POV-Ray 3.7.beta.6 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.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: to view an original bug report, prefix the message ID with the URL
http://news.povray.org/. For example, to read <42765ef3$1@news.povray.org>,
visit http://news.povray.org/<42765ef3$1@news.povray.org>. The '<' and '>'
are optional (if using a shell you may want to omit them).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The following features are not supported but will be added prior to release
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

  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.5a and 3.7.beta.6
------------------------------------------

Fixed quadric bounding problem.
Fixed CSG merge problem.
Made numerous other changes to speed up code, should be closer to v3.6.1 now.

Changes between 3.7.beta.5 and 3.7.beta.5a
------------------------------------------

Fixed bug reported in <428de855@news.povray.org> re:sunsethf.pov.
Worked around SMP bug in trace related to lighting code altering lightsources
  during render.

Changes between 3.7.beta.4 and 3.7.beta.5
-----------------------------------------

Fixed a photon building issue that caused progressive slowdown.
Fixed scattering media problem reported in <427ca163@news.povray.org>.
  (This also fixes <427c0121@news.povray.org>).
Parser now honors Split_Unions and Remove_Bounds options.
Fixed lathe artifacts bug reported in <427c0f95@news.povray.org>.
Fixed no_image and no_reflection issues reported in
  <427c1900@news.povray.org>.
Fixed area light orient issue reported in <427c14ef@news.povray.org>.
Fixed issue where a new clip statement would overwrite a previous one rather
  than appending to it.
Fixed speed issue with quadrics by reverting to old bbox calculation method.
Fixed a swathe of memory leaks.

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.

Post a reply to this message

Chris Cason <42ae290d@news.povray.org> Tuesday 14 of June 2005 02:47

Hi,
thanks for the good work.

Btw - just asking for curiosity - why beta is made for win32? It seems a bit
harder (the GUI/IDE is included, isnt it?) and on Linux/UNIX there are
probably more multiprocessor machines (for more professional use).


I dont own yet dual CPU machine, but if I would, I would try to play around
with optimization flags, probably others can do that as well and genral
benchmarking seems a bit easier in linux I quess.


Is there known data for general-source-beta release (or precompiled for
linux)?



-- 

Post a reply to this message

Raf256 wrote:
> Btw - just asking for curiosity - why beta is made for win32? It seems a bit
> harder (the GUI/IDE is included, isnt it?) and on Linux/UNIX there are
> probably more multiprocessor machines (for more professional use).

The issue is that there were some very significant changes to the way the
front-end and back-end code interacts and rather than try to work on that on
multiple platforms at once, it was decided it was best to get the wrinkles
out and settle it down on one platform first. Once all the other front-end
related things are sorted out (this includes animation, output redirection,
and continue render amongst a few others), and the changes to the front-end
code are documented for the other platform authors to refer to, you can
expect to see a unix beta.

Hopefully that won't be too far in the future but I can't promise when.

-- Chris

Post a reply to this message