nemesis <nam### [at] nospamgmailcom> wrote:
> But why Megapov?  AFAIK, it's based on an old fork from the pov
> codebase.  How many of megapov patches go the way back to pov?  Still
> waiting for AOI or HDRI.

Guess what: HDRI actually *is* in the beta :)

Nobody seems to have made much fuss about it, but it works. It just seems to
handle gamma a bit differently than the MegaPOV implementation, but that may be
simply due to the general gamma handling change.

And AFAIK some things like radiosity and/or photons actually made their way into
official POV via MegaPOV.

Aiming for it to be integrated into MegaPOV seems the right way for me (and
besides: Who uses standard POV anyway? :)); at least as long as we're talking
about 3.7 - for throwing old things overboard, the 4.0 would be a much better
candidate.

4.0 is still at its very basics, and is intended to head for radical changes
anyway (new SDL and all).

So getting Lightcuts into MegaPOV - as a proof that it *can* be integrated into
existing concepts, that the *POV* development community can implement it, that
it *does* give the expected performance benefits, and that it can be done
*without* sacrificing other features like reflections, caustics or all the
types of media - might give it a chance to be selected for the 4.0 *main*
lighting model. If it's never integrated into a POV patch, I guess it will at
best make it into 4.0 as an experimental feature.


So yes, going for a Lightcut-patched 3.6 (or 3.7) - ideally as part of MegaPOV -
might be *the* key to actually get it into official POV at all.

Doing it as fast as possible might be crucial on both sides: As of now, no final
decision has been made about the main lighting model for 4.0; some advocate to
stick with the existing model, while others suggest other approaches, but the
discussion seems to have come to a standstill. An approach with such
extraordinary runtime characteristics as promised by Lightcuts - if proven to
be feasible in the POV world - would most likely tip the scales. A sub-linearly
scaling algorithm - and not only that, looks like we're talking about very close
to logarithmic here - where do you get *that* in 3D rendering, where sometimes
you'd be happy if things would scale sub-quadratic?!

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