Ray Tracing (opens in new tab)

Honestly, the way dedicated hardware and software engineering have teamed up has totally changed the game for developers making worlds look real. Instead of artists spending weeks manually dropping in fake light bulbs to trick your eyes, they can just place one virtual sun in the scene and let ray tracing physics handle the rest. This basically deletes a ton of tedious development time while making sure the lighting always looks right across changing environments. Like, when a character walks...