[joesmo]

I don't think so, not with modern tools anyway. Raytracing is in my experience the technology that most closely models the real world. Most technologies used in games even today are hacks, using precomputed values oftentimes derived from ray traced models. Raytracing is quite natural to work with because it simulates real world objects and does so in a realistic manner. The only difficulty might be caused by the lack of such real-time raytracing hardware as depicted here causing slower development as one has to wait for a scene or animation to render. IMO, raytracing is indeed the pinnacle of photorealistic rendering currently.