Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> Rahul <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> > BTW, I'm pleasantly surprised to see that many other posters actually thought
> > raytracing might be the *fastest* option around!
>
>   This should actually be so when the number of spheres grows (at least when
> there's no reflection nor refraction, ie. basically we are using raycasting),
> especially compared to alternatives like OpenGL.
>
>   This is because as the number of spheres grows, the rendering time of
> OpenGL grows linearly while the rendering time of POV-Ray grows slower
> (I'm not exactly sure how much slower, but probably by O(sqrt(n)) or
> O(log(n)).) This means that at some point POV-Ray indeed becomes faster
> than OpenGL.
>
> --
>                                                           - Warp

That's fascinating; I had no idea. I had *always* thought--in a rather
simple-minded way  :-( --that OpenGL was definitely and always faster than
raytracing. What a surprise!  Thanks. (And thanks to Willaim Tracy also, for
the succinct description of raytracing vs. scanline rendering.) This single
newsgroup post has *really* opened my eyes.

Ken W.

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