nemesis skribis:
> yes, but the difference is that at the time there was no other option to obtain
> very detailed and realistic results.  Both photon mapping and radiosity
> generate are capable of delivering very realistic and accurate results without
> the huge performance penalties associated with the bruteforce methods...

But let us not forget that the _are_ things that povray is unable to render.
Imagine a room with a window. The window will act as a light source, making the
objects in the room cast shadows and generate caustics. Even if no direct
sunlight passes through the window. Radiosity can make the window illuminate
the room, but cannot generate (decent) shadows.

One could also imagine two walls that appear to have the same colour under a
broad-spectrum white light (such as an incandescent bulb), but have different
colours when observed under an emmissive-spectrum light (such as an LED). Such
effects would require a renderer to maintain hundreds of wavelengths instead of
just the three colours, and AFAIK no renderer can do this. (Still, it would be
cool if povray were the first.)

Long story short: realism is subjective. When the film Tron came out it had
amazing CGI. Nowadays we think it has very bad CGI. Today we think povray 3.6
generates amazing CGI. In ten years, http://xkcd.com/338/

Hymyly.
And there was light.

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