I agree with what I think your unstated point is (namely this is basically raytracing). I think the detail here is that this is essentially a sorting/data-organisational solution rather than a geometrically calculated solution. Ray tracing generally takes into account more than one atom (often at complex geometric angles to the directly visible surface) to create a pixel. This claims not to (but to look really good I would have thought it will eventually have to).
So yes. This is a kind of raytracing but I think that the implementation is radically different to the commonly used raytracing implementaions.
So yes. This is a kind of raytracing but I think that the implementation is radically different to the commonly used raytracing implementaions.