Perhaps my statements would make more sense when I describe what I would be thinking
about putting together as my "rendering farm".

I own one "fast" computer (albeit not all that fast anymore), and several older, much
slower machines (all Wintel boxes right now - but I am considering dual-booting my
good one with Linux).  They are all networked on a 10Meg ethernet.

The fast computer may be able to parse some scenes about 100 times faster than the
slower ones.  It may be possible to transfer the memory constructs created by the
parsing process to the slower machines faster than they could generate them.  This
would be even more possible were I to have a 100 Meg ethernet.

So, I have a dream.  It may not be practical, but it is a dream.

The "accuracy problem" is supposed to be addressed by the POV program.  The team
mentions that it has worked to keep cross-platform problems at a minimum, including
random number generation.  I don't know enough about the differences in CPU
architecture to speak to differing accuracies in floating-point operations.

Randy Hawley



> On Thu, 22 Nov 2001 23:23:52 -0500, Randy Hawley <rha### [at] iquestnet> wrote:
>
> > Also, we need a "binary" scene file, that the parsed scene can be stored in.
> > That way, the scene is parsed once, stored in a shared file (or the file can be
> > shipped to each rendering engine), then rendered by the farm.
>
> IMO it has sense only if the "binary" format supports constructions like
> #macros, #while etc. Sometimes could be  more efficent to send short script with
> #while(N<10000) and parse it on place instead of unrolled "binnary" list of
> objects with slow bandwidth.
>
> Also I wonder how accuracy problem will work when platforms on the farm will
> support different accuracy.
>
> ABX
> --
> #declare _=function(a,b,x){((a^2)+(b^2))^.5-x}#default {pigment{color rgb 1}}
> union{plane{y,-3}plane{-x,-3}finish{reflection 1 ambient 0}}isosurface{ //ABX
> function{_(x-2,y,1)|_((x+y)*.7,z,.1)|_((x+y+2)*.7,z,.1)|_(x/2+y*.8+1.5,z,.1)}
> contained_by{box{<0,-3,-.1>,<3,0,.1>}}translate z*15finish{ambient 1}}//POV35

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