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Rayteacing doesn't simulate light, it simulates a very primitive idea of light. There's no diffraction, no interference patterns. You can't simulate the double-

Rayteacing doesn't simulate light, it simulates a very primitive idea of light. There's no diffraction, no interference patterns. You can't simulate the double-slit experiment in a game engine, unless you explicitly program it. Our universe has a surprising amount of detail. We can't even simulate the simplest molecular interactions fully. Even a collision of two hydrogen atoms is too hard - time resolution and space resolution is insanely high, if not infinite.

zokier 3y ago
> You can't simulate the double-slit experiment in a game engine, unless you explicitly program it. Afaik you can't even simulate double-slit in high-end offline VFX renderers without custom programming
Sharlin 3y ago
And what’s more, it simulates a very primitive idea of matter! All geometry is mathematically precise, still made of flat triangles that only approximate curved surfaces, every edge and corner is infinitely sharp, and everything related to materials and interaction with light (diffuse shading, specular highlights, surface roughness, bumpiness, transparency/translucency, snd so on) are still the simplest possible models that five a somewhat plausible look, raytraced or not.
smolder 3y ago
I wanted to make a dry joke about renderers supporting the double slit experiment, but in a sense you beat me to it.
- hoseja 3y ago
  There sure has been a lot of slits simulated in Blender.
zokier 3y ago
Btw there is some movement towards including wave-optics into graphics instead of traditional ray-optics: https://ssteinberg.xyz/2023/03/27/rtplt/ https://ssteinberg.xyz/2023/03/27/rtplt/
- carterschonwald 3y ago
  This is very cool. Thx for sharing
majoe 3y ago
Raytracing simulates geometrical optics. That it doesn't take interference pattern into account is therefore a mathematical limitation and of course true, but irrelevant for most applications. There are other effects (most notable volume scattering), which could be significant for the rendered image and which are simulatable with raytracing, but are usually neglected for various reasons, often because they are computationally expensive.

zokier 3y ago

> You can't simulate the double-slit experiment in a game engine, unless you explicitly program it. Afaik you can't even simulate double-slit in high-end offline VFX renderers without custom programming

Sharlin 3y ago

And what’s more, it simulates a very primitive idea of matter! All geometry is mathematically precise, still made of flat triangles that only approximate curved surfaces, every edge and corner is infinitely sharp, and everything related to materials and interaction with light (diffuse shading, specular highlights, surface roughness, bumpiness, transparency/translucency, snd so on) are still the simplest possible models that five a somewhat plausible look, raytraced or not.

smolder 3y ago

I wanted to make a dry joke about renderers supporting the double slit experiment, but in a sense you beat me to it.

hoseja 3y ago
There sure has been a lot of slits simulated in Blender.

zokier 3y ago

Btw there is some movement towards including wave-optics into graphics instead of traditional ray-optics: https://ssteinberg.xyz/2023/03/27/rtplt/ https://ssteinberg.xyz/2023/03/27/rtplt/

carterschonwald 3y ago
This is very cool. Thx for sharing

majoe 3y ago

Raytracing simulates geometrical optics. That it doesn't take interference pattern into account is therefore a mathematical limitation and of course true, but irrelevant for most applications. There are other effects (most notable volume scattering), which could be significant for the rendered image and which are simulatable with raytracing, but are usually neglected for various reasons, often because they are computationally expensive.