In article <3eab03ee@news.povray.org> , Wolfgang Wieser <wwi### [at] gmxde>  
wrote:

> Either smart "intelligent" mixed-resolution meshes with (at least
> primitive) viewport culling or a very fine mesh is required.
> OR, subdivision at render time.
> Anything else?

Culling is of little use for ray-tracing, it is a typical scanline render
acceleration technique.

However, I recall a paper (in ACM TOG iirc) about an optimized level of
detail algorithm for terrain modeling that was suitable for ray-tracing.
And I am sure somebody has already invented a method for fitting huge meshes
such that they can be used by ray-tracing - RAM to store meshes of whole
planets has _not_ been affordable or available for a long time after all.
And the need to store those meshes has existed for a much longer time!

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

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