>> Regarding your last point .. I thought the point of ray tracing is that you get a lot more realistic images than with OpenGL
That's correct - you CAN get more realistic images. I guess what I was trying to say is that the better (photo realistic) rendering quality is not real-time yet on high resolution displays, but simple rendering using ray tracing techniques can be near real time. But if all you want is simple rendering with phong shading you're probably not going to bother with ray tracing.
That's correct - you CAN get more realistic images. I guess what I was trying to say is that the better (photo realistic) rendering quality is not real-time yet on high resolution displays, but simple rendering using ray tracing techniques can be near real time. But if all you want is simple rendering with phong shading you're probably not going to bother with ray tracing.