Distributed ray-tracing is a term that is commonly misconstrued, and often associated with the concept of parallel computing, where the calculations required to render an image are distributed across a network of processing nodes. The more appropriate term, ‘parallel ray-tracing’ is typically used to resolve the ambiguity. Whitted Ray-Tracing In the traditional Whitted algorithm, a ray is spawned, for every pixel in the screen. That ray is tested against the geometry of the scene to check...
