Ray tracing with depth buffered display

Abstract

An image that includes ray traced pixel data and rasterized pixel data is generated. A synergistic processing unit (SPU) uses a rendering algorithm to generate ray traced data for objects that require high-quality image rendering. The ray traced data is fragmented, whereby each fragment includes a ray traced pixel depth value and a ray traced pixel color value. A rasterizer compares ray traced pixel depth values to corresponding rasterized pixel depth values, and overwrites ray traced pixel data with rasterized pixel data when the corresponding rasterized fragment is 'closer' to a viewing point, which results in composite data. A display subsystem uses the resultant composite data to generate an image on a user's display.