Instead of the beta 29 installing desktop/program shortcut/link to the usual 
pvengine.exe I discovered it was actually the pvengine-sse2.exe. I almost 
always use the sse2 anyway for its speed improvement so I was always making 
my own shortcut to it for all the prior betas I was using.

That's how I noticed this install had already done it for me, so I wanted to 
point that out here if it wasn't done so by design. Common sense tells me 
the installer would use the non-SSE2, so I was wondering if this was the 
intent or if somehow the installer knew I used SSE2 almost exclusively-- or 
selects it from CPU info it finds.

My brain is fuzzing up about what I did to use the SSE2 after installing 
beta 28 so I can't say what happened with that one, sorry. I almost never 
use the regular pvengine.exe after being spoiled by the choice of having 
SSE2 to render faster.

Bob

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Bob Hughes <omniverse charter net> wrote:
> That's how I noticed this install had already done it for me, so I wanted to 
> point that out here if it wasn't done so by design. Common sense tells me 
> the installer would use the non-SSE2, so I was wondering if this was the 
> intent or if somehow the installer knew I used SSE2 almost exclusively-- or 
> selects it from CPU info it finds.

  I don't know if the current beta installer chooses the executable based
on the platform, but it would certainly make sense if it did so. (In other
words, if this was just an oversight and it *always* chooses that sse2
executable because of an oversight, then I think it would be a good idea
to actually make it choose the executable based on the platform.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Bob Hughes wrote:
> That's how I noticed this install had already done it for me, so I wanted to 
> point that out here if it wasn't done so by design. Common sense tells me 
> the installer would use the non-SSE2, so I was wondering if this was the 
> intent or if somehow the installer knew I used SSE2 almost exclusively-- or 
> selects it from CPU info it finds.

Yes, it's by design - the installer asks for system info and if it finds
that SSE2 is available it will make the shortcuts point to the SSE2
executable. However both binaries are installed, as before.

-- Chris

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"Chris Cason" <del### [at] deletethistoopovrayorg> wrote in 
message news:48e74c78@news.povray.org...
> Bob Hughes wrote:
>> point that out here if it wasn't done so by design. Common sense tells me
>> the installer would use the non-SSE2, so I was wondering if this was the
>> intent or if somehow the installer knew I used SSE2 almost exclusively--  
>> or
>> selects it from CPU info it finds.
>
> Yes, it's by design - the installer asks for system info and if it finds
> that SSE2 is available it will make the shortcuts point to the SSE2
> executable. However both binaries are installed, as before.


Glad you knew it was doing that. I thought it might have been about 
something else, like uninstall leftover shortcuts.

Wouldn't surprise me if I had made my own shortcuts to that SSE2 after the 
previous beta (28) installed and never realized it was already on the 
desktop and programs list! Meaning I could have been using it when I 
expected I was rendering with the regular pvengine.exe, if this was also 
done before (beta 28).

Thanks for the clarification. And as Warp has said, makes sense to use it by 
default. I didn't want to totally neglect the non-SSE2 during beta testing 
so maybe I can start doing the opposite thing when creating links to the 
other one after those install. Got to be a habit of making those myself 
before the installer came along.

Bob

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On my system the installer selected SSE2 which is unavailable,
so the shortcut crashed. How is it doing the query to check?

It was easy enough to fix the target to the correct version
of pvengine though.

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Tim Attwood wrote:
> On my system the installer selected SSE2 which is unavailable,
> so the shortcut crashed. How is it doing the query to check?

The check is done by calling a windows system information function that asks if
SSE2 is available. So either that call is not being done properly, or Windows
says it has SSE when it doesn't.

I'll double-check the code tonight and see if I can find any problems with it.

thanks,

-- Chris

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Chris Cason <del### [at] deletethistoopovrayorg> wrote:
> The check is done by calling a windows system information function that asks if
> SSE2 is available. So either that call is not being done properly, or Windows
> says it has SSE when it doesn't.

  Perhaps the installer could show the user the selections it has made and
allow the user to change them if they are wrong for some reason?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Chris Cason <del### [at] deletethistoopovrayorg> wrote:
>> The check is done by calling a windows system information function that asks if
>> SSE2 is available. So either that call is not being done properly, or Windows
>> says it has SSE when it doesn't.
> 
>   Perhaps the installer could show the user the selections it has made and
> allow the user to change them if they are wrong for some reason?

This is a good idea, I'll see if I can add that without making things too
confusing.

-- Chris

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Tim Attwood wrote:
> On my system the installer selected SSE2 which is unavailable,
> so the shortcut crashed. How is it doing the query to check?

I discovered a fault in the installer that would cause this. I've updated
it on the website.

thanks for the report,

-- Chris

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I read some time ago that the POV-Team was using a donated Intel VC++ 
package to compile POV-Ray, is this still true?

Regards.

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