Support for ellipsoid(s) (to trace earth)

Gaming and Visualization Technologies Visualization OptiX
1

I would like my program to (ray)trace Earth. however Earth is more like an ellipsoid then a sphere.

The program needs extensive zoom-in zoom-out capabilities, down to meter or centimeter level.

It may require 64 bit floating points.

Intersection points between ray and ellipsoid, normals on intersection points.

2

Hi @Skybuck,

cool project. Ellipsoids: they can be traced with a custom intersection program:

https://raytracing-docs.nvidia.com/optix9/guide/index.html#acceleration_structures#primitive-build-inputs

The 64 bit precision topic has been discussed here About getting OptiX closer to double precision - Visualization / OptiX - NVIDIA Developer Forums

And for an LOD system, OptiX 9’s clusters feature 5.12 - Clusters can be useful.