The first render I just loaded the envsphere, applied an image, loaded the fog, and then a simple branch prop. it started rendering at the lowest ray trace setting, and after 20 minutes, I took a nap (it was still pretty early in the morning)

I came back an hour and a half later, and saw it was still rendering, and killed it.

I then deleted every other plane, starting with the bottom most one, and then started the same exact thing on that, and killed it after a half hour or so.

 

I just checked, and it is still visible in ray tracing, and is a light emitter.. I'll toggle those off, and see what happens. I'm trying to set the view angle from something like say, 15 feet above the ground in a real world setting, BTW. Would vertical planes be better for something like that?

Way too many people take way too many things way too seriously.