C++ Ray Tracer
By Aaron Fritz
This ray tracer currently has the most features out of any ray tracer I have made yet. There are several buttons for changing the render settings in real time, and it even allows the camera to grab objects and move them around! It has the capability to run in real time if the settings are low enough, and the capability to render high quality images if the settings are high enough. I did not add super-sampling because that's too much of a detriment to performance (I do have super-sampling in other ray tracers, though).
I find ambient occlusion to be a great addition to the feature list. In my opinion, it has a significant impact on the subtle realism of a scene, and helps with progressing through the uncanny valley of computer graphics. I would have to start working with path tracing if I wanted photo-realistic images, but for now, I prefer working on ray tracers with real-time capability.