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# Ray-Tracing the Current View

An important capability even beyond the ability to generate an evaluated boundary wireframe is the ability of MGED to initiate a quick ray-trace rendering of the current view on any nearby framebuffer! This is implemented by using the MGED ``rt'' command to fork off an instance of the RT program, and sending the RT program a description of the current view with any user-specified options. This allows the designer to use the power of MGED to select the desired view, and then to quickly verify the geometry and light source placement. A 50 by 50 pixel rendering of the current view can usually be done in less than a minute (on a DEC VAX-780 class processor), and allows for general verification before the designer uses the ``saveview'' command to submit a batch job for a high resolution ray-trace of the same view.