Guys - raytracing does render displaced vertices. It does not render displaced polygon interiors - it interpolates the geometry between the moved vertices.

So - some props will be obvious that you're missing displacement in the shadow, others not so obvious, and still others, nothing missing at all. It's a question of how similar is the virtual object with displaced vertices alone, versus displaced individual micropolygons.

This is also true of reflections or refractions. It isn't just shadows that are affected by the simplified perspective of displaced vertices. I wrote about this six years ago when I first published matmatic.

The micropolygon displacement that Poser performs is visible in depth-mapped shadows, but not in raytraced, because of memory problems. When this was decided, nobody, not even Pixar, had 4 GB of RAM in a single computer.

Personally I think we should be allowed to switch on full-object micropolygon displacement, and not be limited to a bucket, but seriously other than in your contrived demonstrations how often does this come up?

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Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)