I was thinking that it would be cool to create a new electricity macro,
along the same lines as Rune's "Electric.inc" but rather than setting
the intensity directly, have the macro calculate strikes and intensity
based on interactions between spherical static fields:  Much like blob
calculations.

This in mind, I have a few questions:

1) Is this possible using only the current Official version of POV.

* I'd thaught of starting with a no_image sphere to simulate the field,
and calculating interactions with other fields based on variables like
Location, Radius and Strength
2) Is it possible to have the macro calculate interactions only between
"fields" and not between surrounding objects?  If not can anyone suggest
a workaround?

The electric arc could be perturbed so that small forks might branch off
or it's path might vary slightly based on turbulence calculations.

At the moment, I'm thinking that all the "field" coordinates would have
to be fed into one macro,  I was thinking this might be done with an
array.  The macro could step through the array using a loop.

It's quite likely that, even if what I propose is possible, it will take
me quite some time to come up with a with a working model; however, I
wanted to float the idea and get some feedback and ideas.

Again, this is an idea I had for something to work on while I'm learning
programming, I have no Idea how hard it might be - only that it would be
interesting to try.

ADB

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This is certainly possible, and the actual creation of the invisible spheres
is generally irrelevant.  The one piece of tricky physics that you need and
I dont have is the transition of air from an insulator to a conductor.  Im
sure google could supply information on this, but im not sure how simple it
would be.

Everything else is simple algebra, just given charges and locations, the
forces between them are the inverse square of their distances.  When ever
the intensity reaches a certain threshhold (i hate english), you can use
the electricity macro directly.  It would just be a simple wrapper the
macro needed to be in.  Almost all the hard stuff is already done, if i
understand correctly.

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