  While the researchers have set their sights on future wireless networks of
2030, communications through reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) appears
as one of the potential enabling technologies for 6G wireless networking. This
article aims to shed light on the potential use-cases of RISs in future
wireless systems by means of a novel channel modeling methodology as well as a
new software tool for RIS-empowered millimeter-wave communication systems. It
is shown by the open-source, user-friendly, and widely applicable SimRIS
Channel Simulator, whose 2.0 version is proposed and goes online by this
article, that RISs will work under certain use-cases and communication
environments. Potential future research directions are also discussed to bridge
the gap between the theory and practice of RIS-empowered systems towards their
standardization for 6G wireless networks.
