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Ray tracing: A quantitative analysis and a new practical algorithm

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Abstract

We present a new method to accelerate the process of finding nearest ray-object intersections in ray tracing. The algorithm consumes an amount of memory more or less linear in the number of objects. The basic ideas can be characterized with a modified BSP tree and plane traversal. Plane traversal is a fast linear time algorithm to find the closest intersection point in a list of bounding volumes hit by a ray. We use plane traversal at every node of the high outdegree BSP tree. Our implementation is competitive to fast ray-tracing programs. We present a benchmark suite that allows for an extensive comparison of ray-tracing algorithms.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science Department, University of the Saarland, D-66041, Saarbrücken, Germany

    Arno Formella & Christian Gill

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  1. Arno Formella
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  2. Christian Gill
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Formella, A., Gill, C. Ray tracing: A quantitative analysis and a new practical algorithm. The Visual Computer 11, 465–476 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02439643

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