Nvidia thinks gamers currently using 780-class graphics boards are longing for an upgrade. But the big deal will be voxel processing. The Maxwell GPU will implement Nvidia’s VXGI real-time global illumination capability. It’s capable of casting a configurable number of cones (probably 5 to 15 per pixel, depending on the performance of the GPU) to trace through the voxel grid and collect indirect light to apply per pixel.
VXGI can eliminate the need for pre-illumination lighting. With voxel illumination, it is possible to get specular and reflective light. Nvidia expects game engines to incorporate its voxel indirect illumination capability by the end of the year.
Nvidia is first to use a GPU to do voxel global illumination, but not the first to use voxels. Certainly they won’t be the last. AMD will likely offer a similar capability. Nvidia spoke about voxel cone processing at Siggraph 2011 and, earlier this year, at GTC, and surely AMD was listening.
Nonetheless, Nvidia has taken the lead, injecting voxels back into our vocabulary, and it has gotten the cooperation of the major game engine developers to incorporate such capabilities. The game developers will use OpenCL rather than Nvidia’s Cuda so they can run on other processors, too.
Over time other processor suppliers will vaunt their voxel-ness. But just as it has done with GPU compute and workstation graphics, Nvidia has taken and probably will hold the lead dog position in voxel land, too.
