Analyst group Jon Peddie Research has just published a forecast for the computer graphics industry (one week before SIGGRAPH, even, what a coincidence) where they track the recent ‘bounce back’ from the last year’s recession. They predict that the recent slowdown, combined with aging equipment, improved algorithms, and an insatiable thirst for faster better graphics will help to drive the industry to new record-breaking heights.
Today, software programs for making movies and computer games, designing products, and creating simulations are exploiting the features of today’s CG hardware. We’re seeing the results in amazing realism and real time capabilities for the next generation of films and designs, and the trend is accelerating.
The demand for programmers, artists, scientists, and designers has picked up again and firms are actively looking for people who can use and exploit these new programs and their associated hardware accelerators. The economic recession has caused a slow down but it’s going to look like a small bump in the road by 2013.
I do like that he ackowledges how Scientific visualization as an industry has largely stagnated in recent years, but is primed for a resurgence with new hardware and capabilities. In my work, I’ve personally seen this as GPU’s are an easier sell to HPC users as they can dual-purpose them now as Visualization Accelerators and Compute Accelerators, and software-emulated rendering systems like Mesa are beginning to break down at extreme scales. GPUs right now may be more of a panacea than a cure, but they do a great job alleviating the pain of rendering modern simulation results and look to be scaling such that better algorithms (like Ray Tracing) can benefit greatly from the acceleration as well.
via Jon Peddie Research Says the CG market will exceed $150 billion in 2013 – Comments – Press Releases.
