John Mellerick wrote:
 >
> Hi all,
> 
> Not sure if this is the right group for it (maybe advanced users would be
> better). I've just written an article about Povray's arealights, based on
> some tests I've conducted recently, and unfortunatly I have to say it isn't
> glowing with praise for them.

As I understand it, POV's area lights pretty much are crude hacks. Their 
*only* purpose is to create soft shadows, not to accurately simulate 
flat-panel lighting or arrays of point lights.. and because they only 
calculate shadows, they can do so much faster than a real light array 
while using less memory. Even today this is valuable; in the past it 
would have been necessary.

In regards to Christoph's "theoretical" comment, I suspect he means to 
say that having over a hundred point lights for every light in a scene 
may be practical for simple test scenes, but would make rendering for 
many real scenes unacceptably slow. I have often found the same to be 
true of high radiosity settings.

I do find the "stadium lighting" effect on the half-marble strange, 
though. Are you sure you're using the area light properly?

-Xplo

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