ADAPTIVE RAY TRACING SUITABLE FOR SHADOW RENDERING

In examples, the number of rays used to sample lighting conditions of a light source in a virtual environment with respect to particular locations in the virtual environment may be adapted to scene conditions. An additional ray(s) may be used for locations that tend to be associated with visual artifacts in rendered images. A determination may be made on whether to cast an additional ray(s) to a light source for a location and/or a quantity of rays to cast. To make the determination variables such as visibilities and/or hit distances of ray-traced samples of the light source may be analyzed for related locations in the virtual environment, such as those in a region around the location (e.g., within an N-by-N kernel centered at the location). Factors may include variability in visibilities and/or hit distances, differences between visibilities and/or hit distances relative to the location, and magnitudes of hit distances.