This is a ray tracing software written in PHP. It's pretty much pointless, I just wrote it "for the lolz".

A ray tracer is a piece of software which generate 3D images by simulating the physics of light. The result is a very realistic 3D image.

sample image.

If you want to read more about ray tracing, you should checkout www.povray.org (a real raytracer).

I decided to share various pieces of functional code (dubbed "for the lolz"). These pieces of code are meant to illustrate fundamental computer science concepts, so someone looking at this code might learn something useful.

If you are teaching programming and you find a use in these projects, feel free to use my code however you like.

The coordinate system is the following:

• x points right
• y points up
• z points away from you

This system is also known as the "left-hand".

git clone git://github.com/alokmenghrajani/php-raytracer.git cd php-raytracer php sample_01.php

and then open images/sample_01.bmp in your favourite image viewer.