Interesting results!

I like the nice combination of memory/trace time for the superpatch type 2
bicubic patch.  Who would ever want type 0 again?  (What an awful trace
time.)  I think you should increase the triangles-per-patch, however.
From the POV-Ray Docs:

This means that you really should keep u_steps and v_steps under 4. Most
patches look just fine with u_steps 3 and v_steps 3, which translates to 64
subpatches (128 smooth triangles).

(pieces = 2^u_steps * 2^v_steps)

That means 512 smooth triangles for u_steps 4 and v_steps 4.

Doing this will hurt the parse time for the mesh, but shouldn't affect the
trace time.  On the other hand, if you output to a 'mesh2' (part of the 
superpatch), you should be able to speed up the parse time for the mesh.

-Nathan

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