Ray tracing algorithms are quite simple - it’s essentially just checking line intersections with geometry and doing bounce calculations - but a VAST number of r

Ray tracing algorithms are quite simple - it’s essentially just checking line intersections with geometry and doing bounce calculations - but a VAST number of rays are needed and a GPU that can do ray tracing needs to keep much more information about the scene geometry in memory. In older generations you wouldn’t store detailed collision information in GPU memory. A GPU that can handle ray tracing, however, can do a lot of the techniques mentioned in the article (and others) more efficiently without doing what you’d consider full scene ray tracing, because the fundamental path tracing algorithms are very versatile.