> So where's 4.0 headed?  Will the future development process for povray
> simply involve introduction of new MegaPov features, or will it ever get
to
> a much faster rendering engine?  (Hey, I'm not disparaging its rendering
> speed or demanding a feature request: I don't even know enough about the
> engine to know whether a manyear of volunteer effort could make "povray" a
> faster renderer.)

What I've read on these groups so far seems to suggest that POV-Ray 4 will
be more flexible on the "modding" side, for example stuff like *real*
plug-ins, not just include-files. The new number shows that it'll be a
complete rewrite, and if I recall correctly, there were numerous times when
someone mentioned that the new texturing model in 4 might be completely
different from what we have today, to make room for a much more flexible
texturing. Making POV-Ray faster might be nice, though I don't really know
how that could be achieved. To me, it seems like the way things are done
right now are as efficient as they can get with this model (bounding boxes,
vista buffers, light buffers, etc), and I don't really expect a speed-up,
though maybe certain aspect might be made faster (media, isosurfaces, but I
don't know what I'm talking about here, I just know that they're slow most
of the time :-).
Notice though that I do not speak for the POV-Team and these are just my
thoughts and things I believe to remember, maybe I'm completely wrong (aside
the fact that 4 is a rewrite, duh! :-).

Anyways, I do think the POV-Team does lurk around and not only listen to
these newsgroups, but keep an eye on other software as well. And the ones
doing the programming are very likely the ones having discussions about what
to do with what feature, how to change it or if to leave it out for
something completely new. I trust their expertise and experience. As far as
I'm concerned: as long as POV-Ray is as stable as it is now, I can't
complain. Some guru will come along and add the next feature I need. :-)

Regards,
Tim

-- 
"Tim Nikias v2.0"
Homepage: <http://www.nolights.de>
Email: tim.nikias (@) nolights.de

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