POV-Ray   Ray-tracing is a method to create a 'photographic' image of a landscape, described as a series of objects and light sources. In the real world light rays originate at a light source, then get modified when they hit one or more objects and finally arrive at the camera to form an image. Using the same approach a ray-tracing program would have to follow a near infinite number of light rays to build up a single image, and hence would require a near infinite amount of time to complete the image. Therefore a ray-tracer reverses the process and starts at the camera end. From there it backtracks the path of all light rays that hit the camera, until they pass through a light source. The nature of the objects that a light ray interacts with on its way from light source to camera defines its color and intensity when it hits the camera, and thus the color and intensity of an image point. Browsing around the web one day, more or less at random, I came across the POV-Ray site, which made me curious enough to download this ray-tracing program. And that was when I discovered that an Intel 486 based PC is definitely not what you want to run this program on. Quite frustrating, because I did manage to create some interesting small images of simple objects. But the operating words here are 'small' and 'simple'. It was only after I had upgraded to a more state-of-the-art PC that I did get satisfactory results. The 640 x 480 version of the image to the right took more than ten hours to create on the 66 MHz Intel 486 based system, using the DOS version of the program. Now, using the Windows version on an 800 MHz AMD Athlon based system, that time is reduced to approximately six minutes. To see some more images that were made with POV-Ray check out the image gallery. And in case you wonder: the backdrop image for this web site was made with POV-Ray and so were the menu buttons, the 'top' arrow and the logo at the top of the page. If you are already a POV-Ray user you may find this sphere_sweep design aid useful.

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