Introduction
The goal of this presentation is to present two simple ray tracer
acceleration techniques (Bounding Volumes and Spatial Subdivision) as
implemented in an object oriented ray tracer. A brief review of some
acceleration techniques is first presented. It is important to note
that in this context an acceleration technique is any enhancement that
improves on the execution time of an exhaustive ray
tracer[1]. Exhaustive ray tracing involves testing every object in the
world for intersection for every ray that is cast. The techniques
presented in the next section improve on exhaustive ray tracing by
reducing the number of objects that a given ray must be tested
against. The reader is referred to [1],[2] or [3] for an introduction
to ray tracing in general.