Jon Harrop wrote:
On Thursday 24 April 2008 20:29:50 Andrew Coppin wrote:
2. It's the only program I've seen that can render *real* curves, not fake trickery with triangle meshes.
What you called "fake trickery with triangle meshes" is the core of all modern computer graphics. Focussing on ray tracing instead of that is rather missing the point, IMHO.
Well, that rather depends on what your "point" is, doesn't it? Personally, I don't see the point in rendering a couple of million mathematically flat surfaces, and then trying to blur the edges to give the false illusion of a curved surface - when you could just, you know, render a real curved surface. Sure, surface normal tricks can make lighting and reflections look almost correct, but they won't fix profile views, shadows and self-shadows, intersections, or any of the other artifacts caused by using triangles. But anyway, this is wandering off-topic. Suffice it to say, for my humble little hobby graphics, I intend to stick to ray tracing. If you disagree, feel free to use something else for your stuff. :-)