On Sat, 25 Jul 2020 05:50:47 -0400, Pekka Aho wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>>
>> It's always fun to see folks who were around in the early days on
>> CompuServe.  :)
> 
> Ah, sadly I wasn't having any online activity at that time, sorry. :O I
> had a 1200 bit/s modem, but it was never used. Here in Finland it was
> still quite expensive to call anywhere, thus my resort was those few
> (yet also costly) import magazines with utility disks wrapped along.
> Those were from where I later got a newer version of POV too in addition
> to those many trial versions of other software.
> 
> A good friend of mine had the possibility to access several bulletin
> boards, but those were rather quick visits for getting us some shareware
> games every now and then.

Back in the mid-90s, I was gifted a sponsored account on CompuServe 
because of some technical product expertise I had, and the sponsored 
account status meant that I didn't pay the by-the-minute charges that 
CompuServe charged.

When I was at university, I had access to an account and got interested 
in raytracing; I was a CS major (for a time), and a student member of ACM 
and SIGGRAPH.  I never got to the point of understanding the math behind 
raytracing (it's still largely little more than magic to me today), but I 
was fascinated at the entire idea.

> Indeed and same here, my highest respect to Tran, Shay, Hormann,
> Piqueres, Kern and so many others for their stunningly mind-blowing
> works! Even though feeling most comfortable with the SDL, I'm still far
> from all that. Already long time ago I embraced my destiny and ever
> since been concentrating mostly on game style art with anything else but
> realistic textures etc., as actual simulations of reality in any level
> of accuracy is still completely beyond my head. :D

Ah, yes, several other names there I haven't seen in years, but I 
remember well interacting with them (now that the memory's refreshed) in 
those forums (maybe not quite as much as the memory is telling me, but 
even just downloading and viewing the images was magical).

Many of those images still live in the HOF today.  The one that I most 
often think of is Tran's "The Wet Bird".  Simply amazing.  And of course 
"Reach for the Stars" - the story behind that one is incredible.  Ray-
tracing in space.

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>>
>> Today I play in Blender when I need to put something together, but
>> getting the POV-Ray plugin going is something that I've not fully
>> completed.  I need to get back on that and re-render some of my more
>> recent images with it.  It'd be interesting to see the differences in
>> output compared to Cycles.
> 
> I must confess - with a slight sting in my heart - that lately I've been
> fiddling around with a Finnish software called Realsoft 3D (formerly as
> Real 3D). It has a history going back to the Amiga times, and was too
> expensive for my budget back in the day. A couple of years ago they
> released the version 8 and it was just 200 EUR (~ 233 USD), so finally
> gave it a go. I remember this one from the early 90s as well, so at last
> I can see and try myself what it is about. The render output is
> surprisingly close to that of POVs btw.

I vaguely remember Real 3D - when I was in high school (late 80s), I 
worked for a retailer that sold Amigas and Amiga software.  We may well 
have carried it.  (We did carry the Video Toaster, for example - so it's 
not much of a stretch that we'd have had Real 3D as well).

Jim

-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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