> I take the risk of appearing stupid, but is it possible to make the
> assumption that if a ray hits an object, the rays next to it (next pixel
> for example, or the next ray shot, or so ...) have a high probability to
> hit the same object, thus avoiding useless tree-traversal and intersection
> test?

I believe this is already done for shadow rays. Shadow rays have the
advantage that once any (opaque) object is hit, we can stop and say the
point is in shadow. Normal rays, as Warp pointed out, still have to be
tested for other objects between the ray origin and the object that was hit
last time.

 - Slime
 [ http://www.slimeland.com/ ]

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