"Mike Sobers" <sob### [at] mindspringcom> wrote:
> I may be wrong, but I doubt that in '82 they were using raytracing for these
> CGI animations (hard to believe I was only 7 then ;) ).

You are half-wrong (I think):

http://www.3gcs.com/tron/publications/time-life/index.htm

The company that did the lightcycles used a method to model and render them
that sounds suspiciously like raytracing of CSG-based objects.

> That's why it's hard to reproduce the effects using a raytracer
> (same reason why games don't use raytracing - it's too slow).

I think at the time raytracing was competitive because the alternative used
so much more memory.

Tom

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