> Simon> thanx, but the reason I want to use ray tracing is for the
> realisium, if virtual reality mean triing to trick the participant into
> believing he is in a different env., then ray tracing just seems
> right(since it models light rays and all),  Also I realise that
> computers are just not fast enough today, but they will be in the maybe
> not so distance future(Intel's P4, to be released this year, will be
> 1.5GHz+). Plus you can also make dedicated hardware, and software
> improvments. But hey, thanx anyways, I will read up more on openGL.

In a not so <great> distant future??
Look here I got a PII@433Mhz and I get One frame of Povray for a Minimum of "A
few seconds" some time "A few minutes" and rarely but it happens "A few hours or
so..."
The eye perceive about 30 frames per second...  which means you would have to
render every frame in 1/30 seconds...  that is if you divide the speed of my
computer (433) for let say a 1 second render of povray by (1/30) you get the
computer of your dream and it's probably not a Pentium since it should have
12990Mhz!!! (<currentSpee>/(1/<fps>)) = (433/(1/30)) = 12990Mhz!
And a one second render of povray with my 433 isn't worth looking at...  You
need at least a minute to about what you could get with OpenGL...
(<dreamMhz>*<secs> = 12990Mhz * 60 = 779400Mhz....)

This... is... INSANE!
We won't be living in that dream future!

Believe me for your Virtual Reality, OpenGL is the thing...  but I like adding
Povray textures, povray light effects into OpenGL...  yeah, it's a fake, but I
can't even see the difference when it's well programmed!

I hope I didn't scare you tho,
  Keep trying,
	Simon

PS:  Mmmm  779400Mhz  8P~~~~~~

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