I just had a silly idea:

Imagine a form on a Web page.
It will have a combo box allowing to select some (low) resolutions, an
upload zone to provide image maps and height fields, and a text area to type
or paste scenes.
Perhaps also a combo box to insert some preset scenes.

You hit the Render button, and the Web server answer by a page giving the
messages and the rendered image (unless there is a parse error, of
course)...

What's the use?

- Show a friend what is a ray-tracer from his house.
- Try before you buy, er, download... You can copy some code snippets from
the Internet and see what they look like.
- Continue your favorite activity even on the move, from any Internet
cafe...
- Allow to make some logos, using predefined scenes where the user has just
to type some text.
- Etc.

We can even imagine a paid zone, where users would be allowed to keep their
scenes, uploaded images (with otherwise would have a limited life span) and
rendered images. They would be allowed to render at higher resolution and to
set whatever setting they want...

Of course, you need a very robust server... :-)

-- #=--=#=--=#=--=#=--=#=--=#=--=#=--=#=--=# --
Philippe Lhoste (Paris -- France)
Professional programmer and amateur artist
http://jove.prohosting.com/~philho/

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