In article <40b1f3d3@news.povray.org>, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> 
wrote:

>   Certainly the photon code could be *improved* (eg. by adding a code
> which refuses to take an infinite object as a target), but I don't
> understand how it is buggy or system-dependant.

From the original message:
"I tried running it again, but watched it this time. After about 10 
seconds it started rendering, but I hadn't changed any code at all."

It spent over 7 hours collecting over a billion photons before being 
canceled. The next time, it spent a few seconds and rendered as it 
should have. That sort of nondeterministic behavior is almost always a 
sign of a bug.

And it shouldn't disallow infinite objects as photon targets...finite 
objects can take just as long, if their bounding box contains the light 
source. However, a warning may be in order for both these cases.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: <chr### [at] tagpovrayorg>
http://tag.povray.org/

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