Claude Mench <c.m### [at] adilinstrumentscom> wrote:
: more interested in realtime rendering (OpenGl and clever
: use of it to simulate reflection, and even radiosity).

  If you are talking about environment mapping to simulate reflection and
light maps to achieve radiosity, then there's nothing strange with them
(of course it's not trivial to make them efficient, but the idea behind them
is quite simple). Most of the current 3D-games use both techniques to
achieve a kind of "fake" reflection (with env. mapping) and radiosity
(with light maps).
  Of course there are limitations: Environment mapping is not an accurate
reflection and radiosity using light maps works only in static scenes (you
can't move anything, no objects, no light sources, nothing).

:         - 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...)

  You answered your own question. Converting all the primitives to
triangles is not a trivial task and probably not worth the efforts.
  And even when OpenGL is a standard, it's not part of the ANSI C++ standard.
Adding support for it would make povray platform-dependant.

:         - Will the photon map be improved to perform optimised
:           global illumination and shadows optimisation ?

  Nathan is the best one to answer this question.
  I have understood that using photon mapping for global illumination is
pretty inefficient and that the current radiosity method (with the fixes made
in uvpov) is a lot more efficient.
  The good thing about the current stochastic method is that the radiosity
samples are calculated only where they are needed. Almost every sample taken
will affect the illumination of the image even a little. With photon mapping
lots of photons will be shot in vain; they will just end somewhere in the scene
where they do not affect anything.

-- 
main(i,_){for(_?--i,main(i+2,"FhhQHFIJD|FQTITFN]zRFHhhTBFHhhTBFysdB"[i]
):5;i&&_>1;printf("%s",_-70?_&1?"[]":" ":(_=0,"\n")),_/=2);} /*- Warp -*/

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