Aliasing problem in function InvSqrt_Lomont() in tsMesh.cc

My last few posts today in this thread document an aliasing problem in InvSqrt_Lomont() in engine/ts/tsMesh.cc.

F32 InvSqrt_Lomont(F32 x)
{
   F32 xhalf = 0.5f*x;
   S32 i = *(S32*)&x;         // [b]ALIASING PROBLEM[/b]
   i = 0x5f375a84 - (i>>1); // hidden initial guess, fast
   x = *(F32*)&i;                 // [b]ALIASING PROBLEM[/b]
   x = x*(1.5f-xhalf*x*x);
   return x;
}

I can only verify the problem under SuSE 10.0 w/ gcc 4.0.2 and ubuntu dapper w/ gcc 4.0.3, however it could affect optimization results from other compilers as well.

See this thread for more discussion and some solutions I tried.