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  SSE Ray/Box Intersection Test
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A robust and branchless SSE ray/box intersection test.

In their excellent paper "A Cross-Platform Framework for Interactive Ray Tracing"[1] Markus Geimer and Stefan Müller propose a branchless SIMD friendly variation of the slab test. It's extremely fast but there's a catch, under some conditions (say (box_min-pos) == 0 while inv_dir = inf) a NaN is produced and due to the way SSE min/max work, it ends up with a bogus result. Here's an attempt to fix that corner case while keeping things tight. It also works with flat voxels and take around 33 cycles on a good day (compared to the 17 cycles of the original version), if you have a decent compiler (wink wink, nudge nudge).

Thierry Berger-Perrin.

PS: if you don't need the intersection points, just discard them.
PPS: scheduling is left as an exercise for the compiler.

[1] http://www.uni-koblenz.de/~cg/publikationen/cp_raytrace.pdf

Currently browsing [raybox.zip] (1,499 bytes) - [cotd.h] - (216 bytes)

// can you say "barebone"?
struct vec_t { float x,y,z,pad; };
struct aabb_t { 
	vec_t	min;
	vec_t	max;
};

struct ray_t { vec_t pos; vec_t inv_dir; }; struct ray_segment_t { float t_near,t_far; };


Currently browsing [raybox.zip] (1,499 bytes) - [cotd.cpp] - (2,970 bytes)

#include <float.h>
#include <math.h>
#include <xmmintrin.h>
#include "cotd.h"

#ifdef __GNUC__ #define _MM_ALIGN16 __attribute__ ((aligned (16))) #endif

// turn those verbose intrinsics into something readable. #define loadps(mem) _mm_load_ps((const float * const)(mem)) #define storess(ss,mem) _mm_store_ss((float * const)(mem),(ss)) #define minss _mm_min_ss #define maxss _mm_max_ss #define minps _mm_min_ps #define maxps _mm_max_ps #define mulps _mm_mul_ps #define subps _mm_sub_ps #define rotatelps(ps) _mm_shuffle_ps((ps),(ps), 0x39) // a,b,c,d -> b,c,d,a #define muxhps(low,high) _mm_movehl_ps((low),(high)) // low{a,b,c,d}|high{e,f,g,h} = {c,d,g,h}

static const float flt_plus_inf = -logf(0); // let's keep C and C++ compilers happy. static const float _MM_ALIGN16 ps_cst_plus_inf[4] = { flt_plus_inf, flt_plus_inf, flt_plus_inf, flt_plus_inf }, ps_cst_minus_inf[4] = { -flt_plus_inf, -flt_plus_inf, -flt_plus_inf, -flt_plus_inf };

static bool ray_box_intersect(const aabb_t &box, const ray_t &ray, ray_segment_t &rs) { // you may already have those values hanging around somewhere const __m128 plus_inf = loadps(ps_cst_plus_inf), minus_inf = loadps(ps_cst_minus_inf);

// use whatever's apropriate to load. const __m128 box_min = loadps(&box.min), box_max = loadps(&box.max), pos = loadps(&ray.pos), inv_dir = loadps(&ray.inv_dir);

// use a div if inverted directions aren't available const __m128 l1 = mulps(subps(box_min, pos), inv_dir); const __m128 l2 = mulps(subps(box_max, pos), inv_dir);

// the order we use for those min/max is vital to filter out // NaNs that happens when an inv_dir is +/- inf and // (box_min - pos) is 0. inf * 0 = NaN const __m128 filtered_l1a = minps(l1, plus_inf); const __m128 filtered_l2a = minps(l2, plus_inf);

const __m128 filtered_l1b = maxps(l1, minus_inf); const __m128 filtered_l2b = maxps(l2, minus_inf);

// now that we're back on our feet, test those slabs. __m128 lmax = maxps(filtered_l1a, filtered_l2a); __m128 lmin = minps(filtered_l1b, filtered_l2b);

// unfold back. try to hide the latency of the shufps & co. const __m128 lmax0 = rotatelps(lmax); const __m128 lmin0 = rotatelps(lmin); lmax = minss(lmax, lmax0); lmin = maxss(lmin, lmin0);

const __m128 lmax1 = muxhps(lmax,lmax); const __m128 lmin1 = muxhps(lmin,lmin); lmax = minss(lmax, lmax1); lmin = maxss(lmin, lmin1);

const bool ret = _mm_comige_ss(lmax, _mm_setzero_ps()) & _mm_comige_ss(lmax,lmin);

storess(lmin, &rs.t_near); storess(lmax, &rs.t_far);

return ret; }

void checkpointcharlie() { // let's keep things simple. // the ray is right on the edge, aimed straight into Z const aabb_t _MM_ALIGN16 box = { -1,-1,-1, 0, 1,1,1, 0 }; const ray_t _MM_ALIGN16 ray = { -1,-1,-1, 0, flt_plus_inf,flt_plus_inf,-1, 0 };

ray_segment_t rs; const bool rc = ray_box_intersect(box, ray, rs); }

The zip file viewer built into the Developer Toolbox made use of the zlib library, as well as the zlibdll source additions.

 

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