Hi(gh)!

On 13.04.20 12:23, jr wrote:

> on the source (zip) files -- you wrote a 3601x3601 tile needs ~1.5G.  that is
> ~115 bytes per pixel; likely, some/much of that information will not be
> required.  suggest recoding those, to a custom file format.

What do you mean with "custom file format"? Anything binary rather than 
text?

> on the mesh2 storage -- what if meshes were only created on-the-fly[*], when
> needed for rendering that part of povearth?  sure, performance hits everywhere,
> but within budget.

On the average raytracing geek's machine (if I regard my six-core AMD 
with 24 GB of RAM as average) this still would take 2 1/2 hours per 
elevation data tile... just downloading, decompressing and readily using 
them in a scene file would be faster!

> another "budgeting" option would be to focus on a single continent, initially,
> and only produce those meshes.

Yes, with POVghanistan only (160 tiles, liberally including also parts 
of neighbouring countries to have a neat rectangle - and, yes, doing the 
Shalimar Gardens at Lahore or the Golden Temple of Amritsar would be 
very nice, not to mention countless other examples of Mughal 
architecture throughout India and Pakistan), this would fit into my 
limited webspace resources...

>  (maybe, when you retire, your pension will allow
> you to buy more cloud-storage.  :-))

But cloud storage would not be publicly accessible, would it?
In fact, I am an early retiree... from a very patchy work life, so my 
pension is rather low, I can't help but having to win a lottery jackpot 
to be able to do full-fledged POVEarth... and also my other megalomaniac 
project, the Organ Palace - a museum showing all electronic organ models 
ever manufactured, at least in virtual space (X3D organs playable as VST 
instruments via MIDI keyboard(s) or even entire MIDI organ playtables) 
if not in the real world, then also containing a music school and 
concert venue... but there is no El Gordo in Germany!

See you in Khyberspace!

Yadgar

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