My thesis work at the University of Applied Science FH Joanneum plays with the idealised notion of realism in 3D computer graphics, by taking a completely different approach: instead of tracing the path of rays of light, my Particle Caster produces images by following the trajectories of particles, which may be influenced by the same forces used in the particle systems of commercial 3D animation software.
This modification of the raytracing algorithm results in non-linearly projected, warped and distorted images, as shown in a video presentation produced with a prototypical Particle Caster, which was implemented in Java.