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Comment by krisrm | Hacker News Reader

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krisrm·

I'm sincerely hoping that whoever wrote this is a hockey fan.

(for those who aren't, Connor McDavid is arguably the best hockey player alive today)

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Most probably is rally driver Colin McRae[0], after whom a popular series of rally games are named[1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_McRae

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_McRae_Rally_and_Dirt

(edit: formatting)

Indeed and the first part is the first scene done in any ray tracer:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell_box

It's by far not the first scene done in any ray tracer, rather an early test scene for radiosity (diffuse-only global illumination, before path tracing was developed).

Oh I meant “when anyone today writes a toy ray tracer, this is usually the first scene you test with it”

Which one is the oldest, Utah teapot, bunny, dragon, default material cube?

I'd guess the Utah teapot, it's been around since 1975. Cornell box is from 1984, and test scenes for materials are in some way a pretty recent thing, at least how they are used now; to me the modern versions started with Maxwell Render.

I figured it's a play on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_McRae instead.

It is probably a play on Collin McRae. But McRae died under tragic circumstances and to me it felt slightly odd to allude to his name in this manner.

He also had a brilliant career as a driver, and people remember him very fondly. It's about the way he lived, not the way he died.

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