Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:

>   Each and every different seed value *does* generate a stream of
> pseudo-random numbers with the exact same quality of randomness.
>
>   In fact, POV-Ray has only one single stream of pseudo-random numbers.
> This stream has 4294967296 (2^32) unique numbers in it. When you set up
> a seed, you are simply setting up your starting point in this stream.
> All random number streams will eventually start giving the same values
> as all the other streams at some point, because they are all actually
> just traversing the one and same stream, just at different starting points.

Ah!  It *finally* clicks in my brain. Thanks for the excellent clarification.

IIRC, you mentioned something several ago (to me) that seed() chooses it
'starting point' in the stream in a very complex fashion...not just 'linearly'
in the stream.  IOW, the difference between seed(23) and seed(24) isn't just
jumping one value ahead in the 2^32 stream. Is my thinking correct?

KW

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