"POV-Ray News" <kyn### [at] cchatcom> wrote in message
news:3b37f516@news.povray.org...
> I have an 800Mhz Pentium III at work with 128Mb with a 256Mb swap file
> running Windows 2000.  The following script file runs fine without any
> problems.  Unfortunately when I run it on my home system with a 1.4 GHz
> Pentium IV with 128Mb with a 300Mb swap file running Windows ME, I get the
> message:
>
> Slab building error.
> Out of memory. Cannot allocate 327680 bytes for photons.
>
> The system shows only 56.5Mb of RAM in use.

I was trying to think of when I had seen something like that recently, maybe
it was while my System Resources were so low things started going wrong.  I
hibernate this computer all the time and it eventually degrades to the point
of a reboot being needed.  Anyhow, the 327680 looks familiar but I was
thinking I saw it as 32768 instead.  Unfortunately I don't remember if
photons were a part of that at all.

Here's the stats:
C:\Program Files\POV-Ray for Windows v3.1\scenes\photonmemorybug.pov
Statistics, Resolution 160 x 120
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pixels:           19200   Samples:           19200   Smpls/Pxl: 1.00
Rays:            778683   Saved:            100511   Max Level: 5/5
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ray->Shape Intersection          Tests       Succeeded  Percentage
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Box                            4962262         3683979     74.24
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Calls to Noise:                  0   Calls to DNoise:             10
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Media Intervals:          12760600   Media Samples:         37838730 (2.97)
Shadow Ray Tests:          3639126   Succeeded:               909663
Reflected Rays:             321814   Total Internal:            5091
Refracted Rays:             311634
Transmitted Rays:            28400
Number of photons shot:          98980
Media photons stored:          9763500
Priority queue insert:        97015921
Priority queue remove:        48845455
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Smallest Alloc:                 28 bytes   Largest:           327704
Peak memory used:        195436684 bytes
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Time For Parse:    0 hours  0 minutes   3.0 seconds (3 seconds)
Time For Photon:   0 hours 13 minutes  51.0 seconds (831 seconds)
Time For Trace:    0 hours 11 minutes  15.0 seconds (675 seconds)
    Total Time:    0 hours 25 minutes   9.0 seconds (1509 seconds)
Total cache size: 14800

Returned from renderer
POV-Ray finished

I have 192MB physical and the Windows swap file went up to 412MB (Outlook
Express and Explorer were running) and this is a 800MHz P3 running
Millennium too.
Your exiting light beam chops off and then continues faded, not sure why.
Maybe the media 12,3 in the global photon block needs adjusting (100 is the
recommended), although you start with a pretty close spacing and the factor
of 3 could be okay; I really can't say.  And the intervals 20 might be a bad
thing, the Doc says to use intervals 1 and that more can produce unwanted
artifacts since method 3 prefers to select its own value if more are needed.

Bob H.

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