Expression 2 Raytracer

  I'll cut the philosophy and cut to the trace—this thing was an absolutely terrible idea in retrospect.  Who would be such an idiot as to write a raytracer that runs serverside, in an interpreted language built upon another interpreted language?  Yup.  That would be me.

While I may not work on this anymore because the codebase is a mess and rendering now is just way too slow, I still showcase it here because of the incredible journey it took me on.  From the very beginning, where simultaneous reflection and transparency forced me to truly tackle recursion for the first time, to the very end, where I learned nearly every render I'd done used only naive guesses as to how light really behaves in real life.  Without these renders, I would never have created this portfolio to show them and other my amazing projects to the world.

Godsend, E2 Raytracer.  You will never be forgotten.

Special thanks to @Speedeo (bitmaps) and @Vurv (pnglib) for helping me encode my traces into mostly-to-spec image formats.
The gallery below would be empty if not for their help!

(Click the left or right sides of the image carousels to browse them.)
Winds and Clouds Update Rv.1
Orange Skybase v8
1024x Render
Winds and Clouds Update Rv.1
Speedeo's Bitmap Module
The Amazing Curvy Base
256x Render
Speedeo's Bitmap Module
Colored Shadows Dev Test
Shipping Containers
256x Render
Colored Shadows Dev Test
Colored Shadows Update
Transparency Test
256x Render
Colored Shadows Update
Simple AO Update
Mellon Sphere
256x Render
Simple AO Update
Colored AO Update
AO Ballpit
256x Render
Colored AO Update
Working on P-Gen Grass
Grass Test 1
256x Render
Working on P-Gen Grass
End of the Line
Autospleef Terrain
512x Render
End of the Line
AO Performance Improvements
Level 3 Icosphere
512x Render
AO Performance Improvements
Recovered from a crashed render
E2 Dodgeball Arena
512 x 511
Recovered from a crashed render