Comment Re:Yawn... (Score 2, Insightful) 116
Many of the 'pretty' effects that come with raytracing such as reflections and highlights are easily approximated in most games using cheap hacks, eg environment and normal mapping.
We have become so used to these in games now, that I dare say if you did produce a real-time raytracer you would be hard-pushed to explain to the average gamer what was so cool about it.
The bar has been raised significantly since ray-tracing was first presented in the 70s. And we've long since started looking beyond what raytracing can deliver, eg soft shadows, colour bleeding, subsurface scattering etc.
As a lighting model, its a very blunt instrument mathematically - most /.ers probably remember writing their own for some undergraduate assignment a long time ago ;).
We have become so used to these in games now, that I dare say if you did produce a real-time raytracer you would be hard-pushed to explain to the average gamer what was so cool about it.
The bar has been raised significantly since ray-tracing was first presented in the 70s. And we've long since started looking beyond what raytracing can deliver, eg soft shadows, colour bleeding, subsurface scattering etc.
As a lighting model, its a very blunt instrument mathematically - most
