sev### [at] NOT_THISsibafi news:41954bb8$1@news.povray.org

> I just began to wonder how other people thinks about the future of 
> POV-Ray. Has there been any thoughts of turning POV-Ray into a true 
> forward raytracer or are there issues (others than maybe rendering 
> speed) that makes it unfeasible? That might also make the code a lot 
> simpler as there would be no need for separate algorithms for photon 
> mapping, radiosity, anti-aliasing, specular highlights, color 
> dispersion, light sources, area/point lights etc. Not to mention the 
> simpler scene description files. WinOSi also seems to be very easily 
> parallelized. Or is the speed difference still so big that the extra 
> quality is not worth it?

IMHO it would a good idea to add this *possibility* and _not_ to limit 
Pov-RAY to such approach - even now Pov-RAY is to slow for meany 
profesional graphics because it doesnt offert line-scane mode.

1. line-scan mode (+ some tricks)
2. ray-tracing
3. light-tracing

If I'm correct (am I?) this are mose pupular approaches, currenlty PovRAY 
implements 2. 

Also, Pov-RAY even "traces" every shape, instead of working on triangles.

IMHO best way to go would be to increase aspect of Pov-RAY futures, to 
allow both faster-but-faked renderings, and slow-but-accurate ones.

I myself had had some ideas for TurboPOV, for example - to pre-render 
shadow (especialy hi-quality area_light) and use it later just as a 
texture, same could be done for i.e. radiosity and photons.

Assume we hawe glass-ball +photons+dispersion over a plane. Then we pre-
trace the plane image, and use pre-traced data as image map. That way, if 
other objects like reflective sphere wants to "read" color of plane, it 
doesnt trigger again photon calculations, it only read's data from 
image_map.

Other approach could be to pre-traingulate some compilated objects into 
smooth-mashes (or at least use them as better bounding-objects).

I wonder if any of thoes ideas is worth implementing? It should give big 
speed boost in some cases...

-- 
http://www.raf256.com/3d/
Rafal Maj 'Raf256', home page - http://www.raf256.com/me/
Computer Graphics

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