Re: Optical Ray-tracing software - not like povray!
On Tue, 2007-11-06 at 20:12 -0600, elw@stderr.org wrote:
>
>
> The jocaml home page (http://jocaml.inria.fr/) has a couple of TINY ray
> tracers as the examples.
>
> They are *really* small - really really really small.
>
> I provide the fact that I read the entire source of the smaller one this
> evening as a datapoint :-) It is about 11kb, spread across five or so
> source files.
>
> Did I mention that that particular raytracer is distributed and
> client-server-ish? I am pretty impressed, and think some of you will be
> as well. [Impressed enough to be thinking about trying to learn the jocaml
> dialect this week...]
>
>
> --elijah
>
>
> > What about tachyon?
> > http://jedi.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/raytracer/
> >
> >> As part of an Optics course I'm teaching, we use an old 'ray tracing'
> >> program which is used for modelling and learning geometrical optics in
> >> 2D. However, it is commercial and out of date, so for next year we are
> >> hoping to use an alternative.
> >>
> >> Does anyone know some kind of equivalent software, ideally open-source?
> >> Its very difficult to search for such software, since 'ray tracing'
> >> gets lost in a maze of pov-ray type software, all alike...
I think your missing the point. I think the OP means he's teaching
students about lenses and how optical lenses bend light to create an
image of an object. He's probably teaching them stuff like 1/f = 1/v +
1/b (or probably the more complete lens makers formula).
So, basically, he's teaching ray tracing in the sense of:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lens_%28optics%29
So, he needs a program (java applet?) that can trace rays through lenses
and show students if that will result in an image. There are nice
interactive applets on the internet today which will do simple ray
tracing and teach students intuitively how lenses work.
For example,
http://webphysics.davidson.edu/applets/Optics/intro.html
However, probably more advanced and preferably 3d? I know of one I once
came across... Ah, here it is:
http://openraytrace.sourceforge.net/
It's still very preliminary, I think, but maybe will suit your needs, I
don't know.
Good luck,
David
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