Nekar Xenos <j-p### [at] citywalkcoza> wrote:
: Maybe this is a stupid question, but why doesn't Pov use real radiosity?

  There's no such a thing as "real" radiosity.

  There's an algorithm called "radiosity" which calculates the
inter-reflection of light between flat polygons. This algorithm is usable
only if your scene consists of polygons.
  POV-Ray uses a monte-carlo raytracing method in order to calculate
the inter-reflection of light between surfaces. The advantage of this
method is that it works with any object you can raytrace.

  Both methods have their advantages and disadvantages. Usually the first
method is faster but more limited. It's also a bit unoptimized (it has
to be calculated for every surface, even those which are not seen and do
not contribute to the global illumination in any way). And as said, it only
works with polygons.
  The second method is usually slower, but can give as good results as the
first, and even better. AFAIK Radiance uses monte-carlo raytracing for
the radiosity calculations, and its quality is well known.

  The implementation of this in POV-Ray just suffers from some problems
(probably bugs), which makes it problematic in some cases.

-- 
#macro N(D,I)#if(I<6)cylinder{M()#local D[I]=div(D[I],104);M().5,2pigment{
rgb M()}}N(D,(D[I]>99?I:I+1))#end#end#macro M()<mod(D[I],13)-6,mod(div(D[I
],13),8)-3,10>#end blob{N(array[6]{11117333955,
7382340,3358,3900569407,970,4254934330},0)}//                     - Warp -

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