Simulated Photons: The Brutal Mathematics of Real-Time Raytracing

For decades, video game developers had to fake the behavior of light. They painted shadows directly onto walls and used clever mathematical shortcuts to pretend a flashlight was illuminating a dark room. Then, modern graphics cards finally became powerful enough to execute the holy grail of digital physics: Real-Time Raytracing. Instead of faking the image, raytracing forces the game engine to m...