Warp escreveu:
>   However, the core renderer doesn't currently work that way. It doesn't
> "buffer" intersection tests to be calculated in a bunch and then processed
> all at the same time afterwards. It fully calculates one ray and all the
> new rays that it spawns before going to the next ray, and so on.

Curiously enough, it's the same basic process as a path tracer (like the 
one I linked to), except a path tracer spawns several times more rays 
for each ray than povray.

>   Even if you were able to totally change the design of the core renderer
> to do that, it would still probably help only in a limited amount of
> situations. Obviously it would only work with meshes (and perhaps some
> simple primitives such as spheres and planes), but ray-surface intersections
> are often *not* the heaviest part of the raytracing process. Texturing,
> lighting, media, photon mapping and radiosity often take a big chunk
> of the total time.

They take far less than a path tracer.

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