Jaime Vives Piqueres wrote:
> 
> Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> > So you suggest one renders the even and another the odd indexed frames?
> > Or do you suggest that the beginning and the end of a sequence take long
> > and you divide them such that one renders from beginning to the middle of
> > the
> > sequence and the other from the end to the middle of the sequence?  Why
> > would it have to work backwards in either case?  The speed would be the
> > same regardless of sequence direction!
> 
>   IMHO, in the case you proposed, one of the computers can finish before
> the other, because the first half renders fast or viceversa, so one of the
> computers becomes iddle while the other is still rendering, and there are
> still pending frames. With the other solution (starting at both ends), no
> computer is iddle: both finish at the same time, so they finish the task
> before undoubtely (except in perfectly balanced animations where all the
> frames take the same amount of time to render).

How can a second instance of POV-Ray possibly know exactly which frames had
been rendered by the first instance. Backward frame rendering on the second
instance would make no difference as neither instance knows what the other is
doing and couldn't possibly know when to stop in the theoretical middle.
So, as Thorsten already mentioned, it won't matter if you start the second
instance from the middle or the end becasue the two instances have no way
to track and communicate what the other instance has completed. The program
would have to be modified to allow this idea to work and no matter what
you do you will never acheive a perfect load balance with each machine
stopping at exactly the same time.


-- 
Ken Tyler

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