Slackware 13.0 x86_64 running RC2 - I've recently started finding pov'pid' files
in my /tmp directory - where 'pid' was the povray process id.
They're quite big - 60Mb or so - similar size to the .pov-state file in my
working directory.

Usually they're cleaned up at the end of a povray run, but if I kill a job then
they're left behind.

I don't remember ever seeing them before RC2 - what are they for?
Should they be there?

Cheers,
Peter

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Le 15/01/2011 20:17, geep999 nous fit lire :
> Slackware 13.0 x86_64 running RC2 - I've recently started finding pov'pid' files
> in my /tmp directory - where 'pid' was the povray process id.
> They're quite big - 60Mb or so - similar size to the .pov-state file in my
> working directory.
> 
> Usually they're cleaned up at the end of a povray run, but if I kill a job then
> they're left behind.
> 
> I don't remember ever seeing them before RC2 - what are they for?
> Should they be there?
There: yes.
They are used for big picture to avoid taking too much valued ram.
(so far the trigger is more than 1024² pixels, but it is still a hot
topic and might evolve, as far as I know (and I ignore a lot of things!))
You can change the location by exporting POV_TEMP_DIR value if /tmp does
not suit you.

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Le_Forgeron <jgr### [at] freefr> wrote:
> Le 15/01/2011 20:17, geep999 nous fit lire :
> > Slackware 13.0 x86_64 running RC2 - I've recently started finding pov'pid' files
> > in my /tmp directory - where 'pid' was the povray process id.
> > They're quite big - 60Mb or so - similar size to the .pov-state file in my
> > working directory.
> >
> > Usually they're cleaned up at the end of a povray run, but if I kill a job then
> > they're left behind.
> >
> > I don't remember ever seeing them before RC2 - what are they for?
> > Should they be there?
> There: yes.
> They are used for big picture to avoid taking too much valued ram.
> (so far the trigger is more than 1024² pixels, but it is still a hot
> topic and might evolve, as far as I know (and I ignore a lot of things!))
> You can change the location by exporting POV_TEMP_DIR value if /tmp does
> not suit you.
Ta for the answer.
But - I have only observed the pov'pid' file being about 60Mb.
I can surely spare 60Mb out of my 4Gb for "big pictures".
And using RAM ought to be faster too.
I'm frequently creating 2048x1536=3145728 pixels pictures - I suppose it's
"big".
What are 1024² pixels? (I'm seeing 1024 capitalAgrave squared on my PC -
should it be 1024 Megapixels?).

Perhaps it's something that the user could control by over-riding a default
using an environment variable?

Cheers,
Peter

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Le 16/01/2011 13:38, geep999 nous fit lire :
> Le_Forgeron <jgr### [at] freefr> wrote:
.
> What are 1024² pixels? (I'm seeing 1024 capitalAgrave squared on my PC -
> should it be 1024 Megapixels?).

sorry, short hand for 1024 x 1024.

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Le_Forgeron <jgr### [at] freefr> wrote:
> They are used for big picture to avoid taking too much valued ram.

  All the previous versions of povray had it easy: They simply had to keep
two lines of the image in RAM (the current one and the previous one, for
antialiasing). All the others could be written to the final image file as
they were rendered.

  No more in 3.7. Multithreaded rendering means the image can be calculated
in any order, so writing-and-forgetting already rendered parts is much more
complicated.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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