AMD have been pushing the concept of "Cinema 2.0" since just before the launch of their Radeon HD 4800 series graphics boards, and this has continued at a recent event hosted by the company in New York which showed off some rather interesting technology based around the current levels of computational horsepower on offer.



Joystiq have the full story about what AMD had on show.

One word: "Stunning!"

Great, now we're fed tech demos that are unrealistic to implement.
This stinks like how Photoshop Next was supposed to harness multi-core CPUs, PPUs and GPUs concurrently.

Unrealistic to implement, bhame? What are you on? The raw horsepower of the 4870 boards is pure incredible. 1TFLOPS of computational processing power available, and you say its unrealistic to implement a more realistic "cinematic" scene?

Sanosuke!

Dear God man, what's he on. I'd love to see the massive render farm that has that much computational general CPU power. Should be about the size of the Lucas/ILM ranch.

And here we have that same (if not more) horsepower in a 10.5 inch video card (never mind all the other fixed and programmable function hardware that no CPU has). This is as much an advance as the move from vacuum tubes to transistors.

"While practical applications of "Cinema 2.0" weren't showcased at AMD's recent event in New York..."
So if nothing practical exists it is therefore impractical until proven otherwise.

"However, there's another trick: a globe-shaped room that feature rapid high-definition photography from all angles."
...and here is your magic pill. This tech has shit to do with a specific generation, make or model of graphics cards and everything to do with cinema technology elsewhere.

"While AMD will tout that this technology is available "now" for everyone, that is far from the realistic truth."

This is fluff.

So, companies should refrain from moving towards any new technology, because it's fluff?

Glad you weren't the one deciding whether or not the move from vacuum tubes to transistors was worthwhile. Every new technology is just fluff at some point.

The technology itself is not what I'm deeming as fluff - the marketing perspective is what is the fluff here.
This has squat to do with AMD and everything to do with an extended Matrix still photography principle, as I said:

"However, there's another trick: a globe-shaped room that feature rapid high-definition photography from all angles."
...and here is your magic pill. This tech has shit to do with a specific generation, make or model of graphics cards and everything to do with cinema technology elsewhere.

This is one company deriving a 'tech demo' on technology that is primarily not what they're selling to us - so whoopdeedoo to AMD. If Ford showed you a tech demo of a cloaking device that makes an Expedition disappear, but they didn't develop the cloaking tech nor are they going to sell it... then what difference has Ford made? I don't see why any credit should be given to a GPU manufacturer for this.

I think you're missing the point that the results from that can be rendered in real-time, which is what AMD are pushing here. While the gaming angle for this technology seems rather unrealistic (in the short-term at least), the fact that this kind of thing can now be rendered in real-time is another step forward in the right direction.

Is the "Scorpion Demo" the only demo that's on the internet that showcases this Cinema 2.0?

bhame, you are missing the point all the way around. The 3D room is a tool used to gather all the information needed in order to exactly reproduce a 3D model in real time.

Someone could have sat down and created a billion poly model, but it is much more efficient and accurate to use a 3D scanner to get the data needed to reproduce the mode accurately.

Game companies use 3D scanners all the time now. It is a much more efficient way to build models needed.

Anyway, anyone got a link to a video of this demo? All I can find are screenshots and they are not on the AMD site, that I can find. What about the new Ruby demo? Anyone have a video?

skuzzy is correct here folks. All you need is a 3-D scanner -- this scanner has been featured many times and used to scan actors heads for scenes that they could not perform safely even with a stuntman double. This same scanner can also be employed for near-instant importation of heads to map around a high poly mesh.

Sanosuke!

It would be neat to use this sort of thing to import your face into a game wouldn't it? Or maybe your favorite character.

Yup, offsets of that technology are used for 3D lip-syncing. Why model and painstakingly animate what you just scan and monitor? The later is more accurate and much faster to do.

http://www.ggmania.com/?smsid=25700

That shit is impressive though.