Fast uniformly distributed random points on the surface of a unit hemisphere

Question

I am trying to generate uniform random points on the surface of a unit sphere for a Monte Carlo ray tracing program. When I say uniform I mean the points are uniformly distr

Answer 1

Have you tried getting rid of asin?

azimuthal = 2*PI*dsfmt_genrand_close_open(&dsfmtt);
sin2_zenith = dsfmt_genrand_close_open(&dsfmtt);
sin_zenith = sqrt(sin2_zenith);

// Calculate the cartesian point
osRay.c._x = sin_zenith*cos(azimuthal); 
osRay.c._y = sin_zenith*sin(azimuthal);
osRay.c._z = sqrt(1 - sin2_zenith);