Here's a freebie SOP I called Ray Direction. I use it for projecting geo. Not a replacement for the Ray SOP. Just a great convenience that can complement a Ray SOP workflow.
It takes Geo, Collision Geo, and Occlusion Geo as inputs. It outputs the Rayed Geo and the Collision Geo.
It writes 'raydirection' vectors and a 'mask' attribute to the points in 1 of 2 modes: Origin or Direction. It can use the local transformations of an object (say a Null or a Light) as the ray direction, which it can then transform into the local space of your geo.
Download the .hda right here: https://github.com/arabadzhiyski/ray_direction
I'll be stoked to read your comments or questions. Cheers!