Ray tracing

Ray tracing is a rendering technique that simulates light propagation by tracing rays from the camera into the scene, computing intersections with geometry to determine visibility and shading. Unlike rasterization, ray tracing operates geometrically correctly and can natively handle reflections and refractions. Each pixel may require thousands of intersection tests, making it computationally intensive. Modern GPUs with dedicated RT cores enable hybrid pipelines combining rasterization and ray tracing.

Ray tracing is elegant and correct but computationally catastrophic. Its real-time adoption is a triumph of brute silicon, not algorithmic efficiency.