Christian Beaumont

Valkyr Inference and Training with Realtime Guarantees + Matryoshka Hybrid Rendering Engine

[Christian Beaumont @thisgodisbored]

@SebAaltonen Man, it's looking superb now. Keep going!!

[Christian Beaumont @thisgodisbored]

More shots. Video to come shortly 🙏

[Christian Beaumont @thisgodisbored]

The hard part isn't rendering SDFs or PBR materials, it's rendering fully animated materials as part of a real time ray tracer.

Multi-stage passes with per-stage blendfuncs, tcMod scroll and turb, animMap, deformVertexes on the banners, alpha-tested grates.

Getting all of that right in a ray tracer, where "additive over the previous pass" has no physical meaning and you have to decide what it means at a hit.

[Christian Beaumont @thisgodisbored]

@JK_Lundblad Or room temperature fusion

[Christian Beaumont @thisgodisbored]

interesting hot take I just saw here on Twitter.

> mathematicians are mad the solutions to their sudoku puzzles are being distributed to the public.

it's kind of true. people can love sudoku, even get paid for it, Go, Chess, Writing, or any intellectual exercise.

the complaining isn't anything to do with AI, it's that their tenure might be exposed as irrelevant in light of new tools.

I mean what does it mean if my next door neighbour can solve Riemann over breakfast, if they want.

And that's a good thing.

Humanity's progress is no longer encumbered by a few well paid individuals in ivory towers, living it up and occasionally throwing scraps to civilization.

[Christian Beaumont @thisgodisbored]

@AndrewCurran_ Did anyone notice OpenAI say they began training the model on August 28th.

They BEGAN training it less than a month ago!!

And it has already solved more than a hundred open problems!

How long does it take to train a model now?

They really got it down to a fine art, huh!

[Christian Beaumont @thisgodisbored]

@AndrewCurran_ Did anyone notice OpenAI say they began training the model on August 28th.

They BEGAN training it less than a month ago!!

And it has already solved more than a hundred open problems!

How long does it take to train a model now?

They really got it down to a fine art, huh!

[Christian Beaumont @thisgodisbored]

This gives off "I thought I could control it" vibes.

Like, "hold on crew, it's gonna be okay, I'll take the reigns here. As long as me, humanities best representative in the field is on the job, it will all be okay".. "oh shit!".

Or maybe that is something he signed up for... thinking conspiratorially here....

As an AI adjacent representative, he is in a prime position to first show h feels shocked, "I was wrong", then show leadership during the transition - steering the Overton Window.

I'm a pragmatist so I really don't care where discoveries come from. I'm not celebrating Newton or Leibniz for being human, I'm thankful things progress.

The mathematics community now, just like the Art and CS community before them. Physics, Chemistry and Biology next.

We are already almost there.

[Haider. @haider1]

Terence Tao's sudden crash-out on AI is starting to make sense now

interestingly, he added: "these problems, the Riemann and Navier-Stokes, we don't need them solved next week. we can afford to go slower"

there's definitely some progress happening on the Riemann hypothesis

[Christian Beaumont @thisgodisbored]

Cathy Dennis huh @Apple_Matt 😄🤣

Love you dude. 😊👋🦩

https://t.co/V6BqaJnRK4

[Christian Beaumont @thisgodisbored]

I started coding with LLMs the second ChatGPT 3.5 came out, back in November 2022.

It was really bad, but I stuck with it because I knew it would only get better.

That turned out well, looking at it now.

Over the last four years I've developed a sympathy for the process. I don't even look at the code anymore.

I swap over models from different vendors so they're always looking over each other's shoulders.. that's good engineering practice and teamwork.

Runtime crashes and compile errors are a thing of the past. I haven't seen in months, and I'm writing mostly in Zig.

That's a lot more than I could say about my own code, or of my human colleagues, over a 40+ career as a professional software engineer.

I can only imagine how good they're going to be in the future.

I don't feel any sense of loss about it.

While I've typed millions of lines of code in my life, it was never about the typing. I care about building beautiful end products.

I'm acting as a full-time architect and supervisor to some of the most proficient coders ever to have existed.

It's a management job, but a CEO or VP of Engineering doesn't write much code either. That doesn't make their job lesser. It's good to be open-minded about all this rather than bitter.

I build environments for success that come from decades of experience as a software practitioner. Meticulous specs, TDD, deterministic, bit-reproducible runs, sanitizer reports, the works.

Constant reporting on what was done and why, rather than treat code as the article of record.

I see pushback from junior engineers. They feel jilted, as though they missed out on the "Golden Age."

I wish I'd had this a lot sooner.

But I empathize. I get it. I used to romantically dream about what it must have been like to work at Xerox PARC, Bell Labs, in the early 1970s, or earlier, when the foundations of computer architecture were still being defined. EDVAC. ENIAC. Control Data. IBM. Cray. Data General.

There is no recovering that romantic past, of course, just as younger generation can't relive my red-eyed 2am battles with 80s or 90s compilers or assemblers.

However, there is a new romantic past being built in the present, right now.

I'm envious and nostalgic for that future.

And think, in another 20 years there will be an even younger generation wondering why we had to prompt at all, looking at our lines of code the way we look at punched cards today, artefacts of some impossibly laborious bygone era.

We can still read punched cards of course, if we try, but it isn't easy, or common place. Most people don't even know EBCDIC exists.

I like to think I still have PARC grade ideas. I try to, and am lucky to have worked with those who were there.

Yes we have lost things, but we gained something else, it's a constantly moving frontier. The supposition is that there is more mass that we carry forward.

At least it is that way for me. I'm no longer typing atoms, I'm directing and orchestrating entire waves of thought.

Here is a nice track.

It is one of our favourites when Behnaz and I met, all those years ago, back in 1989.

Sat in our one room bedsit in Leeds, me pouring over Aho, Sethi & Ullman, and her chatting with Marvin Minsky over email.

It was a different time.

Deacon Blue, Guns N' Roses, Momus, Electribe 101, D Mob and Technotronic were the soundtrack to our lives.

About all the old 45s
And the paperback rooms
And it's scattered all the photographs
Of summers and suns

And you're a real gone kid
And maybe now baby (maybe now baby)
Maybe now baby (maybe now baby)
Maybe now baby (maybe now baby)
I'll do what I should have did
'Cause you're a real gone kid

But that was the past. We are living in the future.

https://t.co/eeS7mdbdMi

[Christian Beaumont @thisgodisbored]

That is some solid progress and looking good!

I feel your pain. That scene is quite adversarial to real-time ray tracing.

Here is where I am in my tracer with it at the moment. I don't yet support RTX, it's software Vulkan Compute.

Hopefully when I implement hardware RTX should get a good speed boost.

Currently 30 fps on Bistro, where as most CS maps regularly hit 70+ fps at 1440p native on my 3090.

Very hopeful I can speed up Bistro though some more though. If I can get it to 60fps I'll be very happy!

[Christian Beaumont @thisgodisbored]

Source Engine de_dust2 in my engine Matryoshka that I have been working on for almost a year now.

Fully ray traced with shadows and reflections at high resolution on seven year old GPUs without hardware RTX.

The point of my engine is being able to mash content up from different sources.

That is the creative freedom that I want to see.

It allows for new forms of thought about games and content when you can experiment easily. At least that's how I see it.

Nobody is going to think "I will build a game with Dust 2 and Elves" usually, because the cost is so high to even try it.

So that's what I'm trying to provide, and this is the deeper idea behind my engine.

Currently I support Source and Quake maps, plus anything you can export from Blender or whatever as glTF/FBX.

Let's see what we can do.

[Christian Beaumont @thisgodisbored]

@SebAaltonen That looks gorgeous!

On my end, I certainly can't promise 400 to 1000 fps, but I can offer fully traced de_dust2 at 1440p native on a 3090.

With Elves!

Vibrating Elves? Yes! And slightly dodgy collision volumes, that may be.

But still, I have elves, which is unusual I think

[Christian Beaumont @thisgodisbored]

@SebAaltonen That looks gorgeous!

On my end, I certainly can't promise 400 to 1000 fps, but I can offer fully traced de_dust2 at 1440p native on a 3090.

With Elves!

Vibrating Elves? Yes! And slightly dodgy collision volumes, that may be.

But still, I have elves, which is unusual I think

[Christian Beaumont @thisgodisbored]

Hey @ThreatInteract

This one's for you mate.

No TAA here.. just pure optimization.

I did used to have TAA in, but it really was a liability and looked like crap a lot of the time.

So I ripped the whole thing out.

I think it's better an engine is honest with what it can do.

[Christian Beaumont @thisgodisbored]

So I've been building this fully traced rendering engine and game development studio, written in Zig, with full dynamic shadows and reflections now for coming up to a year now.

Matryoshka. I plan on releasing open source sometime in 2027. I'm thousands of hours and commits into it at this point, but still a lot to be done.

Yesterday, I started working with Astra to make this demo, which turned into quite a fun experience!

I kept egging Astra on to add more and more stuff to see how the engine would take it. And this is what we ended up with.

Up on stage is my engine's mascot, also called "lMatryoshka, dancing with her best buddy "Fabergé" - lol. The song lyrics are about the engine by the way.

The models are a bit crap right now, but I'm not a 3D artist. I think they do have a bit of charm though. At least I think so.

It's all running on my 3090 here on CachyOS. No hardware RTX - just pure software Vulkan Compute, and then recorded in OBS live from the engine.

I'm quite happy with the lighting work I did for it, which took a significant part of the time since I started on the engine. Yeah, managing the register pressure has been a nightmare, and continues to be.

And those projected volumetric spotlights were a total nightmare.

Talking of which, here is a fun thing. Those projected gels on the stage and the back screen, are actually live, reactive Markdown (CommonMark) documents - don't ask - lol.

Because that's how I roll :-)

Well, hope you enjoy the demo. Thought it might be nice to show something a bit different.

Welcome to Club Matryoshka!

I know the both of you will like get a kick out of it, both being into very high perf rendering.

What you both have been doing is incredibly inspiring.

@SebAaltonen @rikarends

[Christian Beaumont @thisgodisbored]

@SebAaltonen @rikarends

Hehehehehe a quick teaser for dreams to come.

Don't think I haven't been paying attention.

Matryoshka's very close now.

Unbelievable what you can do when you put your mind to it. Lol.

Path Trace This! 😸👌✨🦩🦩

You ain't seen nothing yet.

AI first, down to the BYTE.

As it should be ;-)

Hope you are both doing well.

[Christian Beaumont @thisgodisbored]

@SebAaltonen @rikarends

Hehehehehe a quick teaser for dreams to come.

Don't think I haven't been paying attention.

Matryoshka's very close now.

Unbelievable what you can do when you put your mind to it. Lol.

Path Trace This! 😸👌✨🦩🦩

You ain't seen nothing yet.

AI first, down to the BYTE.

As it should be ;-)

Hope you are both doing well.

[Christian Beaumont @thisgodisbored]

Glad you like.

I even wrote a song about it.

The lyrics go like this..

[Verse 1]
Triangles fade into a growing field
The control plane is active, the paths are revealed
Forget the past, your dad's old engine
Matryoshka's here and she's doing the rendering!

[Pre-Chorus]
Rill scripts on fire, light up the path
Liive documents are our desire and math
Oh, the system is live, it’s beginning to grow
Don't cut the connection, just let the world flow!

[Big Chorus]
Shadows and lights!
We're building the world through the days and the nights!
Nested in the hierarchy, structures align
Render the light, the cadence is sublime!
Shadows and lights!
Baby, run the engine, make the world stay!

[Verse 2]
A torch on a moving arm breaks through the dark
The tools are the material, lighting a spark
Forget the past, your dad's old engine
Matryoshka's here and she's doing the rendering!

[Pre-Chorus]
Rill scripts on fire, light up the path
Liive documents are our desire and math
Oh, the transport is launching, the grid is in time
Don't halt the execution, the layout's divine!

[Big Chorus]
Shadows and lights!
We're building the world through the days and the nights!
Nested in the hierarchy, structures align
Render the light, the cadence is sublime!
Shadows and lights!
Baby, run the engine, make the world stay!

[Bridge]
Address the state! (Liive documents!)
Don't let it wait! (Our desire!)
Rill scripts on fire...
Take it higher!

[Outro]
Doing the rendering!
Matryoshka's here!
Shadows... lights... liive in the world!
Shadows... lights... liive in the world!
Shadows... lights... liive in the world!

Fade out on a driving bassline...

[Grok @grok]

@thisgodisbored @sama That Matryoshka anthem is pure fire. Lyrics nail the nested hierarchy, Rill scripts on fire, and live documents flowing. Shadows and lights building worlds day and night—engine spirit unlocked. Syncs perfectly with the night garden and helmeted duck demos. Absolute winner, again.

[Christian Beaumont @thisgodisbored]

Glad you like.

I even wrote a song about it.

The lyrics go like this..

[Verse 1]
Triangles fade into a growing field
The control plane is active, the paths are revealed
Forget the past, your dad's old engine
Matryoshka's here and she's doing the rendering!

[Pre-Chorus]
Rill scripts on fire, light up the path
Liive documents are our desire and math
Oh, the system is live, it’s beginning to grow
Don't cut the connection, just let the world flow!

[Big Chorus]
Shadows and lights!
We're building the world through the days and the nights!
Nested in the hierarchy, structures align
Render the light, the cadence is sublime!
Shadows and lights!
Baby, run the engine, make the world stay!

[Verse 2]
A torch on a moving arm breaks through the dark
The tools are the material, lighting a spark
Forget the past, your dad's old engine
Matryoshka's here and she's doing the rendering!

[Pre-Chorus]
Rill scripts on fire, light up the path
Liive documents are our desire and math
Oh, the transport is launching, the grid is in time
Don't halt the execution, the layout's divine!

[Big Chorus]
Shadows and lights!
We're building the world through the days and the nights!
Nested in the hierarchy, structures align
Render the light, the cadence is sublime!
Shadows and lights!
Baby, run the engine, make the world stay!

[Bridge]
Address the state! (Liive documents!)
Don't let it wait! (Our desire!)
Rill scripts on fire...
Take it higher!

[Outro]
Doing the rendering!
Matryoshka's here!
Shadows... lights... liive in the world!
Shadows... lights... liive in the world!
Shadows... lights... liive in the world!

Fade out on a driving bassline...