> I am curious if it is possible to use pov to design optical systems such as
> light tubes, parabolic trough concentrators etc. e.g. for alternative energy
> systems.
> Can I either obtain light rays (paths of photons bouncing off mirrors etc.) or
> output final object illumination values into a colormap or grayscale where
> intensity is prop. to color ...perhaps this happens as default behavior?  I
> would need to somehow obtain the relation between color and [insolation or
> watts/m^2].  Anyone done any optical system design with pov? is there another
> opensource that does it?
>
>

You can model the propagation of photons by using the photons feature. 
You need to ba aware that the propagation of the photons is limited by 
the max_trace_level setting and that it's top value is 255.

It's OFF be default. To enable it, you need to add the followings:
In the global_settings:
photons{count nnn} OR photons{spacing nnn}

For the objects that interact with the photons:
photons{target reflection on refraction on}
As most such object are ether reflective or transparent, possibly both, 
and photons almost don't show on them, you should also add "collect off"

As POV-Ray is NOT designed for those kind of works, it's not evident to 
get the effective power per surface unit. The bets bet would be to 
sample the resulting image and get the brightness of the pixels. To get 
an unclipped value, you need to output to an high dynamic range format. 
Use the current version 3.7 beta for that as I don't thing that versions 
3.6 and previous support that kind of format.



Alain

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