I have uploaded the first version of Sim-POV - a mechanical simulation
system for POV-Ray - to my website:

http://www.tu-bs.de/~y0013390/simpov/

There are still a lot of unfinished things in that patch - a lot of
functions i would have liked to implement. But i think it is good to
release it now, even with a somewhat limited functionality.  Most of those
things part of the released version are fairly well tested.

The documentation is quite complete including a tutorial for the first
steps.  But care should be taken when using the macros in the
'mechsim.inc' include file.  It is not that easy to use in some parts and
not designed to be fool proof.

Now the bad side of the whole thing - i have only prepared a source code
release right now.  I could have made a linux compile but most people
using linux won't have problems compiling their own binary anyway.  I
thought about creating a Windows binary with the free borland compiler but
since simulations are usually quite computationally intensive i thought it
would probably not be of much use to offer a version significantly slower
than the official binary.  If anyone could make a fast windows (or mac)
compile i would be happy to offer it too.

And finally i would like to give credits to ABX for his triangle distance
function that is part of the simulation engine.  The f_triangle patch
itself is also included in this version.  Thanks also to Christophe
Bouffartigue for his work on Clothray - i used a several ideas and code
elements from him in this patch.  I also wanted to include the Clothray
patch itself in this version but did not yet receive an answer from him on
that matter.  

Also included in Sim-POV are my radiosity improvements.  These are even
more experimental than the simulation system but could be interesting to
test if they are useful in some cases.

That's it for the moment, have fun trying it. 

Christoph

-- 
POV-Ray tutorials, include files, Sim-POV,
HCR-Edit and more: http://www.tu-bs.de/~y0013390/
Last updated 28 Oct. 2002 _____./\/^>_*_<^\/\.______

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