I suppose I'm overdue for a bit of elaboration on my project.  So, without
further adu...

> I would suggest to start from reading http://www.it-berater.org/smpov.htm
> My question is: how your application will differ to SMPOV?

SMPOV does look like a very interesting program, somewhat more ambitious,
possibly simply better than my own.  My motive is two fold: first, I'm
fairly new at networking, so I wanted to take on my own project, outside of
school work.  So, there is one very important difference (in my mind).
Second, now I didn't play with SMPOV very much, and that was an older
version, but I didn't see much in the way of support for animations, which
is the entire purpose of my program.  My program does not currently support
dividing a frame up into separate tiles to be rendered separately, and I
don't currently have any plans to add that functionality.  It is designed to
handle animations, and transfer any #include the animation may need to
modify.  It also keeps separate copies of the include files for each frame,
so that if one render client fails to deliver the frame can be sent to
another.  So it boils down to SMPOV seems to be designed for stills, mine
for animations.  As for multiprocessor support: I do not have access to any
multiprocessor machines, so that is not a major priority, though it
certainly seems doable.  Remember that this is being developed first for my
own use, to be distributed second.  The feature set will reflect that, more
than anything else.  (But I am always open to outside input).  If I were to
liken it to anything, it would be to the IMPFarm client, expect that I can
use it to render my own stuff.
Some have brought up portability.  SMPOV (correct me if I'm wrong) seems to
rely on windows specific networking protocols, probably easy to use, but not
so portable, and it won't work over the internet.  I am using standard
TCP/IP, so it can communicate with other computers across the internet.
Will this functionality be useful?  That remains to be seen.  As for the
code itself, I am coding in C# (my first C# project, it is a dream to use)
with VS.NET 2003, so I don't expect this code to be very portable at all,
nto without some fairly major revisions.  That, then, is a sumary of my
work.  I'll release more (executables, API) when it is completed.  With
break ending, don't look for them too soon, though
Ah, in answer to ABX, thankyou for your input, but no, I looked at the help
file and still can't find a parameter that lets me hide the interface
entirely.  There are other options that have proven quite useful, but not
that one.

Barron Gillon

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