[SDL] Blitting algos...

[Simon]

> What else will you do with a multi tera-op/flop GPU with multi-gigabytes
> of display memory? Well, yeah, real time ray tracing will get added in
> too.

Hey you stole my idea! lol

For this (extremely large project), I intend to overuse opengl (and sdl 
of course), but later (actually might have time for this today), I will 
incorporate some sort of binding to use POV-Ray (see povray.org, a 
famous free raytracer).  The binding is to make sure not to break in any 
way the license, so you will need it pre-installed and configured and 
tell my software where it is.

If I remember correctly, POV-Ray supports rendering in PNG 64bits 
(16bits per channel), it is a custom extension for the PNG output.

This integration will permit, for example, to raytrace changing 
landscapes as heightfields using the tools in povray (you could make a 
blob, an isosurface, etc...), or could be used to raytrace textures 
instead of loading them from disk.

At last, here's where realtime raytracing comes in, I expect to be able 
to use povray to do some basic realtime raytraced effects that could 
overlay an OpenGL scene (think of a lensflare inside a church, where the 
lensflare is deformed by the "colored-windows"(?))...  We'll need more 
hardware to acheive true realtime raytracing, but we can start walking 
toward it now! ;)

Thanks for all your help, unfortunately, I was having lots of problems 
with the generation of the image I need to blit (to the point where I 
would believe my blit is good, but the generation is not, so I was 
possibly blitting a black surface or something...)

I'm in the process of starting a small tutorial website, a potpourri of 
different flavors of programming, mostly all web-related (php/asp), but 
I will also include interesting code in C/C++, I'll keep you posted if I 
finish any of these "little things"!

Thanks again,
   Simon