I found out about PovRay almost 20 years ago. I had been using Fractint 
for a couple of years and PovRay was mentioned as a renderer that could 
use for their *.pot files, a 16-bit file. Just the thing to generate an 
animated flythrough over a plasma height field. I thought.
All these years later I have never got round to it.
I need to use a modeller due to a lack of skills in visualisation and 
coding. And it has become obvious that Moray which passed its license to 
the Persistence of Vision Raytracer Pty. Ltd in 2007, by the deafening 
silence whenever I ask how it is going. That it never happen in my 
lifetime. The Blender-PovRay addon suffers from a lack of response to 
the bug reports I have submitted. So I will need to find another way to 
render my images.
Over the next few months it will be: So long and thanks for all the 
bananas. I will miss all the friends I have made on the newsgroups. But 
most have drifted away or died which doesn’t help.
A special mention to Thomas who actually ran the TC-RTC on his own with 
only a little help from me. Thanks Thomas.

At least you all will be spared my attempts at humour in the future. :-)


-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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On Fri, 13 Jul 2018 17:20:32 +0100, Stephen wrote:

> I found out about PovRay almost 20 years ago. I had been using Fractint
> for a couple of years and PovRay was mentioned as a renderer that could
> use for their *.pot files, a 16-bit file. Just the thing to generate an
> animated flythrough over a plasma height field. I thought.
> All these years later I have never got round to it.
> I need to use a modeller due to a lack of skills in visualisation and
> coding. And it has become obvious that Moray which passed its license to
> the Persistence of Vision Raytracer Pty. Ltd in 2007, by the deafening
> silence whenever I ask how it is going. That it never happen in my
> lifetime. The Blender-PovRay addon suffers from a lack of response to
> the bug reports I have submitted. So I will need to find another way to
> render my images.
> Over the next few months it will be: So long and thanks for all the
> bananas. I will miss all the friends I have made on the newsgroups. But
> most have drifted away or died which doesn’t help.
> A special mention to Thomas who actually ran the TC-RTC on his own with
> only a little help from me. Thanks Thomas.
> 
> At least you all will be spared my attempts at humour in the future. :-)

Sadly, the group does seem to be less active than it's been in the past.  
Our mascot seems to have vanished - anyone heard from him lately?

It would be nice/interesting to see Moray resurrected as an open source 
project, potentially with broader platform support.  I always preferred 
it to other modeling software (I've played with Blender and a couple 
others - one that I quite liked was Wings3D, which I couldn't actually 
remember the name for until I started to type it).

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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On 13-7-2018 18:20, Stephen wrote:
> [snip]
> A special mention to Thomas who actually ran the TC-RTC on his own with 
> only a little help from me. Thanks Thomas.
> 
> At least you all will be spared my attempts at humour in the future. :-)
> 
> 

Ah well, do not underestimate your role in the TC-RTC running, Stephen. 
I can rightly say that without your support I would not have lasted 
those ten years. And I shall miss your humour too.

-- 
Thomas

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Am 14.07.2018 um 09:00 schrieb Thomas de Groot:
> On 13-7-2018 18:20, Stephen wrote:
>> [snip]
>> A special mention to Thomas who actually ran the TC-RTC on his own
>> with only a little help from me. Thanks Thomas.
>>
>> At least you all will be spared my attempts at humour in the future. :-)
...
> And I shall miss your humour too.

I subscribe to that.

Post a reply to this message

clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> Am 14.07.2018 um 09:00 schrieb Thomas de Groot:
> > On 13-7-2018 18:20, Stephen wrote:
> >> [snip]
> >> A special mention to Thomas who actually ran the TC-RTC on his own
> >> with only a little help from me. Thanks Thomas.
> >>
> >> At least you all will be spared my attempts at humour in the future. :-)
> ...
> > And I shall miss your humour too.
>
> I subscribe to that.

Hey Stephen,

It still amazes me that I recognize so many of the names here after 20 years of
dabbling in graphics 😁

I have been helping out since a couple months behind the scenes to get Moray
ready for a public release (at least technically). I do hope that Moray will
eventually be revived after I stopped working on it and passed it to the
POV-Team. I still have been making smaller changes to it since I actually still
use it for modeling my 3D prints.

Anyway, just wanted to say thanks for your support and fun over the years.

Lutz

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On 15/07/2018 05:05, Lutz wrote:
> clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
>> Am 14.07.2018 um 09:00 schrieb Thomas de Groot:
>>> On 13-7-2018 18:20, Stephen wrote:
>>>> [snip]
>>>> A special mention to Thomas who actually ran the TC-RTC on his own
>>>> with only a little help from me. Thanks Thomas.
>>>>
>>>> At least you all will be spared my attempts at humour in the future. :-)
>> ...
>>> And I shall miss your humour too.
>>
>> I subscribe to that.
> 
> Hey Stephen,
> 
> It still amazes me that I recognize so many of the names here after 20 years of
> dabbling in graphics 😁

Not as may as there used to be, I bet.
And good to hear from you again.

> 
> I have been helping out since a couple months behind the scenes to get Moray
> ready for a public release (at least technically). I do hope that Moray will
> eventually be revived after I stopped working on it and passed it to the
> POV-Team. 

You are a tease. ;-)
I have been working in IT since '69 and the thing I dislike most about 
it is the "Don't tell the users anything and they should be grateful for 
what we are willing to give them even if it is not what they really 
want", attitude.
If I had known that there was work on it going on behind the scenes I 
would not have been so hasty coming to my decision. If you can call more 
than 10 years hasty.
Now I am in a state of superposition.

> I still have been making smaller changes to it since I actually still
> use it for modeling my 3D prints.
> 

Any need for an experienced tester? :-)


> Anyway, just wanted to say thanks for your support and fun over the years.
> 

No, thank you for allowing me and many others to use PovRay over the 
years. And the fun comes as part of the package whether wanted or not. ;-)



-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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On Sun, 15 Jul 2018 16:13:57 +0100, Stephen wrote:

>> Anyway, just wanted to say thanks for your support and fun over the
>> years.
>> 
>> 
> No, thank you for allowing me and many others to use PovRay over the
> years. And the fun comes as part of the package whether wanted or not.
> ;-)

Seconded!  Moray got me started working with raytracing, and while I've 
moved platforms now to Linux, I'm certainly interested in looking at if 
it runs under WINE. :)

Jim



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

Post a reply to this message

On 16-7-2018 1:34, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Sun, 15 Jul 2018 16:13:57 +0100, Stephen wrote:
> 
>>> Anyway, just wanted to say thanks for your support and fun over the
>>> years.
>>>
>>>
>> No, thank you for allowing me and many others to use PovRay over the
>> years. And the fun comes as part of the package whether wanted or not.
>> ;-)
> 
> Seconded!  Moray got me started working with raytracing, and while I've
> moved platforms now to Linux, I'm certainly interested in looking at if
> it runs under WINE. :)
> 

And I fully join the chorus!

-- 
Thomas

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On 16-7-2018 8:50, Thomas de Groot wrote:

> 
> And I fully join the chorus!
> 

[maybe I should have said 'the choir'...? Monday morning...]

-- 
Thomas

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On 16/07/2018 01:13, Stephen wrote:
> I have been working in IT since '69 and the thing I dislike most about 
> it is the "Don't tell the users anything and they should be grateful for 
> what we are willing to give them even if it is not what they really 
> want", attitude.

The reason we didn't mention anything about it this time is that we've had several
false starts on this over the years and I didn't want to announce we were working on
it and then find a road-blocker that leaves everyone hanging. Hence I was waiting
until we actually had it working before saying anything.

The difference this time is Lutz is actively working on it which helps a lot (thanks
Lutz!:). It doesn't have direct integration with POV-Ray right now, but I will work on
that.

I think then it's safe to say that it's 100% certain that we will re-release Moray
this year, at least for Windows.

As it's MFC-based porting it to other platforms is another target but will require a
rip-out and replace of the MFC side of things (probably to QT). This is not trivial as
there's several hundred dialogs that need to be replaced with native QT ones. In the
meantime though, for Linux users, provided the required OpenGL support is present it
should work under Wine.

If/when we can get it ported to use a cross-platform widget library I suspect the
broader open-source community may be of assistance in improving it, particularly as it
can do STL editing.

-- Chris

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