Tom A. wrote:
> I was re-reading _Rendezvous With Rama_ and thought I'd render it, to 
> get a feel for the size of the thing.  It's Big.
> 
> (For those who haven't read it - it's a hollow, cylindrical cylinder 
> with an interior 50 km long, and an internal diameter of 16 km.  It 
> rotates to generate artificial gravity against the inner surface.)
> 
> At the airlock end, there are three stairways that go from the base of a 
> km long ladder and follow a mostly hemispherical slope to the flat part 
> of the cylinder.
> 
> I got the end's shape - there are six platforms that cicle the 
> hemispherical slope - and ran a trace() to place steps made of boxes. It 
> generated over 10,000 steps.  The parse went fairly quickly.  Then the 
> render started.
> 
> I'm doing this on a Windows 98 system with an Athelon 2200 (which is 
> equivalent of a 1.2G pentium).  It was rendering 130 pixels per _minute_.
> 
> Needless to say, I pulled the stairway.
> 
> Anyone have a suggestion for a quicker render?
> 
> Tom A.
> 
> (If you haven't read it, I suggest _Rendezvous with Rama_ by A. C. Clarke.)

Boy, is my face red.

I placed the stairway code in the wrong place - it was in a difference 
construct.  I was imbedding the stairs, rather than raising them.

Put the code on the other side of the } and it vastly sped up.  (With my 
debug lighting I got about 1500 pps.  When I turn on Rama's six area 
lights, it drops to about 500.  Oh well.)

Thanks for the suggestion.

Tom A.

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