First, hi to all the Povray community and team. And thanks for this great
software I use for many years. This is the first time I post something here. I
decided to look at Povray3.7, even if it is in beta, the new feature of
Subsurface Scattering is attracting! There was a function in Povray 3.6 I use
everytime is duty cycle. Time is not important, and I prefer to have some CPU
time for me and my other applications instead of 100% rendering. In Povray 3.7
this function seems to be not working. Is this a feature you'll drop in the
next version? Or it is disabled for the beta?

The other things are working normally for me, except some scenes with photon
mapping, I found that caustics seems to be brighter in 3.6.

Now, when I need some CPU time, I pause the render.

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> First, hi to all the Povray community and team. And thanks for this great
> software I use for many years. This is the first time I post something here. I
> decided to look at Povray3.7, even if it is in beta, the new feature of
> Subsurface Scattering is attracting! There was a function in Povray 3.6 I use
> everytime is duty cycle. Time is not important, and I prefer to have some CPU
> time for me and my other applications instead of 100% rendering. In Povray 3.7
> this function seems to be not working. Is this a feature you'll drop in the
> next version? Or it is disabled for the beta?
> 
> The other things are working normally for me, except some scenes with photon
> mapping, I found that caustics seems to be brighter in 3.6.
> 
> Now, when I need some CPU time, I pause the render.
> 
> 

When you render with version 3.7, the process priority in "lower than 
normal".

This means than just about every other processes have a higher priority. 
In fact, on my computer, there are only 2 process running with a lower 
priority: Idle and those of distributed computing projects that I 
participate in, like Seti@home.

The result is that your other applications will take precedance, and 
that the duty cycle setting is no longer usefull.

Historicaly, the purpose of that setting was so that a computer 
operating in zero G had less chances of overheating. There is no thermal 
convection in the shuttle or in the International Space Station.

Alain

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Alain <aze### [at] qwertyorg> wrote:
> Historicaly, the purpose of that setting was so that a computer
> operating in zero G had less chances of overheating. There is no thermal
> convection in the shuttle or in the International Space Station.

For all who think this sounds like pure bullshit babble: POV-Ray has indeed been
up in space. See the Hall of Fame for what I guess is probably the only artistic
3D render ever produced under zero G conditions.

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"clipka" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> Alain <aze### [at] qwertyorg> wrote:
> > Historicaly, the purpose of that setting was so that a computer
> > operating in zero G had less chances of overheating. There is no thermal
> > convection in the shuttle or in the International Space Station.
>
> For all who think this sounds like pure bullshit babble: POV-Ray has indeed been
> up in space. See the Hall of Fame for what I guess is probably the only artistic
> 3D render ever produced under zero G conditions.

I used this feature when my laptop was overheating. It kept it rendering without
shutting down.

Stephen

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"Stephen" <mcavoys_AT_aolDOT.com> wrote:
> "clipka" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> > Alain <aze### [at] qwertyorg> wrote:
> > > Historicaly, the purpose of that setting was so that a computer
> > > operating in zero G had less chances of overheating. There is no thermal
> > > convection in the shuttle or in the International Space Station.
> >
> > For all who think this sounds like pure bullshit babble: POV-Ray has indeed been
> > up in space. See the Hall of Fame for what I guess is probably the only artistic
> > 3D render ever produced under zero G conditions.
>
> I used this feature when my laptop was overheating. It kept it rendering without
> shutting down.
>
> Stephen

Not only in space... A laptop can easily overheat on Earth when the processor is
constantly at 100%. And Duty Cycle was a good option to save temperature.

There is this small Windows utility from SysInternals :

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897540.aspx

Of course, on Windows you can just hit "Pause" in the editor, but with this
command, I think there is a possibility to write a script to "pause" Povray
every 10 seconds for example, when you run renders by night. It will be a
simple solution if POVRay drops this feature instead of recompiling POVRay.

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clipka <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> Alain <aze### [at] qwertyorg> wrote:
> > Historicaly, the purpose of that setting was so that a computer
> > operating in zero G had less chances of overheating. There is no thermal
> > convection in the shuttle or in the International Space Station.

> For all who think this sounds like pure bullshit babble: POV-Ray has indeed been
> up in space. See the Hall of Fame for what I guess is probably the only artistic
> 3D render ever produced under zero G conditions.

  Yes, that duty cycle option was added precisely for that space flight.

  Anyways, the purpose of the duty cycle option is to keep the CPU idle
for a certain percentage of time in order to avoid overheating. Its purpose
is not really to give time to other processes. Time sharing is a feature
of the operating system, and in most of them you can configure the priority
of processes. If you want POV-Ray to hog less CPU, just tell your OS to give
it a lower priority: Then if some other program needs CPU, the OS will share
more of it for that program.

  All modern desktop operating systems use pre-emptive multitasking. The
days of cooperative multitasking are long over. If you are using the duty
cycle option for emulating cooperative multitasking, you are using the
wrong tool.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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> For all who think this sounds like pure bullshit babble: POV-Ray has 
> indeed been
> up in space. See the Hall of Fame for what I guess is probably the only 
> artistic
> 3D render ever produced under zero G conditions.

I wonder if NASA has to put this function in all of its software :-)

BTW, couldn't you just underclock the CPU?

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