"Jim Kress" <jim### [at] dccmailcom> wrote:

>OpenGL offers an easy to implement, raster scan technology that could be
>(easily?) implemented in POV-Ray.  It would be ideal for generating previews
>so the user could determine camera, lighting, etc and then do the final
>render with the ray-tracer.  If I knew how to do C++, I'd do it myself but
>since I don't, is there anyone out there who would like to add this
>IMMENSELY useful feature to POV?

Don't think we haven't thought of this. But it would be -very- difficult.

OpenGL is totally different to POV in that it only implements a few primitives,
and basically requires that any complex object be built up from polygons.

POV, on the other hand, supports an extensive set of primitives, plus other
advanced things such as CSG (performing CSG on polygon meshes is not trivial).

To make a OpenGL preview, we would have to write code for each and every
primitive that POV supports, that would convert an instance of that primitive
into a form suitable for use in OpenGL, plus, probably do the CSG as well
(unless we can factor it into the conversion process - thus leveraging the
existing CSG code in POV).

It's certainly high on my wish list for 4.0 but there's no telling if it will
ever happen.

However, if there's any good C/C++ programmers out there who want to volunteer
to add such support to the existing 3.1d codebase ...

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