"Charles C" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> CdeathJd,
> If you haven't done so by now, do a search on these newsgroup for roller
> coasters.  There are some that people have worked on already, albiet not
> always directly in SDL.
>
> Read up on using splines in the docs, they might be really useful. For a
> pertinant example check out:
> /scenes/animation/splinefollow/splinefollow.pov
>
> Every so often I see discussion about how to interpolate equal lengths along
> a spline without a lot of iteration.  If you do end up using splines, I want
> to say it sure is handy if you choose control points that already happen to
> be fairly evenly spaced.   Also, splines also give you a quick way to fake
> physics by adjusting values or distances between control points.
>
> Charles
>
> PS, I'm still not sure this is what you want since it sounds like you have
> working code for something else and might not want to start from scratch?

in essence its going to be like a small rollercoaster type ride that takes
the viewer from 1 place to another, i still dont have any clue how to
achieve
this in pov-ray, i think angles must come into it somewhere but i have no
idea how to make it work, because pov-ray doesn't move objects relative to
their rotation.

crappy ascii image example:
........................................................
........................................................
........................................................
........................................................
...................................#....................
..................................#.....................
.................................#......................
................................##......................
...............................#.#......................
............................##...#......................
...........................#.....#......................
.........................###.....#......................
......................##...#.....#......................
.......#####.#####.###.....#.....#......................
TRACK---#.....#.....#.....#.....#......................
.........#.....#.....#.....#.....#......................

It doesn't matter if the track pieces overlap (at this point), it doesn't
look like
i can do this in POV-RAY because it has weird rotation and maths i think.
Shame,
because it would have looked wonderfull with pov-rays graphics.

i thought i would probably need to move the next track piece, to the old
ones, then
rotate it, then move it "forward" from that position relative to its new
rotation, but as i've
said a lot, pov-ray cant move objects relative to their current rotation.

An example of me doing this in a program (looking very cr/p i must say) can
be found:
http://www.selfign.co.uk/JPP/JPP_RandomCoaster.exe

Any more tips? i do apreciate the help, even if its not helping me!

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