This is exciting. Indeed, it has been "just a few years away" for a few decades now but at some point I'm sure it will show up. I'm sure I'm not the only one

This is exciting. Indeed, it has been "just a few years away" for a few decades now but at some point I'm sure it will show up. I'm sure I'm not the only one on HN who has written a ray tracer, and once you have it's easy to extend it to something like Metropolis light transport or photon mapping. I remember when my code first worked (without error) how amazed I was that such a small amount of programming can achieve such realistic light simulations! A website known as OMPF used to be about the only forum online for people interested in ray tracing and global illumination. For some reason, it seems as though it has gone down :(