3 hours ago, BuckGup said:

It's just real time ray tracing hasn't been possible until around 2013.

Actually, depending on what you consider to be "real-time", it was shown to be possible in 80s.

[mr moose]

If people think this is lack luster then maybe they don't fully understand/appreciate the level of computational  power required to do it. This is an absolutely astounding feat with modern technology.   The complete recreation is being done with only shitty grainy 50 year old footage as the reference,  they are calculating real time sun position, shadows and multiple reflections from that and making it interactive.

[RejZoR]

11 hours ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

Much of the point of the first tech demo was to show that a strong enough light bouncing off material would light objects that are not directly in the light source. It was to poke at the conception the Apollo landing deniers say that there was no way Buzz Aldrin could be lit up the way he did in an iconic photo (https://www.startalkradio.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/as11-40-5866_Buzz-Aldrin-about-to-set-foot-on-the-moon-taken-by-Neil-Armstrong-7-20-69_Credit_NASA_sm-800x800.jpg) because he wasn't in direct sunlight and the only way for him to show up would be to have studio lights lighting him up.

 

I mean if you want to prove they should be "self shadowed" using source material, by all means, go ahead and show me.

Self shadowing gives objects depth. If there is light, anything will drop a shadow unless it's a blinding light reflecting of something. Which would mean his whole suit belly would be bright. But wasn't. Just the valves looked like they were stuck there without any material properties other than basic specular map which gives it that fake shine. Which just makes no sense. Or the rectangular thing on the lunar module that also sticks out in the video like it was placed there without any normal and specular map what so ever.

[thorhammerz]

9 hours ago, mr moose said:

If people think this is lack luster then maybe they don't fully understand/appreciate the level of computational  power required to do it.

> Nvidia
> Real-time-Raytracing

 

...

 

I'm sure people understand, but perhaps that understanding is manifesting through more... visceral feelings .

[strajk-]

Ahem...attention everyone...JOHN MADDEN aeiou

[laminutederire]

12 hours ago, mr moose said:

If people think this is lack luster then maybe they don't fully understand/appreciate the level of computational  power required to do it. This is an absolutely astounding feat with modern technology.   The complete recreation is being done with only shitty grainy 50 year old footage as the reference,  they are calculating real time sun position, shadows and multiple reflections from that and making it interactive.

The thing is that it doesn't seem to be a really challenging scene either, so its not that impressive. Itll become impressive with large number of light sources, of different models, with raytraced participating medium, caustics, snow, sand etc.