Ray Tracing calculation in C - c

Question

I'm new to ray tracing and trying to program one in C. But My program keep on showing a dot (around 1-3 pixel) of the sphere in the wrong places and now I'm confused. This feels like a very stupid question, but I'm confused about exactly how big is 1 radius of a sphere? What I mean by that is if the radius is 1, the circle is 2 pixels?
I know all the calculations and I triple checked if I had any errors in my codes. but just incase, here is part of my codes:
Directions:
//size: 1024x768, view point (512 384 1), screen (0 0 0) to (1024 768 0)
ray[0] = x - start_x;
ray[1] = y - start_y;
ray[2] = 0 - start_z;
//normalize
double length;
length = (sqrt((ray[0]*ray[0]) + (ray[1]*ray[1]) + (ray[2]*ray[2])));
ray[0] = ray[0]/length;
ray[1] = ray[1]/length;
ray[2] = ray[2]/length;
Intersection:
temp = top; //my struct with sphere data, _x, _y, _z, _r, _red, _green, _blue
//x and y is the current pixel value
while (temp != NULL) {
x_diff = start_x - temp->_x + 0.0;
y_diff = start_y - temp->_y + 0.0;
z_diff = start_z - temp->_z + 0.0;
//a = 1 because my direction is a normalized
b = 2.0 * ((rayVector[0] * x_diff) + (rayVector[1] * y_diff) + (rayVector[2] * z_diff));
c = (x_diff * x_diff * 1.0) + (y_diff * y_diff) + (z_diff * z_diff) - (temp->_r * temp->_r);
check = (b * b) - (4.0 * c);
if (check < 0) { //0
pixels[width][height][0] = 0.0;
pixels[width][height][1] = 0.0;
pixels[width][height][2] = 0.0;
}
else if (check == 0) { //1
r1 = (b * -1.0) /2.0;
if (r1 < nearest_z) {
nearest_z = r1;
pixels[width][height][0] = temp->_red;
pixels[width][height][1] = temp->_green;
pixels[width][height][2] = temp->_blue;
}
}
else { //2
r1 = ((b * -1.0) + sqrt(check))/2.0;
r2 = ((b * -1.0) - sqrt(check))/2.0;
if ((r1 < r2) && (r1 < nearest_z)) {
nearest_z = r1;
pixels[width][height][0] = 255.0;
pixels[width][height][1] = 0;
pixels[width][height][2] = 0;
}
else if ((r2 < r1) && (r2 < nearest_z)) {
nearest_z = r2;
pixels[width][height][0] = temp->_red;
pixels[width][height][1] = temp->_green;
pixels[width][height][2] = temp->_blue;
}
}
temp = temp->next;
}
I haven't done any lightings yet since the flat colouring it doesn't work. I'm new to openGL so expect me to miss some common functions in the codes. Thanks in advance.
Edit:
I only have one sphere currently, but my output looks like: img1
I was expecting a bigger circle? Also, I had a printf for each intersection (if there is) and when I manually plot in a paper, it is a 4x5 pixel square. But there are 4 dots in the output.
Edit 2: I change the size of the sphere to: x = 512 y = 384 z = -21 r = 30, it gave me this:
img2
Again, I only have one sphere and there are 4 in the image. Also, there are holds between the lines?
If I change the z value to -20, now my output is all white (colour of sphere).
I use glDrawPixels(1024,768,GL_RGB,GL_FLOAT,pixels); to draw
I had a RBG output file, everything seems to be in the right place. but when I draw on the program, it is off.