[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Ray traced environments

[Jeffrey Kesselman]

On 3/26/07, Adam Martin <adam.m.s.martin at googlemail.com> wrote:

> More dynamism in the environment (more deformation - fewer Adamantite meshes!).
> More curves, especially higher-order curvatures.
> More mirrors ;) (and reflections off surfaces)
> Much richer lighting, less "primary colour wash" lighting and much
> more smooth rich changes in lighting.
> More environmental material changes ("wet" vs "dry" etc)
> More "sculpting" in games (shaving away chunks of objects; knocking
> corners off; roughing-up objects in general wear-and-tear)


All of this comes down to processing power.

The only reason you get "more" in a ray-traced picture is because you
have already accepted the fact that it will be slower then blazes to
calculate.

Throw the same amount of processor at  scan line algorithm (or allow
it to take as long) as you would need to do all this ray tracing in
real time and IMO your going to end up with at least equal results.