Since it isn't actually spelled put in the linked repo: PBRT is "Physically Based Rendering".

PBR shaders are not trivial. It's incredible to me that they are readily available in all the shader languages, for free. Your common gamer thinks that the game engine is responsible for the quality of graphics in a game. This is hugely untrue. The quality is largely down to how well the art assets have been authored to take advantage of PBR. And that tech is, for all practical purposes, free (in both senses of the word).

My only gripe with modern day graphics documentation is the huge gap in any guidance on building a well-performing rendering pipeline. There are hundreds of tutorial series that get you as far as rendering a single, lit, textured, normal mapped model. But managing multiple models, multiple lights, different types of materials, takes a very different design for resource management and is basically ignored.

The current situation is certainly better than it was 20, even 10, years ago. But that last, missing piece is pretty vital.

This is only tangentially related, but if you are into Rust & GPU programming you should check out femtovg (https://github.com/femtovg/femtovg) a nanovg Rust port. Right now it supports OpenGL and WebGL, Metal backend is almost done, WebGPU is planned.

You can run it in the browser https://tronical.github.io/femtovg/examples/index.html

Join the discord https://discord.gg/V69VdVu

Related: I've read numerous reviews on Amazon about the poor printing quality of the book. Is that true? Is there a better version of it, or should I hope the updated version that is in-progress will rectify those issues?

I'd love to buy the book, but would hate to shell out money for a crappy printing.

I think there is a lot of value in doing this kind of exercise. Good work!

If the classroom is located in Japan, then where are all the other rooms located?

This s vital information, of course.

I wonder if PBRT will ever deliver GPU support.