[jessermeyer]

What makes you think culling triangles is going away? Ray tracing is usually done with a highly approximated volume or planar representation of the scene, which is then applied to surface triangles.

Rendering objects that 'we can't see' has been done for as long as shadow caster light sources have been around. Even though we cannot see the mesh directly, the light can, and the viewer can see the shadow. These indirections all play their role in the greater "rendering equation", and the specific solution depends on the constraints of the application and resources of the development team.

Some renderers have abandoned triangles altogether for signed distance fields, but this involves re-creating from scratch the entire art pipeline.

[dclowd9901]

Sorry, I just assumed that you’d need to construct the geometry in order to produce an accurate scene (with any complex lighting, be it shadows or ray tracing). I’ll be reading up more on the techniques you’ve mentioned. Im not a graphics developer so my suppositions are entirely naive.

[jessermeyer]

It's more that "construct the geometry" is a highly subjective exercise. :)