Free real time ray tracing algorithms...

I say realtime, that's very much hardware dependant...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6457951.stm

Sounds nice. I'm still waiting for the day when we really have a nice full-featured realtime raytracer engine with infinite-detail fractals.

http://www.openrt.de/

Is there still a reason to play a game when its gfx are fully realistic?

Ok, so I'm somewhat of a retro-geek, but at least from those old pixeled/low-res/lowcolor games I get the impression I'm playing a game.. :P

Don't get me wrong: I like ray tracing! (oldskool ray tracing that is, with refractive glass spheres on checker-planes :P)

microsoft and Sony missed the boat, they could have setup a deal with a company that makes raytracing cards and had them massproduced for their consoles, Sony's console already costs a lot of money.

I wonder if the graphics card manufacturers have dedicated hardware in mind for the future to do this, or whether it'll all come down to using shaders.

I think in 5 years everything will use realtime raytracing on the GPU.