You're crazy.

Actually, I seem to remember the first ray tracing examples coming out back around the heyday of VB6. So, what are you looking for, exactly? I believe it can be done, and I believe you have the skill to do it, considering some of the other goofy (and awesome) graphics things you've done in the past. I guess I'm a bit curious as to why you are doing it? Hardware has advanced to the point that ray tracing is best done on the GPU, these days. I would think you could hand that off to the GPU using VB6, but it doesn't sound like that's what you are trying to do. It sounds like you are trying to write a CPU based ray tracing engine, which will perform far better than any in the 90s, but still won't measure up to a GPU based system, so what is the underlying objective?