Ray tracing (graphics)

In 3D computer graphics, ray tracing is a technique for modeling

light transport for use in a wide variety of rendering algorithms for
generating digital images.

On a spectrum of computational cost and visual fidelity, ray tracing-

based rendering techniques, such as ray casting, recursive ray tracing,
distribution ray tracing, photon mapping and path tracing, are
generally slower and higher fidelity than scanline rendering
methods.[1] Thus, ray tracing was first deployed in applications
where taking a relatively long time to render could be tolerated, such
as still CGI images, and film and television visual effects (VFX), but
was less suited to real-time applications such as video games, where This recursive ray tracing of
speed is critical in rendering each frame.[2] reflective colored spheres on a
white surface demonstrates the
Since 2019, however, hardware acceleration for real-time ray tracing effects of shallow depth of field,
has become standard on new commercial graphics cards, and "area" light sources, and diffuse
graphics APIs have followed suit, allowing developers to use hybrid interreflection. (c. 2008)
ray tracing and rasterization-based rendering in games and other real-
time applications with a lesser hit to frame render times.

Ray tracing is capable of simulating a variety of optical effects,[3] such as reflection, refraction, soft
shadows, scattering, depth of field, motion blur, caustics, ambient occlusion and dispersion phenomena
(such as chromatic aberration). It can also be used to trace the path of sound waves in a similar fashion to
light waves, making it a viable option for more immersive sound design in video games by rendering
realistic reverberation and echoes.[4] In fact, any physical wave or particle phenomenon with approximately
linear motion can be simulated with ray tracing.

Ray tracing-based rendering techniques that involve sampling light over a domain generate image noise
artifacts that can be addressed by tracing a very large number of rays or using denoising techniques.

History
The idea of ray tracing comes from as early as the 16th century when it was described by Albrecht Dürer,
who is credited for its invention.[5] Dürer described multiple techniques for projecting 3-D scenes onto an
image plane. Some of these project chosen geometry onto the image plane, as is done with rasterization
today. Others determine what geometry is visible along a given ray, as is done with ray tracing. [6][7]

Using a computer for ray tracing to generate shaded pictures was first accomplished by Arthur Appel in
1968.[8] Appel used ray tracing for primary visibility (determining the closest surface to the camera at each
image point) by tracing a ray through each point to be shaded into the scene to identify the visible surface.
The closest surface intersected by the ray was the visible one. This
non-recursive ray tracing-based rendering algorithm is today called
"ray casting". His algorithm then traced secondary rays to the light
source from each point being shaded to determine whether the point
was in shadow or not. "Draughtsman Making a Perspective
Drawing of a Reclining Woman" by
Later, in 1971, Goldstein and Nagel of MAGI (Mathematical Albrecht Dürer, possibly from 1532,
Applications Group, Inc.)[9] published "3-D Visual Simulation", shows a man using a grid layout to
wherein ray tracing was used to make shaded pictures of solids. At create an image. The German
the ray-surface intersection point found, they computed the surface Renaissance artist is credited with
normal and, knowing the position of the light source, computed the first describing the technique.
brightness of the pixel on the screen. Their publication describes a
short (30 second) film “made using the University of Maryland’s
display hardware outfitted with a 16mm camera. The film showed the
helicopter and a simple ground level gun emplacement. The
helicopter was programmed to undergo a series of maneuvers
including turns, take-offs, and landings, etc., until it eventually is shot
Dürer woodcut of Jacob de Keyser's
down and crashed.” A CDC 6600 computer was used. MAGI
invention. With de Keyser's device,
produced an animation video called MAGI/SynthaVision Sampler in the artist's viewpoint was fixed by an
1974.[10] eye hook inserted in the wall. This
was joined by a silk string to a gun-
Another early instance of ray casting came in 1976, when Scott Roth sight style instrument, with a pointed
created a flip book animation in Bob Sproull's computer graphics vertical element at the front and a
course at Caltech. The scanned pages are shown as a video in the peephole at the back. The artist
accompanying image. Roth's computer program noted an edge point aimed at the object and traced its
outline on the glass, keeping the
at a pixel location if the ray intersected a bounded plane different
eyepiece aligned with the string to
from that of its neighbors. Of course, a ray could intersect multiple
maintain the correct angle of vision.
planes in space, but only the surface point closest to the camera was
noted as visible. The platform was a DEC PDP-10, a Tektronix
storage-tube display, and a printer which would create an image of
the display on rolling thermal paper. Roth extended the framework,
introduced the term ray casting in the context of computer graphics
and solid modeling, and in 1982 published his work while at GM
Research Labs.[11]

Turner Whitted was the first to show recursive ray tracing for mirror
reflection and for refraction through translucent objects, with an
angle determined by the solid's index of refraction, and to use ray Flip book created in 1976 at Caltech
tracing for anti-aliasing.[12] Whitted also showed ray traced shadows.
He produced a recursive ray-traced film called The Compleat
Angler[13] in 1979 while an engineer at Bell Labs. Whitted's deeply recursive ray tracing algorithm reframed
rendering from being primarily a matter of surface visibility determination to being a matter of light
transport. His paper inspired a series of subsequent work by others that included distribution ray tracing and
finally unbiased path tracing, which provides the rendering equation framework that has allowed computer
generated imagery to be faithful to reality.

For decades, global illumination in major films using computer-generated imagery was approximated with
additional lights. Ray tracing-based rendering eventually changed that by enabling physically-based light
transport. Early feature films rendered entirely using path tracing include Monster House (2006), Cloudy
with a Chance of Meatballs (2009),[14] and Monsters University (2013).[15]

Algorithm overview

The ray-tracing algorithm builds an image by

extending rays into a scene and bouncing them
off surfaces and towards sources of light to
approximate the color value of pixels.

Optical ray tracing describes a method for producing

visual images constructed in 3-D computer graphics
Illustration of the ray-tracing algorithm for one
environments, with more photorealism than either ray
pixel (up to the first bounce)
casting or scanline rendering techniques. It works by
tracing a path from an imaginary eye through each pixel
in a virtual screen, and calculating the color of the object visible through it.

Scenes in ray tracing are described mathematically by a programmer or by a visual artist (normally using
intermediary tools). Scenes may also incorporate data from images and models captured by means such as
digital photography.

Typically, each ray must be tested for intersection with some subset of all the objects in the scene. Once the
nearest object has been identified, the algorithm will estimate the incoming light at the point of intersection,
examine the material properties of the object, and combine this information to calculate the final color of the
pixel. Certain illumination algorithms and reflective or translucent materials may require more rays to be re-
cast into the scene.

It may at first seem counterintuitive or "backward" to send rays away from the camera, rather than into it (as
actual light does in reality), but doing so is many orders of magnitude more efficient. Since the
overwhelming majority of light rays from a given light source do not make it directly into the viewer's eye, a
"forward" simulation could potentially waste a tremendous amount of computation on light paths that are
never recorded.

Therefore, the shortcut taken in ray tracing is to presuppose that a given ray intersects the view frame. After
either a maximum number of reflections or a ray traveling a certain distance without intersection, the ray
ceases to travel and the pixel's value is updated.
Calculate rays for rectangular viewport
On input we have (in calculation we use vector normalization and cross product):

eye position
target position
field of view - for humans, we can assume
numbers of square pixels on viewport vertical and horizontal direction
numbers of actual pixel
vertical vector which indicates where is up and down, usually - roll
component which determine viewport rotation around point C (where the axis of rotation is the
ET section)

The idea is to find the position of each viewport pixel center which allows us to find the line going from
eye through that pixel and finally get the ray described by point and vector (or its
normalisation ). First we need to find the coordinates of the bottom left viewport pixel and find the
next pixel by making a shift along directions parallel to viewport (vectors i ) multiplied by the size of
the pixel. Below we introduce formulas which include distance between the eye and the viewport.
However, this value will be reduced during ray normalization (so you might as well accept that
and remove it from calculations).

Pre-calculations: let's find and normalise vector and vectors which are parallel to the viewport (all
depicted on above picture)

note that viewport center , next we calculate viewport sizes divided by 2 including

inverse aspect ratio

and then we calculate next-pixel shifting vectors along directions parallel to viewport ( ), and left
bottom pixel center

Calculations: note and ray so

Detailed description of ray tracing computer algorithm and its

genesis

What happens in nature (simplified)

In nature, a light source emits a ray of light which travels, eventually, to a surface that interrupts its progress.
One can think of this "ray" as a stream of photons traveling along the same path. In a perfect vacuum this
ray will be a straight line (ignoring relativistic effects). Any combination of four things might happen with
this light ray: absorption, reflection, refraction and fluorescence. A surface may absorb part of the light ray,
resulting in a loss of intensity of the reflected and/or refracted light. It might also reflect all or part of the
light ray, in one or more directions. If the surface has any transparent or translucent properties, it refracts a
portion of the light beam into itself in a different direction while absorbing some (or all) of the spectrum
(and possibly altering the color). Less commonly, a surface may absorb some portion of the light and
fluorescently re-emit the light at a longer wavelength color in a random direction, though this is rare enough
that it can be discounted from most rendering applications. Between absorption, reflection, refraction and
fluorescence, all of the incoming light must be accounted for, and no more. A surface cannot, for instance,
reflect 66% of an incoming light ray, and refract 50%, since the two would add up to be 116%. From here,
the reflected and/or refracted rays may strike other surfaces, where their absorptive, refractive, reflective and
fluorescent properties again affect the progress of the incoming rays. Some of these rays travel in such a way
that they hit our eye, causing us to see the scene and so contribute to the final rendered image.

Ray casting algorithm

The idea behind ray casting, the predecessor to recursive ray tracing, is to trace rays from the eye, one per
pixel, and find the closest object blocking the path of that ray. Think of an image as a screen-door, with each
square in the screen being a pixel. This is then the object the eye sees through that pixel. Using the material
properties and the effect of the lights in the scene, this algorithm can determine the shading of this object.
The simplifying assumption is made that if a surface faces a light, the light will reach that surface and not be
blocked or in shadow. The shading of the surface is computed using traditional 3-D computer graphics
shading models. One important advantage ray casting offered over older scanline algorithms was its ability
to easily deal with non-planar surfaces and solids, such as cones and spheres. If a mathematical surface can
be intersected by a ray, it can be rendered using ray casting. Elaborate objects can be created by using solid
modeling techniques and easily rendered.

Volume ray casting algorithm

In the method of volume ray casting, each ray is traced so that color and/or density can be sampled along the
ray and then be combined into a final pixel color. This is often used when objects cannot be easily
represented by explicit surfaces (such as triangles), for example when rendering clouds or 3D medical scans.

SDF ray marching algorithm

In SDF ray marching, or sphere tracing,[16] each ray is traced in
multiple steps to approximate an intersection point between the ray
and a surface defined by a signed distance function (SDF). The SDF
is evaluated for each iteration in order to be able take as large steps as
possible without missing any part of the surface. A threshold is used Visualization of SDF ray marching
to cancel further iteration when a point is reached that is close algorithm
enough to the surface. This method is often used for 3-D fractal
rendering.[17]

Recursive ray tracing algorithm

Earlier algorithms traced rays from the eye into the scene until they hit an object, but determined the ray
color without recursively tracing more rays. Recursive ray tracing continues the process. When a ray hits a
surface, additional rays may be cast because of reflection, refraction, and shadow.:[18]

A reflection ray is traced in the mirror-reflection direction. The closest object it intersects is
what will be seen in the reflection.
A refraction ray traveling through transparent material works similarly, with the addition that a
refractive ray could be entering or exiting a material. Turner Whitted extended the
mathematical logic for rays passing through a transparent solid to include the effects of
refraction.[19]
 A shadow ray is traced toward each light. If any
opaque object is found between the surface and
the light, the surface is in shadow and the light
does not illuminate it.
These recursive rays add more realism to ray traced
images.

Advantages over other rendering

methods
Ray tracing-based rendering's popularity stems from its
basis in a realistic simulation of light transport, as Ray tracing can create photorealistic images.
compared to other rendering methods, such as
rasterization, which focuses more on the realistic
simulation of geometry. Effects such as reflections and
shadows, which are difficult to simulate using other
algorithms, are a natural result of the ray tracing
algorithm. The computational independence of each ray
makes ray tracing amenable to a basic level of
parallelization,[20] but the divergence of ray paths makes
high utilization under parallelism quite difficult to
achieve in practice.[21]
In addition to the high degree of realism, ray
tracing can simulate the effects of a camera due
Disadvantages to depth of field and aperture shape (in this case
A serious disadvantage of ray tracing is performance a hexagon).

(though it can in theory be faster than traditional scanline

rendering depending on scene complexity vs. number of
pixels on-screen). Until the late 2010s, ray tracing in real
time was usually considered impossible on consumer
hardware for nontrivial tasks. Scanline algorithms and
other algorithms use data coherence to share
computations between pixels, while ray tracing normally
starts the process anew, treating each eye ray separately.
However, this separation offers other advantages, such as
the ability to shoot more rays as needed to perform
spatial anti-aliasing and improve image quality where
needed.
The number of reflections, or bounces, a "ray"
Whitted-style recursive ray tracing handles can make, and how it is affected each time it
interreflection and optical effects such as refraction, but encounters a surface, is controlled by settings in
is not generally photorealistic. Improved realism occurs the software. In this image, each ray was allowed
when the rendering equation is fully evaluated, as the to reflect up to 16 times. Multiple "reflections of
equation conceptually includes every physical effect of reflections" can thus be seen in these spheres.
(Image created with Cobalt.)
light flow. However, this is infeasible given the
computing resources required, and the limitations on
geometric and material modeling fidelity. Path tracing is
an algorithm for evaluating the rendering equation and
thus gives a higher fidelity simulations of real-world
lighting.

Reversed direction of traversal of scene

by the rays The number of refractions a “ray” can make, and
how it is affected each time it encounters a
The process of shooting rays from the eye to the light surface that permits the transmission of light, is
source to render an image is sometimes called backwards controlled by settings in the software. Here, each
ray tracing, since it is the opposite direction photons ray was set to refract or reflect (the "depth") up to
actually travel. However, there is confusion with this 9 times. Fresnel reflections were used and
terminology. Early ray tracing was always done from the caustics are visible. (Image created with V-Ray.)

eye, and early researchers such as James Arvo used the

term backwards ray tracing to mean shooting rays from
the lights and gathering the results. Therefore, it is clearer to distinguish eye-based versus light-based ray
tracing.

While the direct illumination is generally best sampled using eye-based ray tracing, certain indirect effects
can benefit from rays generated from the lights. Caustics are bright patterns caused by the focusing of light
off a wide reflective region onto a narrow area of (near-)diffuse surface. An algorithm that casts rays directly
from lights onto reflective objects, tracing their paths to the eye, will better sample this phenomenon. This
integration of eye-based and light-based rays is often expressed as bidirectional path tracing, in which paths
are traced from both the eye and lights, and the paths subsequently joined by a connecting ray after some
length.[22][23]

Photon mapping is another method that uses both light-based and eye-based ray tracing; in an initial pass,
energetic photons are traced along rays from the light source so as to compute an estimate of radiant flux as
a function of 3-dimensional space (the eponymous photon map itself). In a subsequent pass, rays are traced
from the eye into the scene to determine the visible surfaces, and the photon map is used to estimate the
illumination at the visible surface points.[24][25] The advantage of photon mapping versus bidirectional path
tracing is the ability to achieve significant reuse of photons, reducing computation, at the cost of statistical
bias.

An additional problem occurs when light must pass through a very narrow aperture to illuminate the scene
(consider a darkened room, with a door slightly ajar leading to a brightly lit room), or a scene in which most
points do not have direct line-of-sight to any light source (such as with ceiling-directed light fixtures or
torchieres). In such cases, only a very small subset of paths will transport energy; Metropolis light transport
is a method which begins with a random search of the path space, and when energetic paths are found,
reuses this information by exploring the nearby space of rays.[26]

To the right is an image showing a simple example of a path of rays recursively generated from the camera
(or eye) to the light source using the above algorithm. A diffuse surface reflects light in all directions.

First, a ray is created at an eyepoint and traced through a pixel and into the scene, where it hits a diffuse
surface. From that surface the algorithm recursively generates a reflection ray, which is traced through the
scene, where it hits another diffuse surface. Finally, another reflection ray is generated and traced through
the scene, where it hits the light source and is absorbed. The color of the pixel now depends on the colors of
the first and second diffuse surface and the color of the light emitted
from the light source. For example, if the light source emitted white
light and the two diffuse surfaces were blue, then the resulting color
of the pixel is blue.

Example
As a demonstration of the principles involved in ray tracing, consider
Image showing recursively
how one would find the intersection between a ray and a sphere. This generated rays from the "eye" (and
is merely the math behind the line–sphere intersection and the through an image plane) to a light
subsequent determination of the colour of the pixel being calculated. source after encountering two
There is, of course, far more to the general process of ray tracing, but diffuse surfaces
this demonstrates an example of the algorithms used.

In vector notation, the equation of a sphere with center and radius is

Any point on a ray starting from point with direction (here is a unit vector) can be written as

where is its distance between and . In our problem, we know , , (e.g. the position of a light source)
and , and we need to find . Therefore, we substitute for :

Let for simplicity; then

Knowing that d is a unit vector allows us this minor simplification:

This quadratic equation has solutions

The two values of found by solving this equation are the two ones such that are the points where
the ray intersects the sphere.

Any value which is negative does not lie on the ray, but rather in the opposite half-line (i.e. the one starting
from with opposite direction).

If the quantity under the square root (the discriminant) is negative, then the ray does not intersect the sphere.
Let us suppose now that there is at least a positive solution, and let be the minimal one. In addition, let us
suppose that the sphere is the nearest object on our scene intersecting our ray, and that it is made of a
reflective material. We need to find in which direction the light ray is reflected. The laws of reflection state
that the angle of reflection is equal and opposite to the angle of incidence between the incident ray and the
normal to the sphere.

The normal to the sphere is simply

where is the intersection point found before. The reflection direction can be found by a
reflection of with respect to , that is

Thus the reflected ray has equation

Now we only need to compute the intersection of the latter ray with our field of view, to get the pixel which
our reflected light ray will hit. Lastly, this pixel is set to an appropriate color, taking into account how the
color of the original light source and the one of the sphere are combined by the reflection.

Adaptive depth control

Adaptive depth control means that the renderer stops generating reflected/transmitted rays when the
computed intensity becomes less than a certain threshold. There must always be a set maximum depth or
else the program would generate an infinite number of rays. But it is not always necessary to go to the
maximum depth if the surfaces are not highly reflective. To test for this the ray tracer must compute and
keep the product of the global and reflection coefficients as the rays are traced.

Example: let Kr = 0.5 for a set of surfaces. Then from the first surface the maximum contribution is 0.5, for
the reflection from the second: 0.5 × 0.5 = 0.25, the third: 0.25 × 0.5 = 0.125, the fourth: 0.125 × 0.5 =
0.0625, the fifth: 0.0625 × 0.5 = 0.03125, etc. In addition we might implement a distance attenuation factor
such as 1/D2, which would also decrease the intensity contribution.

For a transmitted ray we could do something similar but in that case the distance traveled through the object
would cause even faster intensity decrease. As an example of this, Hall & Greenberg found that even for a
very reflective scene, using this with a maximum depth of 15 resulted in an average ray tree depth of 1.7.[27]

Bounding volumes
Enclosing groups of objects in sets of bounding volume hierarchies (BVH) decreases the amount of
computations required for ray tracing. A cast ray is first tested for an intersection with the bounding volume,
and then if there is an intersection, the volume is recursively divided until the ray hits the object. The best
type of bounding volume will be determined by the shape of the underlying object or objects. For example,
if the objects are long and thin, then a sphere will enclose mainly empty space compared to a box. Boxes are
also easier to generate hierarchical bounding volumes.

Note that using a hierarchical system like this (assuming it is done carefully) changes the intersection
computational time from a linear dependence on the number of objects to something between linear and a
logarithmic dependence. This is because, for a perfect case, each intersection test would divide the
possibilities by two, and result in a binary tree type structure. Spatial subdivision methods, discussed below,
try to achieve this. Furthermore, this acceleration structure makes the ray-tracing computation output-
sensitive. I.e. the complexity of the ray intersection calculations depends on the number of objects that
actually intersect the rays and not (only) on the number of objects in the scene.

Kay & Kajiya give a list of desired properties for hierarchical bounding volumes:

Subtrees should contain objects that are near each other and the further down the tree the
closer should be the objects.
The volume of each node should be minimal.
The sum of the volumes of all bounding volumes should be minimal.
Greater attention should be placed on the nodes near the root since pruning a branch near the
root will remove more potential objects than one farther down the tree.
The time spent constructing the hierarchy should be much less than the time saved by using it.

Interactive ray tracing

The first implementation of an interactive ray tracer was the LINKS-1 Computer Graphics System built in
1982 at Osaka University's School of Engineering, by professors Ohmura Kouichi, Shirakawa Isao and
Kawata Toru with 50 students. It was a massively parallel processing computer system with 514
microprocessors (257 Zilog Z8001s and 257 iAPX 86s), used for 3-D computer graphics with high-speed
ray tracing. According to the Information Processing Society of Japan: "The core of 3-D image rendering is
calculating the luminance of each pixel making up a rendered surface from the given viewpoint, light source,
and object position. The LINKS-1 system was developed to realize an image rendering methodology in
which each pixel could be parallel processed independently using ray tracing. By developing a new software
methodology specifically for high-speed image rendering, LINKS-1 was able to rapidly render highly
realistic images." It was used to create an early 3-D planetarium-like video of the heavens made completely
with computer graphics. The video was presented at the Fujitsu pavilion at the 1985 International Exposition
in Tsukuba."[28] It was the second system to do so after the Evans & Sutherland Digistar in 1982. The
LINKS-1 was claimed by the designers to be the world's most powerful computer in 1984.[29]

The next interactive ray tracer, and the first known to have been labeled "real-time" was credited at the 2005
SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference as being the REMRT/RT tools developed in 1986 by Mike
Muuss for the BRL-CAD solid modeling system. Initially published in 1987 at USENIX, the BRL-CAD ray
tracer was an early implementation of a parallel network distributed ray tracing system that achieved several
frames per second in rendering performance.[30] This performance was attained by means of the highly
optimized yet platform independent LIBRT ray tracing engine in BRL-CAD and by using solid implicit CSG
geometry on several shared memory parallel machines over a commodity network. BRL-CAD's ray tracer,
including the REMRT/RT tools, continue to be available and developed today as open source software.[31]
Since then, there have been considerable efforts and research towards implementing ray tracing at real-time
speeds for a variety of purposes on stand-alone desktop configurations. These purposes include interactive 3-
D graphics applications such as demoscene productions, computer and video games, and image rendering.
Some real-time software 3-D engines based on ray tracing have been developed by hobbyist demo
programmers since the late 1990s.[32]

In 1999 a team from the University of Utah, led by Steven Parker, demonstrated interactive ray tracing live
at the 1999 Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics. They rendered a 35 million sphere model at 512 by 512
pixel resolution, running at approximately 15 frames per second on 60 CPUs.[33]

The Open RT project included a highly optimized software core for ray tracing along with an OpenGL-like
API in order to offer an alternative to the current rasterization based approach for interactive 3-D graphics.
Ray tracing hardware, such as the experimental Ray Processing Unit developed by Sven Woop at the
Saarland University, was designed to accelerate some of the computationally intensive operations of ray
tracing.

The idea that video games could ray trace their graphics in real time
received media attention in the late 2000s. During that time, a
researcher named Daniel Pohl, under the guidance of graphics
professor Philipp Slusallek and in cooperation with the Erlangen
University and Saarland University in Germany, equipped Quake III
and Quake IV with an engine he programmed himself, which
Saarland University then demonstrated at CeBIT 2007.[34] Intel, a Quake Wars: Ray Traced
patron of Saarland, became impressed enough that it hired Pohl and
embarked on a research program dedicated to ray traced graphics,
which it saw as justifying increasing the number of its processors' cores.[35]: 99–100 [36] On June 12, 2008,
Intel demonstrated a special version of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, titled Quake Wars: Ray Traced, using
ray tracing for rendering, running in basic HD (720p) resolution. ETQW operated at 14–29 frames per
second on a 16-core (4 socket, 4 core) Xeon Tigerton system running at 2.93 GHz.[37]

At SIGGRAPH 2009, Nvidia announced OptiX, a free API for real-time ray tracing on Nvidia GPUs. The
API exposes seven programmable entry points within the ray tracing pipeline, allowing for custom cameras,
ray-primitive intersections, shaders, shadowing, etc. This flexibility enables bidirectional path tracing,
Metropolis light transport, and many other rendering algorithms that cannot be implemented with tail
recursion.[38] OptiX-based renderers are used in Autodesk Arnold, Adobe AfterEffects, Bunkspeed Shot,
Autodesk Maya, 3ds max, and many other renderers.

In 2014, a demo of the PlayStation 4 video game The Tomorrow Children, developed by Q-Games and Japan
Studio, demonstrated new lighting techniques developed by Q-Games, notably cascaded voxel cone ray
tracing, which simulates lighting in real-time and uses more realistic reflections rather than screen space
reflections.[39]

Nvidia introduced their GeForce RTX and Quadro RTX GPUs September 2018, based on the Turing
architecture that allows for hardware-accelerated ray tracing. The Nvidia hardware uses a separate functional
block, publicly called an "RT core". This unit is somewhat comparable to a texture unit in size, latency, and
interface to the processor core. The unit features BVH traversal, compressed BVH node decompression, ray-
AABB intersection testing, and ray-triangle intersection testing.[40] The GeForce RTX, in the form of
models 2080 and 2080 Ti, became the first consumer-oriented brand of graphics card that can perform ray
tracing in real time,[41] and, in November 2018, Electronic Arts' Battlefield V became the first game to take
advantage of its ray tracing capabilities, which it achieves via Microsoft's new API, DirectX Raytracing.[42]
AMD, which already offered interactive ray tracing on top of OpenCL through its Radeon ProRender,[43][44]
unveiled in October 2020 the Radeon RX 6000 series, its second generation Navi GPUs with support for
hardware-accelerated ray tracing at an online event.[45][46][47][48][49] Subsequent games that render their
graphics by such means appeared since, which has been credited to the improvements in hardware and
efforts to make more APIs and game engines compatible with the technology.[50] Current home gaming
consoles implement dedicated ray tracing hardware components in their GPUs for real-time ray tracing
effects, which began with the ninth-generation consoles PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series
S.[51][52][53][54][55]

On 4 November, 2021, Imagination Technologies announced their IMG CXT GPU with hardware-
accelerated ray tracing.[56][57] On January 18, 2022, Samsung announced their Exynos 2200 AP SoC with
hardware-accelerated ray tracing.[58] On June 28, 2022, Arm announced their Immortalis-G715 with
hardware-accelerated ray tracing.[59] On November 16, 2022, Qualcomm announced their Snapdragon 8
Gen 2 with hardware-accelerated ray tracing.[60][61]

On September 12, 2023 Apple introduced hardware-accelerated ray tracing in its chip designs, beginning
with the A17 Pro chip for iPhone 15 Pro models.[62][63] Later the same year, Apple released M3 family of
processors with HW enabled ray tracing support.[64] Currently, this technology is accessible across iPhones,
iPads, and Mac computers via the Metal API. Apple reports up to a 4x performance increase over previous
software-based ray tracing on the phone[63] and up to 2.5x faster comparing M3 to M1 chips.[64] The
hardware implementation includes acceleration structure traversal and dedicated ray-box intersections, and
the API supports RayQuery (Inline Ray Tracing) as well as RayPipeline features.[65]

Computational complexity
Various complexity results have been proven for certain formulations of the ray tracing problem. In
particular, if the decision version of the ray tracing problem is defined as follows[66] – given a light ray's
initial position and direction and some fixed point, does the ray eventually reach that point, then the
referenced paper proves the following results:

Ray tracing in 3-D optical systems with a finite set of reflective or refractive objects represented
by a system of rational quadratic inequalities is undecidable.
Ray tracing in 3-D optical systems with a finite set of refractive objects represented by a
system of rational linear inequalities is undecidable.
Ray tracing in 3-D optical systems with a finite set of rectangular reflective or refractive objects
is undecidable.
Ray tracing in 3-D optical systems with a finite set of reflective or partially reflective objects
represented by a system of linear inequalities, some of which can be irrational is undecidable.
Ray tracing in 3-D optical systems with a finite set of reflective or partially reflective objects
represented by a system of rational linear inequalities is PSPACE-hard.
 For any dimension equal to or greater than 2, ray tracing with a finite set of parallel and
perpendicular reflective surfaces represented by rational linear inequalities is in PSPACE.

Software architecture

Middleware
GPUOpen
Nvidia GameWorks

API
Metal (API)
Vulkan
DirectX

See also
Beam tracing Path tracing
Cone tracing Phong shading
Distributed ray tracing Progressive meshes
Global illumination Shading
Gouraud shading Specular reflection
List of ray tracing software Tessellation
Parallel computing Per-pixel lighting

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External links
Interactive Ray Tracing: The replacement of rasterization? (https://web.archive.org/web/20190
520020303/http://www.few.vu.nl/~kielmann/theses/avdploeg.pdf)
The Compleat Angler (1978) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV4qXzM641o)
Writing a Simple Ray Tracer (scratchapixel) (http://www.scratchapixel.com/lessons/3d-basic-re
ndering/introduction-to-ray-tracing) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20150228122303/htt
p://scratchapixel.com/lessons/3d-basic-rendering/introduction-to-ray-tracing) February 28,
2015, at the Wayback Machine
Ray tracing a torus (https://marcin-chwedczuk.github.io/ray-tracing-torus)
Ray Tracing in One Weekend Book Series (https://raytracing.github.io/)
Ray Tracing with Voxels - Part 1 (https://jacco.ompf2.com/2024/04/24/ray-tracing-with-voxels-in
-c-series-part-1/)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ray_tracing_(graphics)&oldid=1267964254"