Tor Olav Kristensen wrote:
> Thank you very much for starting it all David !

I did it for the fun of it.  There's not enough of that in computing 
these days.

Thanks
David

Post a reply to this message

David Buck <dav### [at] simberoncom> wrote:
  The POVRay team and the community have made POVRay
> what it is today.  It's still, however, a major source of pride for me.
>
> Congratulations, everyone.
>
> David (Kirk) Buck

POV-Ray is one of the best "finds" I have ever made on the 'net! MANY
MANY thanks to you (and all the POV-Team) for keeping it open -source and
free. It is a CONSTANT source of fun and amazement.

Ken

Post a reply to this message

David Buck <dav### [at] simberoncom> wrote:
>
http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/userblogs/buck/blogView?showComments=true&entry=3306173249

  Cool.

  By the way, be careful with referrers. Nowadays spammers are practising
referrer-spamming. IOW spammer robots will eventually visit your page
and use spam sites as referrer, which will mean that your page will be
directly advertising spam sites if/when this happens. Watch out for this.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Dear David San

I have been learning C language from DKBTrace and POV-Ray for 12 years.

DKBTrace and POV-Ray are my Bible.

Thank you very much much again.

Best regards from Japan.

Y.Tanabe
Kobe,Japan


David Buck wrote:

> In the early days of DKBTrace, I toyed with the idea of making it a
> commercial product.  Making it freeware, however, has allowed it to
> catch on and grow in ways I'd never imagined.  I couldn't begin to count
> the number of people it has influenced and inspired.  I can only claim a
> small part of the credit since I haven't been involved with the project
> since about 1993.  The POVRay team and the community have made POVRay
> what it is today.  It's still, however, a major source of pride for me.
>
> Congratulations, everyone.
>
> David (Kirk) Buck

Post a reply to this message

Y.Tanabe <tec### [at] khrimorjp> wrote:
> I have been learning C language from DKBTrace and POV-Ray for 12 years.

  I could write a sermon about why that is not the best possible idea, but
let's just skip that this time... :P

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

David Buck wrote:

> To everyone in the POVRay community, I commend you.  POVRay is a 
> phenominal program and the quality of the images the POV artists make 
> with it is amazing.

Wow!

Let me be another in a long line of people who dropped in to say 
"Thanks!" Without you, there wouldn't have been this exceptional program.

Though, I joined the party a bit later than DKBTrace, I've been using 
POVRay since it was known as PVRay :)

Post a reply to this message

David Buck wrote:
> After speaking to Aaron Collins today (Aaron helped me write DKBTrace 
> which was later used as the basis of POVRay), I wrote a blog article on 
> POVRay, its history, and its present state.
> 
>
http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/userblogs/buck/blogView?showComments=true&entry=3306173249

> 

Nice to see you stray by.  As you said a bit of the spirit of the good 
old times(tm) often would be good.

Interesting reading and thanks for the flowers. ;-)

I had a look at the DKBTrace source from the link you gave and it's 
amazing how much from this is still in POV-Ray today.  The sad side is 
the amount of bloat added: your lighting.c is 835 lines, today 
lighting.cpp is 6287 lines.

BTW what is Aaron Collins doing these days?

Christoph

-- 
POV-Ray tutorials, include files, Landscape of the week:
http://www.imagico.de/ (Last updated 07 Oct. 2005)
MegaPOV with mechanics simulation: http://megapov.inetart.net/

Post a reply to this message

David Buck <dav### [at] simberoncom> wrote:
> After speaking to Aaron Collins today (Aaron helped me write DKBTrace
> which was later used as the basis of POVRay), I wrote a blog article on
> POVRay, its history, and its present state.
>
>
http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/userblogs/buck/blogView?showComments=true&entry=3306173249


Many thanks to you David !

Post a reply to this message

Christoph Hormann wrote:

> David Buck wrote:
> Nice to see you stray by.  As you said a bit of the spirit of the good 
> old times(tm) often would be good.
> 
> Interesting reading and thanks for the flowers. ;-)
> 
> I had a look at the DKBTrace source from the link you gave and it's 
> amazing how much from this is still in POV-Ray today.  The sad side is 
> the amount of bloat added: your lighting.c is 835 lines, today 
> lighting.cpp is 6287 lines.

At the time, of course, we didn't have photons or radiosity.  That adds 
a lot to lighting.cpp.

When we started, the C++ compilers weren't very mature and we coded it 
in straight C with OO-like enhancements.  I'm surprised that this 
approach has survived all these years.  POVRay still doesn't use C++ 
classes.

There was a time when we had implemented refraction wrong.  The images 
looked ok, but they weren't correct.  To test it, we took a glass sphere 
that a friend of mine had, put it on a real checkerboard and 
photographed it. By modeling this scene in POVRay, we could see how well 
the refractions matched.

> BTW what is Aaron Collins doing these days?

Aaron is doing some consulting work in Chicago.  If I heard correctly, 
he had a bout of cancer and is now in remission.

David Buck

Post a reply to this message

David Buck <dav### [at] simberoncom> wrote:
> When we started, the C++ compilers weren't very mature and we coded it 
> in straight C with OO-like enhancements.  I'm surprised that this 
> approach has survived all these years.

  It's the weight of history. Changing from C to fully-OO-C++ requires a
complete redesign, which is not a trivial thing to do.
  But your point is exactly why the team has been planning pov4 for so long...

>  POVRay still doesn't use C++ classes.

  POV-Ray 3.7 actually moved a big step towards that (although it's still
not a full redesign as pov4 ought to be). It was kind of forced due to
the difficulties in making the old code bend into multithreading...

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message