The professor mentioned here that there have been recently developments in BRDF calculations and models, such as with these ocean waves. I wonder what is motivating such niche and advanced computer graphics research, given that most movies and games nowadays seem to have reached near-realism with effects and simulations. Are there organizations/foundations funding research for the sake of technological innovations, or are companies and institutions still trying to get more advanced and accurate graphics for programs and media, and we just can't tell what we're missing yet? In other words - where does the funding and motivation for modern computer graphics research come from?
StaffDanCubed
I can’t really answer the question since I’m not in the industry, but I can give a few ideas: first there’s always more optimization that can be done, and achieving the same visual effects with a lighter computation load is always going to be attractive, especially for things like games where you must accommodate for different hardwares that users might have (games nowadays are always laggy at launch, so definitely something that can be worked on); speaking of games, it’s interesting that you mentioned it, because from what I’ve seen, even with all the modern developments in graphics, games for the most part still cannot achieve complete realism even with the best hardware available. This is something worth thinking about as well: what precisely makes games more challenging than movies in this regard? Intuitively we all know that games are more complex and you cannot procedurally generate a lot of things, but what are some specific fields that we need more development in to make games more realistic? Perhaps those are the fields that are actively being researched?
The professor mentioned here that there have been recently developments in BRDF calculations and models, such as with these ocean waves. I wonder what is motivating such niche and advanced computer graphics research, given that most movies and games nowadays seem to have reached near-realism with effects and simulations. Are there organizations/foundations funding research for the sake of technological innovations, or are companies and institutions still trying to get more advanced and accurate graphics for programs and media, and we just can't tell what we're missing yet? In other words - where does the funding and motivation for modern computer graphics research come from?
I can’t really answer the question since I’m not in the industry, but I can give a few ideas: first there’s always more optimization that can be done, and achieving the same visual effects with a lighter computation load is always going to be attractive, especially for things like games where you must accommodate for different hardwares that users might have (games nowadays are always laggy at launch, so definitely something that can be worked on); speaking of games, it’s interesting that you mentioned it, because from what I’ve seen, even with all the modern developments in graphics, games for the most part still cannot achieve complete realism even with the best hardware available. This is something worth thinking about as well: what precisely makes games more challenging than movies in this regard? Intuitively we all know that games are more complex and you cannot procedurally generate a lot of things, but what are some specific fields that we need more development in to make games more realistic? Perhaps those are the fields that are actively being researched?