All rendering is an attempt to solve the rendering equation which is very much physically based. Whitted ray tracing is doing a lot of simplification but path t

All rendering is an attempt to solve the rendering equation which is very much physically based. Whitted ray tracing is doing a lot of simplification but path tracing (which is closer to what people are talking about doing in real time with new hardware) is a pretty principled attempt to solve the rendering equation via Monte Carlo methods. I don't see how that's not physically based. The definitive book on this stuff is literally called "Physically Based Rendering" https://pbrt.org/ https://pbrt.org/