Many of the 'pretty' effects that come with raytracing such as reflections and highlights are easily approximated in most games using cheap hacks, eg environment and normal mapping.
We have become so used to these in games now, that I dare say if you did produce a real-time raytracer you would be hard-pushed to explain to the average gamer what was so cool about it.
The bar has been raised significantly since ray-tracing was first presented in the 70s. And we've long since started looking beyond what raytracing can deliver, eg soft shadows, colour bleeding, subsurface scattering etc.
As a lighting model, its a very blunt instrument mathematically - most/.ers probably remember writing their own for some undergraduate assignment a long time ago;).
I've worked in big (> 200) and small ( 5) software companies, and I'm convinced its size thing.
A larger company can afford to pay for extra process (docs, quality control), and usually can't afford to be without it.
A smaller company can often get away with being a bit rough around the edges because its dynamic enough to take up the slack when things go wrong.
Clients already know this of course, so they see it as a quality/price tradeoff. The difficulty for software guys in a smaller company is to have to justify their way of working to a client who expects impecible process, reports/updates, and it all delivered yesterday! Which is undoubtedly what the sales guys promised them when trying to project a 'professional' corporate facade.
Just remember though, no matter how professional the facade - everybodys a cowboy. Thats the nature of software, the industry's still too young for anyone to know what they're really doing. Processes help, but they are a tradeoff..
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Many of the 'pretty' effects that come with raytracing such as reflections and highlights are easily approximated in most games using cheap hacks, eg environment and normal mapping.
/.ers probably remember writing their own for some undergraduate assignment a long time ago ;).
We have become so used to these in games now, that I dare say if you did produce a real-time raytracer you would be hard-pushed to explain to the average gamer what was so cool about it.
The bar has been raised significantly since ray-tracing was first presented in the 70s. And we've long since started looking beyond what raytracing can deliver, eg soft shadows, colour bleeding, subsurface scattering etc.
As a lighting model, its a very blunt instrument mathematically - most
I've worked in big (> 200) and small ( 5) software companies, and I'm convinced its size thing.
A larger company can afford to pay for extra process (docs, quality control), and usually can't afford to be without it.
A smaller company can often get away with being a bit rough around the edges because its dynamic enough to take up the slack when things go wrong.
Clients already know this of course, so they see it as a quality/price tradeoff. The difficulty for software guys in a smaller company is to have to justify their way of working to a client who expects impecible process, reports/updates, and it all delivered yesterday! Which is undoubtedly what the sales guys promised them when trying to project a 'professional' corporate facade.
Just remember though, no matter how professional the facade - everybodys a cowboy. Thats the nature of software, the industry's still too young for anyone to know what they're really doing. Processes help, but they are a tradeoff..