Claude Mench wrote:

> 
>    My question goes to the POV-Team in general, I would
> like to know what kind of features have a chance to appear
> in the next Major version of POV (4.0??). I know a 3.5
> version is planned that will compile all unofficial
> interesting patches (like the one with photon maps ).

 I am not speaking for the POV-Team, and most of your questions fall
into the catagory of feature requests, but I will try to answer some
of your questions for you anyway...

 
>    Precise question follows:
> 
>         - Can we expect an preview mode using OpenGL (I'm
>           aware that the tessalation of all objects existing
>           in pov will be difficult, and infinity ojects also...)

This is not likely. POV-Ray uses it's own algorithms to perform raytracing.
Even with the promises of support for raytracing functions, and hardware
support for future versions of the OpenGL standard, I doubt the POV-Team
will want to invest in the time and program overhead to offer support for
these features. These are good features for a GUI modelling environment
but they are not really all that good for a dedicated raytracing engine.
 
>         - Will the photon map be improved to perform optimised
>           global illumination and shadows optimisation ?

As far as I know the author of these functions in POV-Ray is working
on these issues even now. How soon he will optimize them to his own
satisfaction is anyones guess.
 
>         - Is there an official binary format of scene file
>           planned ?

  Last I heard (Chris Young - Plans for POV-Ray 3.5 and beyond) the POV-Team
has no plans for the support of a binary scene format. It has been discussed
in detail but the final decision was to not add support for this in any near
future release.
 
>         - Extended particle system for simulating fur or grass?

Several people have posted scenes in the binaries.images group on this
server using media for both hair and fur. It takes some dedcated work
on the users part to make it work but it's already possible.


-- 
Ken Tyler -  1200+ Povray, Graphics, 3D Rendering, and Raytracing Links:
http://home.pacbell.net/tylereng/index.html http://www.povray.org/links/

Post a reply to this message