Hello,

Could you please tell me whether what we are trying to do could be
accomplished by POV-Ray?

We would like to model a flash-light consisting of a parabolic mirror and a
light source at the focus of this paraboloic mirror.

We would like to be able to accurately measure the intensity of light
arriving at a plane perpendicular to the the axis of symettry of the
flash-light, which plane is some fixed distance away from the flash light.
Ideally, we would like to see a diagram of light intensity arriving at this
plane, or if that is not possible, some visual presentation of this light
intensity by which it could be straightforward to accurately measure the
intensity at any given point within 10% accuracy.

Here is a simple scene which corresponds to our setup, but the resulting
image does not provide us with the required accuracy for measuring the
intensity:

camera {
location <0, 0, 0>
look_at <0, 0, 7> // 7 is the distance between the plane and the light
source at <0,0,0>
}
// Define a parabola along Z-axis with focus at <0, 0, 0>
// and focal length of 1/(4*a), i.e. a*x^2 - z- 1/(4*a) = 0
quadric {
<0.5, 0, 0>, <0, 0, 0>, <0, 0, -1>, -0.5
texture {
finish {Mirror}
}
}
// Define a plane on which to measure the light
plane { z, 7.0
pigment { color Blue }
finish { Dull }
}
// Define a light source
light_source { <0, 0, 0> color White}

Any suggestions are welcome, as I have been using POV-Ray for only a day.

Thank you for providing this excellent software free of charge.

Goran

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