> but culling doesn’t really work for complex on-screen geometry like foliage, hair, volumetics, crowds, etc, and games are pushing in those directions. Just b

> but culling doesn’t really work for complex on-screen geometry like foliage, hair, volumetics, crowds, etc, and games are pushing in those directions. Just because something doesn't work in all situations doesn't mean it doesn't work in general. Games putting polygonal leaves and crowds full of furry creatures would be a waste, it isn't going to happen without level of detail. It is actually cheaper for film quality assets, but the camera visibility rays aren't where most of the time is spent. Still, things like REYES / renderman architecture decouples all the sampling required for motion blur and defocus so that the visibility samples don't have to be shaded. > The other appeal with ray tracing is being able to consolidate all the various tricks and algorithms into a single path tracing framework. My reply was about ray tracing not actually being faster than rasterization for first hit visibility in practice. I didn't say anything about ray tracing in general here.