In article <3A8ED9D6.19D97662@pobox.com>, Anton Sherwood 
<bro### [at] poboxcom> wrote:

> Can a portal object be infinite? 

It's just a pigment, so it can be applied to any object.


> If so, portals can be used to vary the effective topology of space.

I'm not sure about this...it depends on what you mean. Portals just let 
you see into another area of space, if you have a cylinder poking into a 
portal object, it won't come out on the "other" side, it will just poke 
through the portal object. You could probably come up with a two-way 
portal (using two portal objects) that does something that looks like 
the object emerges on the other side.

> Simple example: place two pairs of parallel portal-planes to make the 
> `torus' field of many games.

I think the most you could do is an effect that looks like a "hall of 
mirrors", where you see infinite (ok, max_trace_level) repetitions of 
the scene when you look to the side.


> I've long wanted to try pseudo-hyperbolic space, where (for example)
> five plane-quadrants meet at a point.  Such an illusion would be
> improved, i think, if the portal had an optional `refraction' setting.

That is a good idea, I will have to put that on the list.

-- 
Christopher James Huff
Personal: chr### [at] maccom, http://homepage.mac.com/chrishuff/
TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg, http://tag.povray.org/

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