The Ray Tracer Challenge - C++

Conventions

This codebase uses the Left Hand Coordinate system.

Building

Conan

Create Profiles

Debug:

$ conan profile new gcc-11-debug --detect 
$ conan profile update settings.compiler.libcxx=libstdc++11 gcc-11-debug
$ conan profile update settings.compiler.cppstd=20 gcc-11-debug
$ conan profile update settings.build_type=Debug gcc-11-debug

Release:

$ conan profile new gcc-11-release --detect 
$ conan profile update settings.compiler.libcxx=libstdc++11 gcc-11-release
$ conan profile update settings.compiler.cppstd=20 gcc-11-release
$ conan profile update settings.build_type=Release gcc-11-release

Install Packages

Debug:

$ conan install -if cmake-build-debug . --build=missing -s build_type=Debug -pr:b=gcc-11-debug

Release:

$ conan install -if cmake-build-release . --build=missing -s build_type=Release -pr:b=gcc-11-release

CMake

$ cmake \
    -B cmake-build-debug \
    -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug \
    -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=conan_toolchain.cmake \
    -DBUILD_TESTS=1 \
    -DUSE_STATIC_BOOST=1

$ cmake \
    --build cmake-build-debug \
    --config Release \
    -j 8

Development Notes

Genericity

Started the project with a type T for most classes, to allow switching between float and double. However it became apparent that float does not provide enough precision for quality images, therefore only the use of double makes practical sense.

At some point, refactor the code to remove the T type parameters. This should simplify the code considerably.

Polymorphism

For Chapter 9, introduced dynamic polymorphism via virtual member functions. This increased chapter8's execution time (Release build, for 2048x1536) from around 7.0 seconds to about 8.0 seconds. There's +/-1 second variation between runs, so probably need a more complex image to get a more precise measurement.

Consider removing virtual member functions and replace the world collection with a tuple of vectors for each supported shape:

std::tuple<std::vector<Sphere>, std::vector<Plane>, ...>