The development of Graphics Hardware Technology is blazing fast, with new and more improved models, that out spec the previous generations with leaps and bounds, before one has the time to digest the potential of the previous generations computing power. With the progression of this technology the computer games industry has always been quick to adapt this new power and all the features that emerge as the graphic card industry learn what the customers need from their products. The current generations of games use extraordinary visual effects to heighten the immersion into the games, all of which is thanks to the constant progress of the graphics hardware, which would have been an impossibility just a couple of years ago. Ray tracing has been used for years in the movie industry for creation of stunning special effects and whole movies completely made in 3D. This technique for giving realistic imagery has always been for usage exclusively for non-interactive entertainment, since this way of rendering an image is extremely expensive when it comes to computations. To generate one single image with Ray Tracing you might need several hundred millions of calculations, which so far haven’t been proven to work in real-time situations, such as for games. However, due to the continuous increase of processing power in Graphical Processing Units, GPUs, the limits of what can, and cannot, be done in real-time is constantly shifting further and further into the realm of possibility. So this thesis focuses upon finding out just how close we are to getting ray tracing into the realm of real-time games. Two tests were performed to find out the potential a current (2009) high-end computer system has when it comes to handling a raster - ray tracing hybrid implementation. The first test is to see how well a modern GPU handles rendering of a very simple scene with phong shading and ray traced shadows without any optimizations. And the second test is with the same scenario, but this time done with a basic optimization; this last test is to illustrate the impact that possible optimizations have on ray tracers. These tests were later compared to Intel’s results with ray tracing Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.

Digital games are based on interactive virtual environments where graphics and audio are combined. In many of these games there is lot of effort put into graphics while leaving the audio part underdeveloped. Audio in games is important in order to immerse the player in the virtual environment. Where a high level of emulated reality is needed graphics and audio should be combined on a similar level of realism. To make this possible a sophisticated method for audio simulation is needed. In the audio simulation field previous attempts at using ray tracing methods were successful. With methods based on ray tracing the sound waves are traced from the audio source to the listener in the virtual environment, where the environment is based on a scene consisting of implicit surfaces. A key part in the tracing computations is finding the intersection point between a sound wave and the surfaces in the scene. Sphere tracing is an alternative method for finding the intersection point and has been shown to be feasible for real-time usage on the graphics processing unit (GPU). To be interactive a game environment runs in real-time, this fact puts a time constraint on the rendering of the graphics and audio. The time constraint is based on the time window to render one frame in the synchronized rendering of graphics and audio based on the frame rate of the graphics. Consumer computer systems of today are in general equipped with a GPU, if an audio simulation can use the GPU in real-time this is a possible implementation target in a game system. The aim of this thesis is to investigate if audio simulation with the ray tracing method based on sphere tracing is possible to run in real-time on the GPU. An audio simulation system is implemented in order to examine the possibility for real-time usage based on computation time. The results of this thesis show that audio simulation with implicit surfaces using sphere tracing is possible to use in real-time with the GPU in some form. The time consumption for an audio simulation system like this is small enough to enable it for real-time usage. Based on an interactive graphics frame rate the time consumption allows the graphics and audio computations to use the GPU in the same frame time.

Ray tracing has for a long time been used to create photo realistic images, but due to complex calculations done per pixel and slow hardware, the time to render a frame has been counted in hours or even days and this can be drawback if a change of a scene cannot be seen instantly. When ray tracing a frame takes less than a second to render we call it “real time ray tracing” or “interactive ray tracing” and many solutions have been developed and some involves distributing the computation to different computers interconnected in a very fast network (100 Mbit or higher). There are some drawbacks with this approach because most people do not have more than one computer and if they have, the computers are most likely not connected to each other. Since the hardware of today is fast enough to render a pretty complex image within minutes it should be possible to achieve real time ray tracing by combining many different methods that has been developed and reduce the render time. This work will examine what has to be sacrificed in image quality and complexity of static scenes, in order to achieve real time frame rate with ray tracing on a single computer. Some of the methods that will be covered in this work are frame optimizations, secondary rays optimization, hierarchies, culling, shadow caching, and sub sampling.

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The 2013 meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that the coupling of clouds to the Earth's climate is one of the biggest uncertainties faced in predicting climate change today. Cirrus clouds are of particular interest because the extensive variability in particle size, shape and complexity poses a number of challenges in the accurate modelling of optical properties. The dependence of the single-scattering properties on particle shape demand accurate representation of the crystal geometries in scattering models, geometries which can vary from simple hexagonal prisms to complex multi-branched aggregates. This work, presented as a series of papers, uses laboratory studies to investigate the single scattering properties of ice crystals. Of particular focus here are columns with internal cavities. The first paper investigates the phase function, P11 and asymmetry parameter, g of varying crystal habits, whilst the second paper focuses on polarised scattering. One of the main findings is the difference in internal structure between hollow columns grown at warmer temperatures (-7 degrees C) and those grown at colder temperatures (-30 degrees C). Measurements were used to create new particle geometries for use in scattering models. The third paper makes use of findings from papers 1 & 2 to create an optical parametrization for cirrus, utilizing the new particle geometry.

The thesis delves into the area of troubleshooting procedures, an interesting areafor industry. Many products in industry tend to be complex, which in turn makestroubleshooting procedures trickier. A fast and efficient repair process is oftendesired, since customers want the product to be repaired as fast as possible. The purpose of a troubleshooting procedure is to find a fault in a broken product,and to choose proper repair actions in a workshop. Such a procedure can besimplified by diagnosis tools, for example software programs that make faultconclusions based on fault codes. These tools can make such conclusions withthe help of algorithms, i.e. fault tracing algorithms. Before a product release, it is hard to specify all faults and connections in the system.New unknown fault cases are likely to arise after release, and somehow thisneed to be taken into account in the troubleshooting scenario. The troubleshootingprocedure can be made more robust, if new data could be easily incorporatedin the current structure. This work seek to answer how new data can be incorporatedin trouble shooting procedures. A good and reliable fault tracing algorithm is essential in the process of findingfaults and repair actions, which is the reason behind the focus of this thesis. Thepresented problem asks how a fault can be identified from fault codes and symptoms,in order to recommend suitable repair actions. Therefore, the problem isdivided into two parts, finding the fault and recommending repair actions. Inthe first part, three candidate algorithms for finding the faults are investigated,namely Bayesian networks, neural networks, and a method called matrix correlationinspired from latent semantic indexing. The investigation is done by trainingeach algorithm with data, and evaluating the results. The second part consists ofone method proposal for repair action recommendations and one example. Thetheoretical investigation is based on the Servo unit steering (SUS), which residein the IPS system of Volvo Penta. The primary contribution of the thesis is the evaluation of three different algorithmsand a proposal of one strategy to recommend suitable repair actions.In this study Bayesian networks are found to conform well with the desired attributes,which in turn lead to the conclusion that Bayesian networks is well suited for this problem.

Context. Reaching photo realistic results when rendering 3D graphics in real-time is a hard computational task. Ray-tracing gives results close to this but is too expensive to be run at real-time frame rates. On the other hand rasterized methods such as deferred rendering are able to keep the tight time constraints with the support of modern hardware. Objectives. The basic objective is to merge deferred rendering and ray-tracing into one rasterized pipeline for dynamic scenes. In the thesis the proposed method is explained and compared to the methods it merges. Image quality, execution time and VRAM usage impact are investigated. Methods. The proposed method uses deferred rendering to render the result of the primary rays. Some pixels are marked, based on material properties for further rendering with ray-tracing. Only reflections are presented in the thesis but it has been proven that other global illumination effects can be implemented in the ray-tracing framework used. Results and Conclusions. The hybrid method is proved through experiments to be between 2.49 to 4.19 times faster than pure ray-tracing in the proposed pipeline. For smaller scenes it can be run at frame rates close to real-time, but, for larger scenes such as the Crytek Sponza scene the real-time feeling is lost. However, interactivity is never lost. It is also proved that a simple adjustment to the original framework can save almost 2/3 of the memory spent on A-buffers. Image comparisons prove that the technique can compete with offline ray tracers in terms of image quality.

The testing technique with high dynamic range is required to meet the measurement of refractive wavefront with large distortion from test refractive surface. A general deflectometric method based on reverse Hartmann test is proposed to test refractive surfaces. Ray tracing of the modeled testing system is performed to reconstruct the refractive wavefront from test surface, in which computer-aided optimization of system geometry is performed to calibrate the geometrical error. For the refractive wavefront error with RMS 255 mu m, the testing precision better than 0.5 mu m is achieved.

The heart arises from two sources of mesoderm progenitors, the first (FHF) and the second heart field (SHF) progenitors. Mesp1 has been proposed to mark the most primitive multipotent cardiac progenitors (MCPs) common for both heart fields. However, it remains unclear whether at the single cell level, Mesp1 progenitors represent a common progenitor for the FHF and SHF. Using mosaic tracing and inducible clonal analysis with a multicolor reporter strategy, we investigated the contribution of Mesp1 cardiovascular progenitors in a temporally controlled manner during the early gastrulation. Our data indicated that the myocardium derives from ~250 Mesp1 expressing cardiac progenitors born during gastrulation. Temporal analysis of clonally labeled Mesp1 cells revealed the existence of temporally distinct populations of Mesp1 progenitors that are restricted to either the FHF or the SHF. FHF progenitors were unipotent, while SHF progenitors, were either uni- or bipotent. Microarray and single cell RT-PCR analysis of Mesp1 progenitors revealed the existence of molecularly distinct populations of Mesp1 progenitors, consistent with their lineage and regional contribution. Moreover biophysical analysis of clonal data revealed that, despite arising at different time points and contributing to different heart regions, the temporally distinct cardiac progenitors present very similar clonal dynamics. Altogether, these results provide insights into the number of cardiac progenitors and their mode of growth. Moreover they provide evidence that heart development arises from distinct populations of unipotent and bipotent cardiac progenitors expressing Mesp1 independently at different time points during gastrulation. Our data reveal that the regional segregation and lineage restriction of cardiac progenitors occurs very early during embryonic development. / Doctorat en Sciences biomédicales et pharmaceutiques (Médecine) / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This thesis explores Voxel Cone Tracing as a possible Global Illumination solutionon mobile devices.The rapid increase of performance on low-power graphics processors hasmade a big impact. More advanced computer graphics algorithms are now possi-ble on a new range of devices. One category of such algorithms is Global Illumi-nation, which calculates realistic lighting in rendered scenes. The combinationof advanced graphics and portability is of special interest to implement in newtechnologies like Virtual Reality.The result of this thesis shows that while possible to implement a state of theart Global Illumination algorithm, the performance of mobile Graphics Process-ing Units is still not enough to make it usable in real-time.