VBGamer

A lens flare is a cool effect that occurs when internal refractions and refractions of incident light within the internals of a physical camera create bright patterns within the image. Photographers generally try to avoid lens flares within their images by using lens hoods, though some photographers use the effect to artistic advantage. Traditionally, computer graphics often tries to immitate the results of photography. This can even include immitating effects such as a lens flare that is in actuality an artifact of the photographic process. Adding a lens flare into a computer generated image or animation can help overcome the computer generated coldness of computer rendered scenes. A lens flare can make it look as if your computer rendered scene was captured by a camera. (Excerpt taken from <http://www.opengl.org/Coding/KilgardTechniques/LensFlare/LensFlare.html> ) Hope that explains it some =) Adam