Haha this effect rules!
Though I would remove the front wall and let the ceiling/floor continue because it looks a bit weird when the light shines at the wall in front of the camera. If I were you I'd add some more patterns to the light (like non-square ones by blacking out some rays) and add a few more spheres floating around. The first time it crossed the beams I thought it was a bug. Or make the sphere larger.
It looks pretty awesome when you add alternating high radius/low radius blurs w/ convolution to equalize the dots (see
here)
By the way, is there any reason why the camera is not moving? If you're raytracing, what is keeping you from having the camera move around?
Some optimization tricks... replace:
Det=-sqr(vb)+4*va*vc;
k51=(-vb+sqrt(Det))/(2*va);
k52=(-vb-sqrt(Det))/(2*va);
...
....if(below(Det,0), ...
with:
Det=-sqr(vb)+4*va*vc;
alpha=below(Det,0);Det=sqrt(Det);
va=.5/va;
k51=(-vb+Det)*va;
k52=(-vb-Det)*va;
...
...if(alpha,
(sqrt is a slow operation)
Oh and 'sqr(.5)' can be replaced by a constant too 🙂. I'm not sure why dz=1.3/15 would be faster, but I think it's because of random fluctuations. Remember that depending on the position of the camera, AVS has to draw more and longer lines, so the speed can vary a lot during the preset. I think you got the wrong impression because of this.
Also, I think it wouldn't be very noticable if you didn't raytrace the sphere in the volumetric beams scope, and it would be slightly faster. Oh and you need to make it so it is already moving at the beginning... a common mistake which makes the preset weirder on slow songs 🙂.
Now of course for the ultimate effect, you need to add a discoball on the ceiling that reflects the rays correctly... 🙄 just kidding (though reflections aren't *that* difficult actually), this is an awesome effect!