> The normal use of POVRAY seems to revolve around the idea of a 'camera'
> which is a single point 'observer'; Raytracing in this case means tracing
> *backwards* from the eye of the beholder to the different spots in the
> scene.
>
> My use seems a bit different: I want to have an imaging plane and I want
to
> 'catch' rays over that plane. The overall result should be data about the
> intensity of light striking various points on my imaging (target) plane.

The best way to see what light is hitting a plane is to actually put a plane
there with a white pigment, and set up a camera to look at it. In order to
get the best approximation of the light hitting it, you will likely want to
use photons on refracting or reflecting objects, and possibly radiosity to
gather any other ambient light. The only difficulty you may have is that
light incoming at a shallow angle will have less of an effect than light
approaching perpendicularly.

 - Slime
 [ http://www.slimeland.com/ ]

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