Gilles Fedak wrote:

> Idea is to use the idle time of computers to render scenes provided by
> any one.
> Xtremweb  allows the distribution of applications and the computing of
> tasks without to much effort, and there are clients available for Linux
> and Windows.
> Povray is for us a good test case for the platform.
> So what do you think about the usefulness of such a project ?

While I've no doubt about Povray being a good test case for this, the main
problem is about the usefulness of it for end users - a least for those who
create stills. Scenes that render slowly (let's say below 10 pps - roughly
an overnight render at 800*600) and that could benefit from it are often
(but not always) ones that also use large amounts of memory and disc space,
which would make their distribution uneasy. While there's usually no formal
relationship between render speed and memory/storage space requirements,
there's a practical one which is the price to pay for scene complexity :
several reflective/refractive objects in a scene involving high-quality
radiosity will make the scene crawl and the memory use rise.
Typically, people who have to meet deadlines for certain raytracing
competitions would be in cases like this ;-)

G.
--

**********************
http://www.oyonale.com
**********************
Graphic experiments
Pov-ray gallery

Post a reply to this message