> 3500 is the number of "hops" for one particle in one frame? Or...?

Yup, in one frame.

> So you want to reduce it to 1 or 20 when a particle slides along a
> surface - which are the cases then where you actually DO want the 3500
> samples being taken?

The precision-settings will take care of that. You set a minimum and a
maximum time-step for calculations. When the timesteps drop below the
minimum time-step for several times (perhap 10 or 20) then the System
assumes that the particle is oscillating on a surface and switches to
rolling/sliding. Now you ask, when would a time-step drop below the minimum
interval? When a particle hits a surface, it doesn't necessarily do that at
the end of the time-step, but in between. So I switch the time-step to only
calculate everything till impact, and then move on. An impact is the only
reason why a particle's timestep may drop below the minimum. Now, if this
happens far too often, I want to switch to a less parsing intensive
calculation.

> I mean - why do your system take that small time
> steps sometimes when it seems you're saying that you don't need that
> precise calculations anyway?

I'm not saying I don't need it anyway. But 3500 bounces always lose a
certain amount of precision, just due to rounding of floating points. On a
cost-scale, I can spend that precision with less parsing, but still get the
same satisfying results. That's what I'm after.

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

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