I had to stop posting/reading here for a while due to things getting far 
too busy at work (and at home). I have a bit more free time now - 
starting a new job in a few weeks so things are finally winding down a bit.

So I'm back (for a little while at least) and am looking forward to 
reading 20 page explanations of why every programming language sucks 
(apart from Haskell) and why jailing people for talking about piracy 
will mark the end of civilisation.

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Well, /something/ has changed... It seems to be getting markedly quiet 
in here lately.

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On 10/04/2012 15:36, Invisible wrote:
> Well, /something/ has changed... It seems to be getting markedly quiet
> in here lately.

Let's see what I can do about that then :-)

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scott escreveu:
> I had to stop posting/reading here for a while due to things getting far 
> too busy at work (and at home). I have a bit more free time now - 
> starting a new job in a few weeks so things are finally winding down a bit.
> 
> So I'm back (for a little while at least) and am looking forward to 
> reading 20 page explanations of why every programming language sucks 
> (apart from Haskell) and why jailing people for talking about piracy 
> will mark the end of civilisation.

you're welcome back!

you may also try some good text game:


http://iplayif.com/?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/anchor.z8.js

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Invisible escreveu:
> Well, /something/ has changed... It seems to be getting markedly quiet 
> in here lately.

Darren is busy and Warp the same too.

that and since Povray 3.7 has not been released yet means no new users 
are rushing here...

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> that and since Povray 3.7 has not been released yet

It looks close now though, but I worry it will be an eternity before v4 
is ever released, which will be a big shame.

GPUs seem so fast and capable now, a POV type program that takes full 
advantage of that would be awesome.  Imagine being able to edit your 
SDL, have it parse instantly and look around the fully path-traced scene 
in real time, adjusting your SDL until it looks just right. 
Productivity would be orders of magnitude better than how POV works at 
the moment.  With standard hardware available today that is (just about) 
possible, in the coming years (surely before POV4 is released) even for 
large complex scenes it will become possible.

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On 11/04/2012 08:49 AM, scott wrote:
>> that and since Povray 3.7 has not been released yet
>
> It looks close now though

Really? I thought all development work had stopped years ago...

> GPUs seem so fast and capable now, a POV type program that takes full
> advantage of that would be awesome. Imagine being able to edit your SDL,
> have it parse instantly and look around the fully path-traced scene in
> real time, adjusting your SDL until it looks just right. Productivity
> would be orders of magnitude better than how POV works at the moment.
> With standard hardware available today that is (just about) possible, in
> the coming years (surely before POV4 is released) even for large complex
> scenes it will become possible.

What you're talking about amounts to a complete rewrite of the entire 
program. Only the SDL parser would remain unchanged. Plus, I'm pretty 
sure all the trippy real-time GPU renderers we've seen only render 
polygons, not true curved surfaces - which, let's face it, is the entire 
*point* of using POV-Ray.

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> Really? I thought all development work had stopped years ago...

Seems like a lot of features have been added/improved in the last year 
(I was just reading the last few change logs).

>> GPUs seem so fast and capable now, a POV type program that takes full
>> advantage of that would be awesome. Imagine being able to edit your SDL,
>> have it parse instantly and look around the fully path-traced scene in
>> real time, adjusting your SDL until it looks just right. Productivity
>> would be orders of magnitude better than how POV works at the moment.
>> With standard hardware available today that is (just about) possible, in
>> the coming years (surely before POV4 is released) even for large complex
>> scenes it will become possible.
>
> What you're talking about amounts to a complete rewrite of the entire
> program. Only the SDL parser would remain unchanged.

No, the parser needs rewriting too, it's way too slow.

 > Plus, I'm pretty
> sure all the trippy real-time GPU renderers we've seen only render
> polygons, not true curved surfaces - which, let's face it, is the entire
> *point* of using POV-Ray.

Exactly, that's why we need POV4 asap - imagine the greatness!

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>> What you're talking about amounts to a complete rewrite of the entire
>> program. Only the SDL parser would remain unchanged.
>
> No, the parser needs rewriting too, it's way too slow.

I'm not sure about "slow"; I think the way that macros are fundamentally 
based on token substitution rather than value manipulation places a hard 
limit on how fast the parser can be.

>> Plus, I'm pretty
>> sure all the trippy real-time GPU renderers we've seen only render
>> polygons, not true curved surfaces - which, let's face it, is the entire
>> *point* of using POV-Ray.
>
> Exactly, that's why we need POV4 asap - imagine the greatness!

I'm not sure if it's still the case, but it used to be that GPUs could 
render stuff so fast because triangle rendering is hard-wired into their 
design. Hence, if you were to make it render something that isn't 
triangles, it would be drastically slower.

Perhaps still faster than a CPU though. That would still be nice...

(Then again, I haven't tried the beta yet. I hear it uses multiple CPU 
cores now...)

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On 10/04/2012 03:55 PM, scott wrote:
> On 10/04/2012 15:36, Invisible wrote:
>> Well, /something/ has changed... It seems to be getting markedly quiet
>> in here lately.
>
> Let's see what I can do about that then :-)

Told you it was quiet in here. :-P

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