I have been working on a simple particle simulation for atmospheric 
effects like smoke, and here is the first result. At the current stage 
it simulates gravity, particle temperature(high temperature particles 
rise faster than lower temperature particles, and particles constantly 
cool), and wind.
No media was used, just a whole bunch of partly transparent spheres. The 
render time is tolerable with smaller amounts of particles, but really 
slows down where many are densly packed. And of course, a high 
max_trace_level has to be specified.
Parse time is a bigger problem, I tend to get impatient with the speed 
of parsing POV simulations. In this case it was about 12 minutes, with 
1500 particles and an iteration level of 300(the simulation simulates 
the path of the particles by going through several iteration steps, 
incrementing the position each time). Of course, that is using MegaPOV 
0.4, so it is using the faster macros.
It is animation safe, although I have only done one test animation. The 
parse time builds up quickly, but I will try to make it support 
MegaPOV's persistant variables, which will help quite a bit.
If there is interest, I will add some finishing touches to the source 
and post it. I will probably make a C++ version someday, it will run the 
simulation much faster.

-- 
Chris Huff
e-mail: chr### [at] yahoocom
Web page: http://chrishuff.dhs.org/

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