>> Really? I was under the impression that splines can describe any 
>> possible surface.
> 
> How do you render a splined surface directly?  Even POV converts them to 
> triangles first!

It's news to me that POV supports splines in the first place.

>> Triangles, on the other hand, can only give a crude approximation to 
>> curves.
> 
> In practice display devices are made of pixels, so using triangles you 
> can always get exactly the same output as using the true curve.

Only if you have the original curve to hand.

> Have you ever seen any "crude approximations" to curves in film CG?

Have you ever seen any curved surfaces in computer games?

If you *insist* on using triangles, you're going to need a hell of a lot 
of them to fake the appearence of a good curve. That means you either 
need a triangle mesh of absurd dimensions, or you need to generate the 
triangles on the fly.

What all known computer games do is use a static, very low resolution 
triangle mesh and then smother it with lashes of low-level trickery to 
give a vague semblance of curvature.

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