AndyW wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I'm a 3rd year physics undergraduate. I have been assigned an experiment to
> do called Optical Beams. The notes say to use a ray-tracing program called
> Beam Three from Steller Software. I've had a look at this and it seems
> ancient and has an awful interface. I would like to use POV-Ray instead,
> but I'm not sure if it's as 'scientifically-capable' as Beam Three. I've
> pasted in below what I've been asked to do. I'd be grateful if anyone could
> give a quick response to say whether the general ideas are feasable to do
> within POV-Ray.

looking at beam three, it appears to me that this is a completely 
different animal from POV-Ray. I would recommend you use it over a 
program like POV-Ray, simply because it was designed to model lenses.

While some of the experiments you listed could be visualised with 
POV-Ray, I don't think the effects would be 100% measurable, or 
accurate. Also, the means to get the light to show up involves photons 
and media, which will cause even the simplest scenes to render in hours, 
possibly days.

-- 
~Mike

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