Interactive Ray Tracing Client

Abstract

In this paper we present an interactive GPU-based, GUI client, working with rendering server employing ray tracing based global illumination. The client is designed to guarantee interactivity (namely 1/60sec response time) no matter how slow the rendering server is. The client dynamically adjusts image resolution to match the server performance and complexity of the rendered scene. When the scene is modified, the image may appear out of focus and noisy, depending on the machine computational power, but usually is readable. With no interrupt from the client, the image is progressively improved with new data from the server. The system expliots hybrid programming model – CPU for the server and GPU for the client.