> I always wondered why POV does not do the same with "normal"
> primitives/csg objects. Are there any technical reasons aside from the
> historical ones you mention?

One good reason is that when primitives are copied instead of referenced,
they can be optimised better. For instance, if you copy a box and translate
the copy, it can simply change the actual coordinates of the copied box and
thereby avoid actually having to use a transformation matrix. Or, if the
original box was already transformed, new transformations can simply affect
the current transformation matrix rather than having to transform the ray
more than once. There may be other similar optimizations.

 - Slime
 [ http://www.slimeland.com/ ]

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