>>> and no, you don't need days to get grainless result anymore than what 
>>> you would need with povray and area lights and radiosity.
>>
>> Er, no, POV-Ray uses an utterly different algorithm for this. In 
>> particular, it uses a shedload of statistical tests to reduce the 
>> number of samples taken.
> 
> Povray still shows a lot of graininess for insuficient samples.  Lots of 
> samples still get very slow rendering.

It doesn't show graininess, it shows patchiness. Because it reuses a 
single sample for multiple pixels. That means it needs to take about one 
millionth of the number of samples that this program takes. Hence, a 
*slight* speed difference.

>> *This* program just endlessly resamples everything until all the 
>> randomness averages out; this is orders of magnitude slower.
> 
> But that's for a pure simple path tracer.  There are far smarter 
> samplers out there, most notably Metropolis Light Transport, that are 
> able to converge the image much faster.

...which still has nothing to do with *this* program.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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