Ray-traced shadows are generated by tracing the path of rays sampled from a light source. Ray-traced shadows are more accurate than shadow-mapped shadows. They always produce a hard edge.

Example of ray-traced shadows

Ray-traced shadows are more realistic for transparent and translucent objects. Also, only ray-tracing can generate shadows for wireframe objects.

Because ray-traced shadows are calculated without a map, you don't have to adjust resolution as you do for shadow-mapped shadows. The parameters for ray-traced shadows adjust the shadow's position (known as shadow bias) and the depth of the quadtree used to calculate ray tracing.

Advanced ray-traced shadows are the same as ray-traced shadows, however they provide antialiasing control, letting you fine-tune how ray-traced shadows are generated.