Ray tracing

Ray tracing is a rendering technique that simulates the physical behavior of light, tracing individual rays to generate photorealistic reflections, refractions, and soft shadows in 3D environments.

Ray tracing fundamentally changes graphics by modeling light transport: it casts rays from the virtual camera (eye) through each pixel and calculates how those rays interact with objects—reflecting, refracting, or creating shadows—before hitting a light source. This backward-tracing method ensures high fidelity, producing physically accurate effects like global illumination, realistic caustics, and complex reflections that traditional rasterization cannot match. Historically limited to non-real-time applications (CGI, film), dedicated hardware like NVIDIA RTX GPUs now enable real-time ray tracing in high-end video games, dramatically elevating visual immersion and closing the gap between digital and physical reality.

https://developer.nvidia.com/ray-tracing