LogFAQs > #898282792

Corrupt_Power posted...

Very basically, instead of lighting in CG environments being largely"pre-baked", raytracing simulates, in a sense, the actual photons being emitted from light sources, bouncing around and interacting with the various objects and materials in the scene, until they eventually reach the "camera". It is obscenely resource intensive, as those articles detail, but it's getting closer and closer to allowing real-time raytracing on consumer hardware.

Typically what games will actually do is actually ray-casting, which is the other way around, i.e., you cast one ray per pixel from your camera, and you see where they end up. It's still very resource intensive since it's millions of rays per frame, but less so since you actually know which one will end up on the projection that you put on the screen.
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