fer all ye gurus

[mlewis]

Anyone know where I can get a good VB or C++ ray casting engine for Windows?

Thx.

[Zaei]

I think that POVRay is open source. Not sure about the
address, but you can look around.

Z.

[parksie]

www.povray.org

[Sastraxi]

'doh, kedaman, that should have been easy for you :P

[SteveCRM]

kedaman?

[plenderj]

You couldnt just do it yourself ?
Anyway, here's a few links that might intrest you :

http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~csilva/papers/rpe/node10.html
http://www.merl.com/people/pfister/thesis.html
http://www.programmersheaven.com/zon...t338/14131.htm
http://www.a1vbcode.com/app.asp?ID=530

- jamie

[parksie]

I distinctly wrote ray CASTING.

I _have_ PovRay and I _know_ where to get the source, I want a ray CASTING not ray TRACING engine.

A raytracer by definition is also a raycaster -- it has to in order to trace them

GET IT?
Sheesh.

Yes, I get it...but I'm not sure you do

Oh, and SteveCRM, kedaman is ranked as a Guru on the forums.

***? He never said anything about that. And anyway, he's not a Guru anymore

[Sastraxi]

Sorry... I was half-asleep when I wrote that.

My apologies to kedaman (yeah right ) and my sincere beatings to Zaei! (hehe!)

It SHOULD have been:

'doh, Zaei, that should have been easy for you :P

[mlewis]

Wow! Talk about a no brainer! If that's what a raycaster is, than I need source code for my microwave oven! Or my laser pen! Or my monitor! Or perhaps the sun! Because all of them cast rays, and according to parksie's literalistic nonsense, they would all be raycasters! DUH!!!!


OK-- ray tracer: follows rays of light along their paths and waits for them either to die or hit the viewing plane. If an intersection with the view plane is detected, the corresponding pixel is set with the appropriate color based on what mediums etc the ray has dealt with in its short life.

Now -- ray caster: a foward looking ray tracer that works based on geometric constraints; for each pixel in the view region, a ray caster follows an imaginary "ray" along its path until the ray hits something or reaches some boundary, e.g. a clip plane or a world edge. When the ray ceases to travel, the engine calculates what the ray has hit or why it stopped and assigns its corresponding pixel a color.

So you ask why do I want code if I already know all this? Because I want code!! Don't ask stupid questions.

So now that we all are completely confused, why don't we just give up because none of you should be posting answers in this thread as none of you have a clue what you're talking about.

[Zaei]

Are all of your 267 posts berating the people you just
asked for an answer? Thats a wonderful way to get
what you want! Were you spolied as a child? You must
have picked up that superiority complex from
somewhere, to be sure. So, when you know
everything, please come back and yell at us. And if you
already do, Clue me in on what goes into
D3DXVec3Unproject to come out with a good return.

Z.

PS: By your definition, a ray caster IS a ray tracer.
Read it for yourself. "..a foward looking ray tracer...".
Hurr Hurr.

[Zaei]

Cough. The sun doesn't trace its rays. Neither does my microwave (does yours?) nor does my moniter. It seems that you, the High and Mighty God of Reading, cannot seem to do it yourself. Oh well, if I'm making you feel low, and stupid, more power to me =).

Z.

[parksie]

POV-Ray does implement this "raycasting" of yours. Nearly ALL packages like it do because otherwise it's a total waste of processing power!

[kedaman]

I didn't have a clue about ray tracing/casting before i visited this thread. What first come to my mind was how the compromises are done because lights on opaque surfaces reflects in all directions. You would get some nasty permutations with increasing amount of such surfaces. Next, when a color of a pixel on the screen is traced, do they take in account all rays passing that pixel, for instance a distant surface positioned at such a distance that it would fit into that pixel's pov would not appear as a specific pixel in the pattern of that surface but the average of all of them. Finally what about half transparent surfaces, interference patterns and all kinds of optical distortions, i guess the complications are overwhelming so i expect the calculations behind are reasonable compromises, far from easy so to speak.
Anyone has idea's?


PS, i'm still one of the 7 gurus on this site, doesn't mean i'm any better than anyone else.

[Jerome W. Norgren]

mlewis,

I don't have any info on any C++ ray caster's, but about two VB one's the answer is yes. Same site one straight VB the other a DirectX version. As to how good they are I have not tried them yet. Here you go:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Amazing 3D A ray caster program in pure VB!
Amazing 3D As above, except powered by DX7
http://www.vbgames.co.uk/community/downloads/main.htm
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hope this helps!

P.S.

I'm not even close to being a Guru, maybe if I keep at it though........ Grin.

[mlewis]

Cool! Thanks, man, this is EXACTLY what I needed!

Keep cracking, someday you'll probably get that Guruship (? is that a word ?)

Thanks again.

[parksie]

Also www.flipcode.com

[Jotaf98]

Heh, isn't that the code the author says "it looks like a fish-eye view"?