Given all of the isosurface stuff I [try to] do, and the functions that are
needed to do them, I really do have to say that it seems like something is
amiss.

I mean, I watch people code shaders, and then I follow along the best I can with
analogous POV-Ray code, and things quickly get SLOW - for a single render -
while they are still happily running at 30+ fps.

(and damn - RT vortices...   :O
https://www.shadertoy.com/view/MlS3Rh
https://www.win.tue.nl/~vanwijk/ibfv/ibfv.pdf
)

Is it a function evaluation issue?
Do vector functions make thing THAT much faster?
(they even use swizzling)
Is it a core isosurface code issue?
Can the pigment pattern - to - isosurface trick help to speed that up?
Is it that the shaders use GPU rather than cpu (ShaderToy runs in a browser...)
Does the shader stuff somehow get compiled beforehand?

I also have to bring up the parametric object speed again - I haven't yet dug
into the source for that, but it doesn't really make any sense why that should
be any slower than any of the rest of the object primitives, or at least THAT
much slower.
Maybe the reason for its drag can point to clues for speeding up ALL of the
function evaluations?

I would of course like to help - you could always point to filenames in 3.7/3.8
and approximate line numbers so I can familiarize myself with the moving parts
and begin to more fully wrap my head around what's going on and let my
subconscious crunch on it.

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