EMAIL: jull43@ij.net
NAME: Matthias M. Giwer
TOPIC: Unbelievable
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: NASA Moon Coverup Revealed! 
COUNTRY: USA
WEBPAGE: http://members.aol.com/jull43 
RENDERER USED: POV-Ray 3.1e
TOOLS USED: Photoshop for image map conversion and formatting 
RENDER TIME: 1m30s 
HARDWARE USED: PII/333 128M Win98

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Massive NASA Coverup! The real first image of 
the dark side of the moon. 

     Ever wondered why the moon only has one face to the earth at 
all times? You would know if it were not for this NASA coverup. 

     Inspired by a short story in Astounding from the 1950s, 
title and author escape me. The pilot is on the first trip around 
the moon to look at the dark side. And this is what he sees. He 
can even see the paint strokes of the craters. And then he goes 
insane. Insanity, the consequence of learning that reality is not 
what we imagine it to be. 

     At the end it is revealed it was a flight simulation he had 
been hypnotized to believe was real. He was to fall asleep before 
actually seeing the backside of the moon but did not. It was just 
a mockup for the simulation and the budget did not permit 
finishing the dark side and the hypnotic instruction to fall 
asleep was a cheap work around. 

     I remember being disappointed that the story was not 
illustrated with what he saw. Now I realize that would have given 
away the punch line. Not that Campbell was ever adverse to doing 
that with illustrations. 

     But now I have finally seen it.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

     The moon is differencing two spheres and a torus clipped_by 
a plane. The torus scaled down greatly in y (in default creation 
orientation) to make it approximate a disk and give me a thick 
hemisphere. 

     The lit side of the moon is an image map of the moon. The 
resolution is kept down for the paint strokes. 

     The starfield is a granite texture with a color map that is 
mostly black. 

     The sun in an internally lit sphere and the primary light in 
the scene. A spotlight at the camera position, flashgun if you 
will, is required to light the hollow interior of the moon 
because the sun being the source. 

     Lens flare? NASA never had a camara as bad as in Hollywood. 
Maybe NASA goes downhill in 18 month, i.e. in 2001.