23 USING THE GEOMETRY IN A RAY-TRACING APPLICATION
In this chapter, we put the algebra to work by using it to implement a ray tracer in the C++ programming language. A ray tracer is a program that takes as input the description of a scene (including light sources, models, and camera) and produces an image of that scene as seen from the camera. We show how the conformal model of Euclidean geometry is very useful for the specification and computation of the basic operations. All geometrical elements occurring in this problem have a natural representation in that model.
When we really try to optimize for the speed of the ray tracer, we argue that one may want to deviate from the natural all-purpose representation to a more dedicated choice, which ...
Get Geometric Algebra for Computer Science now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
