This, very much this!

I do research in a subfield of optics called nonimaging optics (optics for energy transfer, e.g. solar concentrators or lighting systems). We typically use these optical design applications, and your observations are absolutely correct. Make some optical design software that uses GPUs for raytracing, reverse-mode autodiff for optimization, sprinkle in some other modern techniques you may blow these older tools out of the water.

I am hoping to be able to get some projects going in this direction (feel free to reach out if anyone are interested).

PS: I help organize an academic conference my subfield of optics. We run a design competition this year [1,2]. Would be super cool if someone submits a design that they made by drawing inspiration from modern computer graphics tools (maybe using Mitsuba 3, by one of the authors of this book?), instead of using our classical applications in the field.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42609892

[2] https://nonimaging-conference.org/competition-2025/upload/

This is one example of an area where economic incentives make it difficult to shift.

  - There aren't that many people willing to pay for such software, but those that do *really* need it, and will pay quite a bit (passing that cost on of course). 
 
  - The technical domain knowledge needed to do it properly is a barrier to many
 
  - It needs to be pretty robust

As a result, you end up with a small handful of players who provide it. They have little incentive to modernize, and the opportunity cost for a new player high enough to chase most of them off to other avenues.

I think the main way this changes is when someone has already spend the money in an adjacent area, and realized "huh, with a little effort here we could probably eat X's lunch"

Beyond that you at most get toy systems from enthusiasts and grad students (same group?) ...

You’d be surprised! Everywhere I’ve worked, academic or industry, typically writes their own simulation software. Sometimes it’s entirely handwritten (i.e., end-to-end, preprocessing to simulation to evaluation), sometimes it’ll leverage a pre-existing open source package. I imagine this will become more and more common if, for no other reason, you can’t back-propagate an OpticStudio project and open source automatic differentiation packages are unbeatable.

I've been working on something similar, although I'm more interested in replicating the effects of existing lenses than designing new ones: https://x.com/dearlensform/status/1858229457430962318

PBRT 3rd edition actually has a great section on the topic but it's one of the parts that wasn't implemented for the GPU (by the authors, anyway): https://pbr-book.org/3ed-2018/Camera_Models/Realistic_Camera...

It is a bit of a silly term. It was made mostly to contrast against the somewhat more adhoc methods that preceded it. The new technique was parameterized more around physical properties where the older ones were more about visual descriptions.

This paper from Disney is what kicked off the movement https://disneyanimation.com/publications/physically-based-sh...

But what alternative can you suggest which doesn’t break grammar or usage precedents like “physically based”?

Physics-based? Reality-based? Physically-derived?

It bothers me too, but I’m French. I always assumed it was some corner of the language I don’t know

I've been keeping a list of Literate Programs published as books, as well as supporting texts:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/21394355-william-adams...

I'd be glad to know of any I missed, or of a similar resource for websites.