I've always found Pov-Ray a rather beautiful and intuitive way of
putting together 3D scenes and animations.  But with today's 3D cards, I
find that I can have a lot more fun with scenes which are a bit
interactive and render in real-time; for this, I need to use something
like VRML, OpenGL, or Java3D.  All of these describe scenes in ways
which, to my mind at least, are a Heck of a lot more fiddly and unclear
than Pov-Ray.  VRML as a scene description language superficially
resembles Pov to some degree, but it's enormously much uglier, more
awkward and incomprehensible - why they didn't take Pov-Ray as their
starting point is a mystery.

Anyway, my point is that while there is still a place for ray-tracing
the technology is now in place for people to do a lot of the things they
do with Pov-Ray (and more) in real-time.  Are there any plans afoot to
extend Pov-Ray to use 3D acceleration, say, or ways of converting
Pov-Ray-made animations into something that Java3D (say) could use?  Or
will I have to translate my animations (see my web page) by hand?

Thanks

 - Fergus C. Murray
thr### [at] oolongcouk
http://fergusmurray.members.beeb.net/

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