c The Author(s). This paper presents a novel method for pair-wise range image registration, a backbone task in world modeling, parts inspection and manufacture, object recognition, pose estimation, robotic navigation, and reverse engineering. The method finds the most suitable homogeneous transformation matrix between two constructed range images to create a more complete 3D view of a scene. The proposed solution integrates a ray casting-based fitness estimation with a global optimization method called improved self-adaptive differential evolution. This method eliminates the fine registration steps of the well-known iterative closest point (ICP) algorithm used in previously proposed methods, and thus, is the first direct global registration algorithm. With its parallel implementation potential, the ray casting-based algorithm speeds up the fitness calculation for the global optimization method, which effectively exploits the search space to find the best transformation solution. The integration was successfully implemented in a parallel paradigm on a multi-core computer processor to solve a simultaneous 3D localization problem. The fast, accurate, and robust results show that the proposed algorithm significantly improves on the registration problem over state-of-the-art algorithms.