Optic is incredibly complicated, because matter is incredibly complicated. Ray tracing is good for rendering surfaces, reflection and refraction, but what we s

Optic is incredibly complicated, because matter is incredibly complicated. Ray tracing is good for rendering surfaces, reflection and refraction, but what we see is not limited to these things. Volumetric stuff is all over the place: fire and other plasma, smoke and other aerosols, other forms of mixed-state matter. Also we have lots of liquid water on our planet, when it interacts with solids things and/or air, the visual complexity of the scene simply explodes. Look at boiling water, or streams of water, or shoreline. And to complicate things even more, some visuals depend on wave nature of the light: soap bubble, rainbow, or DVD disk. Here’s some 15 years old tech.demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsWh66MvqBg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsWh66MvqBg Stuff like the brick wall with these shadows and reflections is awesome fit for RT. The final scene also good. However, close up scenes of the ground with water pouring all over the stuff, or that glass window with drippling water at 1:30-1:45 — RT won’t help a bit. And the rain / water / wet surfaces is about half of their shaders: https://developer.amd.com/wordpress/media/2012/10/ToyShop-Eurographics_AnimationFestival.pdf https://developer.amd.com/wordpress/media/2012/10/ToyShop-Eu...