The problem lies with several issues:
we only have a floating-point CPU to a certain degree of detail. We cannot
circumvent that due to compability reasons between the different platforms.
We further need a range a User cannot specify, so that the options he may
specify will be rendered correctly within the given precision boundaries.

And when do you actually need to render an amoeba with Saturn in one image,
where you can't fake either one with textures or variable scaling of
distances?


-- 
Tim Nikias v2.0
Homepage: http://www.digitaltwilight.de/no_lights
Email: tim.nikias (@) gmx.de


>
> High!
>
> Experimenting with worlds covering a large range of orders of magnitude
> (for example the Solar System with 1 unit = 1 km), I pretty soon
> discovered the limits of PoV-Ray... nothing smaller than 0.0001 or
> larger/further away than 10,000,000 units is rendered correctly. I
> remember having brought up that issue years ago in
> comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing, back then I was told of the ominous
> "epsilon". What is this "epsilon" precisely?
> Is there a not too complicated way to modify the range of orders of
> magnitude to, let's say 1e-8 to 1e13, so that everything from amoeba to
> Pluto's orbit can be rendered within one scene, by hacking the code?
>
> See you in Khyberspace!
>
> Yadgar
>


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