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From: watson@ames.arpa (John S. Watson)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Constant Time Ray Tracing?
Message-ID: <2721@ames.arpa>
Date: Wed, 9-Sep-87 20:05:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: ames.2721
Posted: Wed Sep  9 20:05:22 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 11-Sep-87 06:49:51 EDT
Reply-To: watson@ames.UUCP (John S. Watson)
Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Lines: 35
Keywords: ray tracing, computer graphics, search algorithms


Hi Folks,

I've been writing a ray-tracer for a few years now, 
adding a few features to it every once in a while.  

And now the time has come to add a "constant-time" feature, 
because as the number of objects in a scene gets larger, 
the time my raytracer takes to render an image grows radically.
Currently, its finding the intersection of every ray with every object. :-(

Anyway, I know there have been a few variations of the constant-time
algorithms around, and what I need to know is, what is the _best_, 
i.e. simplest, most effiecent, etc, ... version to implement.

At SIGGRAPH'85, and I read about Kaphan's version "Space Tracing, 
a Constant Time Ray-Tracer", [course notes], but I suppose there 
might be a newer, better variation since then.  

Could some of you wonderful people comment on these techniques in general, 
and maybe give me some pointers on recent research, implementions, etc. 

Thank you,

John S. Watson
NASA Ames Research Center

ARPA: watson@ames.arpa
UUCP: ...!ames!watson

-- 
John S. Watson                      ARPA: watson@ames.arpa
NASA Ames Research Center           UUCP:  ...!ames!watson
Any opinions expressed herein are solely the responsibility of the
author and do not represent the opinions of NASA or the U.S. Government