Hi

Wow thought this list is dead :)

>So, some news, a paper from Tim Purcell implementing photon mapping on
>the GPU; pretty
>interesting but its not yet practical (i.e. photon splatting is
>comparable in results albeit simpler),
> let's hope that next generation of GPUs will prove even more versatile
> allowing cleaner implementations (is random access to memory still so
> far to come?).

Yes definitly. Having normaly not random access is what makes gpu's fast.
Look at data rates drop when using texture indirections. It seems things
are not even going to improve with new memory technology, as penalties
for band hopping are still tremendous.
Btw if you mention Purcells Paper it is
only fair to mention Carr et als, too they have a paper at the
same conference with the same topic (GI strategies) on GPUs.

>There's plenty of good implementations around, but no radically new
>approaches to GI, how comes?

Those times for radical different approaches are definitly over since
years. What I want to see more are spectral phenomens. (Yes they are
HARD) How can someone call himself a Global Illumination solver without
taking these effects into account.

--
Explore SRT with the help of Java3D
(http://wwwvis.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/relativity/minkowski)
(http://www.antiflash.net/java3d/relativity (mirror)