Hi Chris,

Chris Cason wrote :
> POV-Ray for Windows version 3.7 beta 1 is now available from our beta p
age
> (http://www.povray.org/beta/).

I would be glad to beta-test that on my dua### [at] 125Ghz ...
Is any OSX version coming soon ?

Best regards,


Author of Eureka 2.12 (2D Graph Describer, 3D Modeller)
http://eureka.atari.org

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Francois LE COAT wrote:
> I would be glad to beta-test that on my dua### [at] 125Ghz ...
> Is any OSX version coming soon ?

A Mac version is going to be made available within the next few weeks.

	Thorsten

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I copied the pvengine.exe file for the 3.7 beta 1 to the bin directory
of my current 3.6.1 installation and started it normally. However, for
some reason it fails to load the editor. It says:

Editor DLL initialisation failed [LoadLibrary failed, code is 0000007e]

  There's no mention of this in the beta page and Gilles has seemingly
run the program without problems, so it's strange.

  I'm running Windows XP (SP2) on a Pentium4 box.

  I then tried rendering a scene by writing in the command-line box:

-i ../scenes/advanced/woodbox.pov

and it rendered it ok. However, I noticed in the end stats that it
seemingly was using 4 threads ("on 4 CPU(S) with 32 CPU-seconds total").

  Does it try to detect the number of CPUs or is 4 some kind of default?

  Well, I then tried writing this:

-i ../scenes/advanced/woodbox.pov /THREADS 2

to see if it worked. Now it's hung. Even if I try to stop it by clicking
on the stop button, it won't. It's not taking any CPU time, ie it's not
doing anything, but it's just not stopping.

  Seemingly I can't specify the number of threads in this way (at least
not with the current beta).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> and it rendered it ok. However, I noticed in the end stats that it
> seemingly was using 4 threads ("on 4 CPU(S) with 32 CPU-seconds total").
> 
>   Does it try to detect the number of CPUs or is 4 some kind of default?

The Windows version detects the number of processors Windows reports and 
asks for twice as many threads.  Apparently two threads per (virtual) CPU 
gives better performance than just one at least on Windows.

	Thorsten

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Thorsten Froehlich <tho### [at] trfde> wrote:
> The Windows version detects the number of processors Windows reports and 
> asks for twice as many threads.  Apparently two threads per (virtual) CPU 
> gives better performance than just one at least on Windows.

  I tried rendering some scenes with 1, 2 and (the default) 4 threads
here (Pentium4). Rendering with 2 threads showed a speed increase of
approximately 20% (which is actually quite good, knowing how the
hyperthreading of P4 works). Rendering with 4 threads didn't speed
up considerably compared to 2 threads, but in some cases there was
perhaps a minor speedup (something like 1-2%), so I suppose 4 threads
is indeed slightly better than 2.
  I didn't test quite extensively, though (ie. with many varied scenes
with different rendering settings).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> Editor DLL initialisation failed [LoadLibrary failed, code is 0000007e]

  It's difficult to test the program when the editor is not loading.
Why do I seem to be the only one having this problem?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>> Editor DLL initialisation failed [LoadLibrary failed, code is 0000007e]
> 
>   It's difficult to test the program when the editor is not loading.
> Why do I seem to be the only one having this problem?

0x7e is 'The specified module cannot be found'. Are you running POVWIN 3.6.1
or 3.6.1a ? Note that there is a major difference between the two WRT the
editor, and that will cause this error.

-- Chris

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Chris Cason <nos### [at] deletethispovrayorg> wrote:
> 0x7e is 'The specified module cannot be found'. Are you running POVWIN 3.6.1
> or 3.6.1a ? Note that there is a major difference between the two WRT the
> editor, and that will cause this error.

  Seems like I has the non-a version. I installed the latest 3.6.1 and
now it works ok...

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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I neglected to mention the following in the list of things not yet done:

Currently file continue does not work, and moreover the output file is not
written at all until the render ends. (Contrast this with the old system
where it was written as render progresses). We will of course re-instate file
continue and provide output crash protection, it's just not in there yet.

Also, alpha is not shown or written to the output file. Will also of course
be fixed.

-- Chris

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Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> A Mac version is going to be made available within the next few weeks.

To be more precise, the current goal is the first half of May.  However, 
please note that this is just a goal and not a promise yet.

	Thorsten

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