"Mueen Nawaz" <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote in message 
news:42a4effa$1@news.povray.org...
> Bob Hughes wrote:
>>>Not a beginner to POV-Ray (first experience in 1995).
>>
>> Gee, that's just one year less than me. Give or take several months, 
>> maybe.
>> Been such a long time.
>
> Well, I'll confess. I started with raytracing in 1994 with Alexander
> Enzmann's Poly-Ray

Wow. Just like me, or I you. Maybe was late 1993, I just don't recall 
anymore.

I didn't have a good computer until mid-'93 (DELL 486DX math coprocessor, 
was Tandy 1000 before) so all I ever did was use e-paint, simple CAD 
programs and basic (ala Basic) screen plotting. I roamed around AOL a while 
and somehow picked up on Polyray there. Main thing I remember about it was 
the "depth" output, for putting it into a random dot stereogram program.

I had learned a little about these concepts during the late '80's just from 
watching some Public Broadcasting Station stuff and reading science 
magazines, although I didn't really know anything about ray tracing itself. 
Happened across POV-Ray while I was finding more things about it. That led 
me to CompuServe because of the group of people involved in it there, 
leaving AOL for about a year, but I couldn't move around in CS fast enough 
even though I had upgraded the modem (2400 to 14400??). AOL was tried again 
and it was much quicker to get places than I was able to do in CS. Until as 
recently as last year I was still using AOL, even with Cable internet access 
since 2000 (had only TV antenna, then small satellite dish those last two 
years), although I had been in the process of leaving AOL quite a while.

Ooops. Turning this into a biography!

I gave the blob idea a try to check on it myself and if you have, too, then 
you might be having trouble using cylinder components in the way I imagined. 
I'm thinking using all spheres might still be plausible, but at this point 
I'd be willing to change my suggestion to a height_field instead.  ;)

Bob Hughes

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