Patent ID: 8421801

Claim:
A method for ray tracing 2-D representations of 3-D scenes, comprising: instantiating, in a processor executing a shader routine, a ray to be tested for intersection with geometric objects comprising scene primitives and elements of geometry acceleration data, the instantiating comprising providing a data structure storing data defining an origin and direction for the ray and respective clipping information indicative of a maximum distance from the origin that the ray is to be traced and storing the data structure in a tangible machine readable medium prior to initiating intersection testing of the ray; and in an intersection tester, accessing the data structure from the tangible machine readable medium to obtain the origin and direction for the ray, testing the ray for intersection only with geometric objects within the respective maximum distance defined by the clipping information stored in the data structure for the ray, and outputting an indication of any closest identified intersection between the ray and any tested scene primitive.