In article <44014e05@news.povray.org>, war### [at] tagpovrayorg says...
> Patrick Elliott <sha### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> > Now... A Spline Path could work though, maybe?
> 
>   And sampling along a spline (iow. splitting the spline into very small
> parts and making a whole ray-scene intersection test for each small part)
> is exactly what would make it prohibitively slow.
>   Would it really be worth the effort?
> 
But, is it actually slower than for a regular line? I mean, sure, the 
calculation may require a few more math steps, but intersections still 
require the same sort of testing, even for a straight line right? Maybe I 
am wrong.

>   Radiosity requires lots of sampling, but the results can be spectacular.
> Media also requires lots of sampling, but the results can also be quite
> spectacular. Variable IOR would probably require even more sampling, yet
> I highly doubt the end result will look any spectacular.
> 
Depends. What about an object where the variable IOR is based on a 
pattern, similar to what you can do with media? Right now you can't even 
simulate that, at least unless you wanted to glue together hundreds of 
discrete objects, all approximate shapes and all with different IORs. We 
really can't be sure what effect would result, without trying it. And for 
that matter, from what I understand, there are real world materials that 
actually have a "different" IOR depending on the angle of incidence of 
the light hitting it (I think I remember reading about some anyway).

-- 
void main () {

    call functional_code()
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

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