Massive model visualization using realtime ray tracing

In the last years real-time ray tracing has become an attractive alternative to rasterization based rendering, particularly for highly complex datasets including both surface and volume data. Ray tracing [7, 15] is a much more flexible rendering algorithm than triangle rasterization found in most of todays graphics cards. Employing it in a real-time context might at first sound a bit surprising as ray tracing is mostly known for its application in high-quality off-line image generation, as e.g. in the motion picture industry. Infamous for its long rendering times, ray tracing was not used for interactive purposes until recently [13, 14, 19]. What makes it attractive for massive model rendering is not only its simplicity and robustness, but especially its versatility.