I get the impression the goal is to save 3D environments with baked lighting without having to run raytracing, at a level above explicitly defined meshes with f

I get the impression the goal is to save 3D environments with baked lighting without having to run raytracing, at a level above explicitly defined meshes with faces covered by 2D textures, which can't represent fog, translucency, reflection glints, etc without a separate lighting pass. Basically trying to get raytracing without doing raytracing.