On Wed, 27 Nov 2002 18:56:13 -0000, "Tek" <tek### [at] evilsuperbraincom>
wrote:

>Speaking as a programmer this sounds like rather shoddy coding! Okay I'm sure
>values near the limits of floating point numbers would cause problems, but the
>limit is around 1e38, so I'd expect it could get much bigger than 1e7 without
>any problems.

Don't forget that some shapes require solving polynomials of a very
high degree, and large values, even though way below the theoretical
fp limit, can easily cause considerable problems for the root solver
when used in high powers.

>BTW, does anyone know if there's a similar lower accuracy limit? i.e. the
>shortest distance below which two surfaces will be judged to be in the same
>place?

Yes, there is. Any intersection closer than EPSILON to the current one
is ignored. The reason is simple - it can easily be the same
intersection :)


Peter Popov ICQ : 15002700
Personal e-mail : pet### [at] vipbg
TAG      e-mail : pet### [at] tagpovrayorg

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