Invisible wrote:
> POV-Ray, of course, gets round this problem by using more sophisticated 
> mathematical techniques than simply projecting flat polygons onto a 2D 
> framebuffer. I've yet to see any GPU attempt this.

Well, I wrote a vertex shader a while ago that would correctly position 
a point along a Bezier patch*.  Then, rendering the patch became a 
matter of passing a "net" of points in, and let the GPU handle the 
actual calculation of the points.

It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to extend this to other functions, 
and not just a Bezier calculator.

-- 
...Ben Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

*It even varied the granularity of the net in real time based on the 
current FPS, so it would maintain a constant frame rate.  It ended up 
quite nice, and I was able to have about a dozen patches on screen, with 
no visible polygon edges, on my GeForce 5200.

Of course, on my 7600GT, I can render several dozen patches on screen at 
once, with no visible polygon edges.  Still a far cry from modern games 
(where an individual model might have 8-15 *thousand* polygons, and 
there are usually several characters on screen at once), but a neat 
effect anyway :)

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