Chris Huff <chr### [at] maccom> wrote:
: And I wouldn't call them "incredibly fast"...well, if you compare them 
: to the POV-Script parser...and they are surprisingly fast. Just not 
: "incredibly" fast. :-)

  Well, since isosurfaces are faster than many builtin primitives, like
polys or superellipsoids, I'd say that isosurfaces are incredibly fast.
  Polys and superellipsoids don't have to parse anything the user has written.
Only the numeric values are stored at parse time into variables (which don't
differ in any way of any other variable used by the machine code) and at
render time a fixed-type code is run to test intersections etc.
  Isosurface functions, however, have to be somehow interpreted each time you
want a value. The function is not coded in a native machine code, but it's
a byte code (or whatever) that has to be interpreted (much like java byte
code, for example).
  Moreover, you need to get several values from the function for each
intersection test, which makes its speed even more incredible.

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

Post a reply to this message