14th September 2010, 4:34 PM
Nice, very nice, but that's 3 minutes for a single image, as opposed to real time at 80 frames per second (notably choppier when they zoomed in on that chandelier, but still watchable). I think that real time occlusion is actually included under ray tracing though. That is, if it's tracing how images are displayed based on where light is going, then shadowing follows naturally. That and all the other things ray tracing would remove the need for are why it's the holy grail of 3D rendering.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)