Hi,

POV Ray doesn't use any hardware-assisted acceleration technologies.
It will not use MMX nor DirectX nor OpenGL. It will not use more than 1
CPU (you posted this question too).

I think it is the price of being generic and portable in the most simple
way.
Anyway I don't understand technical reasons for not using multiprocessor
computers on any platform. MMX (and upcoming MMX2, which includes
some vector-oriented floating-point operations) can improve the
performance but it is Wintel-specific (it has only 90% of the market--
who needs to support it specifically :-) and it is produced by some diabolic
company :-)) ). OpenGL is generic enough and can be used for some
oversimplified preview to test a scene geometry. (Upcoming merge of
OpenGL and DirectX will cover DirectX too).

I understand guys are working for free and they are doing the great
job! I don't even know any comparable products. You can use any
hardware platform you want to render pictures.

I understand that they didn't do this and that because they don't have
enough time to play with MMX or multiprocessors. Probably they
don't have multiprocessor computer handy to debug their stuff. I
believe guys don't have enough spare time to cover all bases and
they do their best!

Anyway, support of some features will be nice. :^)

Eugene

PS: Well, MMX can help on Linux and other non-Microsoft Intel-based
OSes.

-- Eugene Lazutkin (eug### [at] carnac-graphicscom)

Scott Anderson wrote in message <34c54d1e.0@news.povray.org>...
>I was wondering if POV on Windows 95 supports or uses MMX and/or any 3D
card
>to improve performance? Also I heard last night from a friend that, the
>speed is only from the CPU and RAM, is this true?
>
>Thanks,
>
>Scott
>
>

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