I think this "discussion" is going nowhere... let's just conclude that

(a) there are obviously different views on the issue of whether a mesh-only
lighting model should be included into a renderer like POV-ray, and

(b) in practice it will most likely not happen any time soon.


To throw in some more pragmatic argument: Although I see some point in Warp's
argumentation, I for one think it is of *much* more benefit to invest time &
energy into improving an existing lighting model, than into adding a new one
that works only with a subset of the geometry supported by POV-ray.

Note that I'm not saying that it wouldn't be worth to put time & energy into new
lighting models *per se* - but that *any* lighting model supporting only a
subset of POV-ray's geometric primitives should have lower priority than *any*
reasonably promising lighting model supporting the whole palette.

And I still consider "Wardian" radiosity promising enough for that matter. I
think there is still room for improvement - at least on the quality side. 3.6
was obviously flawed with implementation issues worth working out.

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