Archive notice: This article was originally published on January 2, 2013. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Caustic Professional, which belongs to the Imagination Technology Group, has currently announced the Caustic Series2 Ray Tracing Acceleration Boards and has already released the Visualizer plug-in for Autodesk Maya in beta.
There will be two different versions of the boards: The Caustic R2500 OpenRL PC Board, including a copy of Caustic Visualizer, is to cost 1,495 US dollars and be suitable for the latest high-end workstations. The R2100 Board, by contrast, is intended to be suitable for a wider range of workstations, from mid-range to higher-level PCs, and be available for 795 US dollars. Both boards can currently be pre-ordered. In the future, the hardware and plug-ins are intended to enable real-time ray tracing in all common 3D and animation software packages.
The trial version for Maya 2012 and 2013 on Windows is available for download and is said to remain fully functional until January 31, after which it will be replaced by the commercial version, which will be available for 299 dollars, and the Education Edition for 199 dollars. According to the website, Caustic Visualizer for 3ds Max will appear in March, and the drivers for the hardware will also be released there soon.
You can find more information here: https://caustic.com/products.php
