POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.general : POV-Ray 3.7.beta.4 available Server Time
31 Oct 2024 19:27:45 EDT (-0400)
  POV-Ray 3.7.beta.4 available (Message 1 to 1 of 1)  
From: Chris Cason
Subject: POV-Ray 3.7.beta.4 available
Date: 6 May 2005 08:33:28
Message: <427b6418$1@news.povray.org>
POV-Ray 3.7.beta.4 is available from http://www.povray.org/beta/.

This beta is currently for the Windows platform only and includes standard,
SSE2, and 64-bit binaries.

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The following features are not supported but will be added prior to release
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  o Animation.
  o Radiosity.
  o Dispersion.
  o Mosaic preview.
  o Light and vista buffers. These may replaced with a more efficient system.
  o Ability to choose block size allocated to threads.
  o Resume render (a.k.a. 'continue').
  o Windows rerun dialog and statistics.
  o Redirecting text message output to files.

Known issues which will be fixed
--------------------------------

  o There is an issue with media and transparency. See
    <42769324$1@news.povray.org>.
  o The windows editor does not always detect new files as type 'povray'.
  o Text layout of windows message page not yet finished (e.g. no wrapping,
    early wrapping).
  o There are memory leaks, and memory tracking is not yet complete.
  o In many cases speed is not as good as 3.6.
  o Photon support is not yet completed.
  o There are some differences in the way gamma correction works.
  o Anti-aliasing method 2 currently takes more samples than in version 3.6
    and earlier.

Changes between 3.7.beta.3 and 3.7.beta.4
-----------------------------------------

Fixed indexed PNG alpha problem reported in <42765ef3$1@news.povray.org>.
Fix area light problem reported in <427a3fa5$1@news.povray.org>.
Fixed crash during trace of lathe reported in <42796797@news.povray.org>.
Improved handling of cancel/pause render.
Fixed max_trace_level calculation and display (see
  <42769105@news.povray.org>).
Fixed image memory leak.
Fixed speed issues reported in <42769f6d@news.povray.org>.
Fixed shadow problem mentioned in <42769f6d@news.povray.org>.
Fixed sphere_sweep bug reported in <42773e51@news.povray.org>.
Fixed 'inverting pre-declared union' crash reported in
  <42769b59@news.povray.org>.
Fixed focal blur issue.
Fixed omnimax camera bug reported in <42775c1b$1@news.povray.org>, plus
  several other related camera issues.
Fixed facets pattern crash reported in <42773fab$1@news.povray.org>.

Changes between 3.7.beta.2 and 3.7.beta.3
-----------------------------------------

Partial render (start col/row etc) now works
Fixed CSG merge issue reported in <42645c3b@news.povray.org>.
Added warning and better progress reporting to photons.
Some hollow media fixes.
Re-enabled alpha display in render window for windows port.
Fixed alpha bug reported in <web.426402d627a031d914107e060@news.povray.org>
Fixed no_image bug from <web.426402d627a031d914107e060@news.povray.org>
Changed default bounding threshold back to 3 as per v3.6.
Fixed alpha inversion bug in BMP, Targa, and PNG file reading/writing.
Fixed crash mentioned in <42689685@news.povray.org>.
Fixed noise generator default issue reported in <426898db@news.povray.org>.
Fixed irid problem reported in <42680b39@news.povray.org>.
Fix for area light problem from Massimo Valentini.
Made quick_colour work as it should.

Changes between 3.7.beta.1 and 3.7.beta.2
-----------------------------------------

CSG should now work properly
Problem with too many recursions when rendering shadows fixed
I/O restrictions should now work
Fixed recursion bug in renderer
Initialise photon variables
Restore ability to open error file in editor (note: column number not always
  correct).
Fixes no-display crash
Fixes image closing bug
Tweak to some radiosity local vars
Fixes rendering area bug
Fixes AA method 2 brightness issue
Add output file type '+FB' (bmp).
Add 'bmp' token to parser.
Fix for BMP reading.
File output defaults to on.
Fix render quality options output.
Change references to 'CPU(s)' to 'thread(s)'.
Update render time output to include fractional seconds.
Fix crash reported in <4263125b@news.povray.org> and one related bug.

Intentional changes for POV-Ray 3.7
-----------------------------------

The version directive and command-line setting no longer provide compati-
bility  with most rendering bugs in versions prior to POV-Ray 3.5. However,
compatibility with the scene language is provided for scenes as old as POV-
Ray 1.0 just as in all previous versions of POV-Ray. Nevertheless, we
strongly recommend you update scenes at least to POV-Ray 3.5 syntax if you
plan to use them in future versions of POV-Ray.

This version uses multi-threaded rendering by default. The ability to render
in more than one thread is primarily of use to those users who have SMP
machines (i.e. more than one CPU). There have been reports of benefits for
users of hyperthreading systems, particularly with higher thread counts (e.g.
16 threads).

You can render in only one thread by using the '/THREADS 1' switch in the
Windows version. Note that parsing and photon building will only use one
thread no matter how many are specified. However photon scenes will benefit
from multiple threads once photon building has completed.


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From: Mike Raiford
Subject: Re: POV-Ray 3.7.beta.4 available
Date: 6 May 2005 09:56:32
Message: <427b7790$1@news.povray.org>
Chris Cason wrote:

Area Lights are fixed: Yay!

-- 
~Mike

Things! Billions of them!


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From: Warp
Subject: Re: POV-Ray 3.7.beta.4 available
Date: 6 May 2005 11:04:33
Message: <427b8781@news.povray.org>
There's a speed-related oddity with one scene:

  scenes\advanced\ionic5\ionic5.pov at 640x480 +a +am2 takes 18 seconds
to render with pov3.6 and almost 4 minutes with pov3.7beta4.

  Other scenes seem to render in a more comparable time (equal or even
faster than pov3.6), so this seems to be a rather unique case.

-- 
                                                          - Warp


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From: Bob Hughes
Subject: Re: POV-Ray 3.7.beta.4 available
Date: 6 May 2005 15:12:28
Message: <427bc19c$1@news.povray.org>
"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message 
news:427b8781@news.povray.org...
>  There's a speed-related oddity with one scene:
>
>  scenes\advanced\ionic5\ionic5.pov at 640x480 +a +am2 takes 18 seconds
> to render with pov3.6 and almost 4 minutes with pov3.7beta4.

Look at the stats for quadric tests and succeeded percentage. It's way off. 
I'm seeing somewhere around 40% succeeded from a much lower number of ray 
tests in 3.6, yet in 3.7 beta 4 it has over 92 million tests with a mere 5% 
or so succeeded.

On my computer the render time is even wider than yours was, being 14 
seconds for 3.6 and 6 minutes 10 seconds for the beta.

Bob Hughes


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From: Bob Hughes
Subject: Re: POV-Ray 3.7.beta.4 available
Date: 6 May 2005 15:25:25
Message: <427bc4a5$1@news.povray.org>
Yoiks! Sorry, that was using default AA, not the method 2 as you had done. 
Still was similar results; that is, wider span of time and this time it had 
over one billion tests with the same kind of percentage succeeded, or 5.78% 
compared with over 38% in the 3.6 version.

Bob


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From: Emerald Orchid
Subject: Re: POV-Ray 3.7.beta.4 available
Date: 7 May 2005 09:41:50
Message: <427cc59e$1@news.povray.org>
The beta doesn't have vista buffers. (Or light buffers.) Is this the
cause? Maybe?


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From: Thorsten Froehlich
Subject: Re: POV-Ray 3.7.beta.4 available
Date: 7 May 2005 09:53:04
Message: <427cc840$1@news.povray.org>
Emerald Orchid wrote:
> The beta doesn't have vista buffers. (Or light buffers.) Is this the
> cause? Maybe?

No.  Essentially vista and light buffers hardly ever give just 1% speed 
increase, if any at all.

	Thorsten


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From: Emerald Orchid
Subject: Re: POV-Ray 3.7.beta.4 available
Date: 7 May 2005 09:57:10
Message: <427cc936$1@news.povray.org>
>> The beta doesn't have vista buffers. (Or light buffers.) Is this the
>> cause? Maybe?
> 
> 
> No.  Essentially vista and light buffers hardly ever give just 1% speed
> increase, if any at all.

OK. Was just a thought...


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From: Chris Cason
Subject: Re: POV-Ray 3.7.beta.4 available
Date: 10 May 2005 02:31:18
Message: <42805536$1@news.povray.org>
Warp wrote:
>   There's a speed-related oddity with one scene:
> 
>   scenes\advanced\ionic5\ionic5.pov at 640x480 +a +am2 takes 18 seconds
> to render with pov3.6 and almost 4 minutes with pov3.7beta4.
> 
>   Other scenes seem to render in a more comparable time (equal or even
> faster than pov3.6), so this seems to be a rather unique case.

this is fixed, thanks.

unfortunately to fix it I had to restore the old (buggy) clipping behaviour
of quadrics, however as this has been present for many years it should not be
a major problem.

-- Chris


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From: Warp
Subject: Re: POV-Ray 3.7.beta.4 available
Date: 10 May 2005 04:32:44
Message: <428071ac@news.povray.org>
Chris Cason <nos### [at] deletethispovrayorg> wrote:
> unfortunately to fix it I had to restore the old (buggy) clipping behaviour
> of quadrics, however as this has been present for many years it should not be
> a major problem.

  I'm not aware of such bug. Could you explain in more detail?

-- 
                                                          - Warp


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