Mimicking POV-Ray Photorealistic Rendering with Accelerated OpenGL Pipeline

Traditional ray tracing algorithms tend to provide photorealistic results but at high computing costs. Rendering times of minutes or days are not exceptional. On the other side, hardware accelerated OpenGL rendering can provide real-time interaction with virtual environment with unnoticeable rendering times. This paper attempts to bring these two together and attempts to give an answer on the difficulty of implementing real-time photorealistic rendering. The paper presents case study on mimicking of POV-Ray photorealistic rendering with accelerated OpenGL pipeline. The study shows the opportunity to accelerate some photorealistic algorithms by real-time approaches while, on the other side, it locates the parts that are difficult to replace by traditional real-time rendering paradigms. Particularly, it is shown how to implement primary and shadow rays and POV-Ray-like material model using accelerated OpenGL pipeline using modern shader technology. On the other side, the difficulties of reflected and refracted rays implementation using real-time rendering approaches is discussed.