What DOES realtime 3D actually mean?

 

A computer must always convert 3D models into a graphic before the final result can be seen. This is done with the rendering process. The 3D rendering creates a 2D image, as you know it from all architectural visualizations.

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This process can take minutes or even hours. It always depends on the used materials, the render engine* and the light and environment settings. 

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So the biggest difference between those engines is the speed at which the images can be calculated.

1 or 2 hours for a large single image rendering is still reasonable. With a rendered movie it becomes quite a problem. For one second of film, you need at least 25 frames, although nowadays renderings are often done at 30 frames per second. Newer render engines can calculate good visualizations in 4-5 minutes per frame. Now you can imagine what these values mean for an architectural visualization.

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This process is completely different for a real-time rendering. In principle, you can compare it to a computer game. A powerful graphic card can display a large number of individual images. This means that the scenes can be seen in real time and can also be rendered as a picture or an animation at almost the same speed. Only the codec*, the texture quality or the output size concerns a slight loss of time during data creation.

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*Renderengine: an engine is a program to create a 2D graphic from a 3D model. These engines are very different and are rendering faster or slower depending on the quality.

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*Codec: is a program that generates the encoding of a digital video and reduces the amount of data significantly while maintaining visually similar quality. A common format is the h.264 or h.265 codec for mp4 films.