If every pixel takes too long you get nothing; plus you wasted computing power to find out.
A different solution is to cast a sparser set of rays as things slow down, and then use compressed sensing (which has a runtime complexity independent of scene complexity) to integrate the full scene. Then as the scene gets more complex, you get what (visually) amounts to a heavily compressed jpeg.
A different solution is to cast a sparser set of rays as things slow down, and then use compressed sensing (which has a runtime complexity independent of scene complexity) to integrate the full scene. Then as the scene gets more complex, you get what (visually) amounts to a heavily compressed jpeg.