Quote - Do you think there's any chance that trying another triangulation method might help?  The fanning method is the easiest, but possibly not the best.  In most cases, particularly since were largely dealing with quad-polygons, it probably doesn't make much difference.  I'm wondering whether it could, though, at least in some cases.

 
It might help in some cases - just as much as it might hurt in some cases.  It might slightly alter some normals (due to non-planar quads), but you're just as likely to 'break' as many hits as you gain from doing that. In other words, IMO, it's not worth changing,  The normal averaging is already addressing that to some degree.

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