Patent ID: 8120609

Claim:
A system for adaptively ray tracing a scene composed of primitives using intermediate ray results, comprising: a processor configured, with one or more of fixed function computation elements and machine executable instructions, to perform operations comprising emitting rays from a plurality of samples, each ray associated with a respective identification of a location of the sample from which it was emitted, a direction, and a weight; causing a subset of the rays to be tested for intersection with one or more primitives; and processing an identified intersection between the identified ray and the identified primitive, the processing including determining, based at least on the weight of the ray identified in the indication, a ray tracing adaptation comprising selecting further rays for intersection testing based on a comparison of the weight associated with the ray identified by the indication, and weights associated with rays that have been emitted and for which definition data is stored in a memory, but for which an intersection has not yet been received.