It's very impressive -- the speed is remarkable even considering the processor speeds of modern computers.
Interestingly, Strata (www.strata3d.com) used to sell technology along these lines that worked quite well on 25MHz processors (!). You exported a "cooked" 3d scene from their modeling package and then a viewer allowed you to fly through it in real time. The scene was ray-traced but static.
They're obviously doing as much precalculation as possible (hence the relatively long "load" times for fair simple scenes involving only a few primitives -- the bowls, for example, are simply one sphere minus a slightly larger offset sphere).
Neato
Interestingly, Strata (www.strata3d.com) used to sell technology along these lines that worked quite well on 25MHz processors (!). You exported a "cooked" 3d scene from their modeling package and then a viewer allowed you to fly through it in real time. The scene was ray-traced but static.
They're obviously doing as much precalculation as possible (hence the relatively long "load" times for fair simple scenes involving only a few primitives -- the bowls, for example, are simply one sphere minus a slightly larger offset sphere).
Neato