On Sat, 25 Jul 2020 01:22:56 +0100, Stephen wrote:

> The image will do. :)

I wish I still had it somewhere. :)



-- 
"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 Sat, 25 Jul 2020 12:57:30 +1000, Chris Cason wrote:

> I then built a console-based POV port for OSF/1 (not hard as it's pretty
> straightforward) but as I wanted to be able to see render progress I
> added code that would show a render preview via X Windows and
> contributed that to the project as well. Somewhere in this timespan
> Chris Young invited me to be the maintainer for the VMS or Unix port (or
> both, don't quite recall) and here I am today.

Oh, man, Chris Young is a name I haven't heard in ages.

I remember Dan Farmer (ISTR that he lived not far from where I did at the 
time, but I never had a chance to meet him) and David K. Buck (who still 
pops in here from time to time).

I wonder what Dan is up to these days.




-- 
"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 Sat, 25 Jul 2020 05:50:47 -0400, Pekka Aho wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>>
>> It's always fun to see folks who were around in the early days on
>> CompuServe.  :)
> 
> Ah, sadly I wasn't having any online activity at that time, sorry. :O I
> had a 1200 bit/s modem, but it was never used. Here in Finland it was
> still quite expensive to call anywhere, thus my resort was those few
> (yet also costly) import magazines with utility disks wrapped along.
> Those were from where I later got a newer version of POV too in addition
> to those many trial versions of other software.
> 
> A good friend of mine had the possibility to access several bulletin
> boards, but those were rather quick visits for getting us some shareware
> games every now and then.

Back in the mid-90s, I was gifted a sponsored account on CompuServe 
because of some technical product expertise I had, and the sponsored 
account status meant that I didn't pay the by-the-minute charges that 
CompuServe charged.

When I was at university, I had access to an account and got interested 
in raytracing; I was a CS major (for a time), and a student member of ACM 
and SIGGRAPH.  I never got to the point of understanding the math behind 
raytracing (it's still largely little more than magic to me today), but I 
was fascinated at the entire idea.

> Indeed and same here, my highest respect to Tran, Shay, Hormann,
> Piqueres, Kern and so many others for their stunningly mind-blowing
> works! Even though feeling most comfortable with the SDL, I'm still far
> from all that. Already long time ago I embraced my destiny and ever
> since been concentrating mostly on game style art with anything else but
> realistic textures etc., as actual simulations of reality in any level
> of accuracy is still completely beyond my head. :D

Ah, yes, several other names there I haven't seen in years, but I 
remember well interacting with them (now that the memory's refreshed) in 
those forums (maybe not quite as much as the memory is telling me, but 
even just downloading and viewing the images was magical).

Many of those images still live in the HOF today.  The one that I most 
often think of is Tran's "The Wet Bird".  Simply amazing.  And of course 
"Reach for the Stars" - the story behind that one is incredible.  Ray-
tracing in space.

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>>
>> Today I play in Blender when I need to put something together, but
>> getting the POV-Ray plugin going is something that I've not fully
>> completed.  I need to get back on that and re-render some of my more
>> recent images with it.  It'd be interesting to see the differences in
>> output compared to Cycles.
> 
> I must confess - with a slight sting in my heart - that lately I've been
> fiddling around with a Finnish software called Realsoft 3D (formerly as
> Real 3D). It has a history going back to the Amiga times, and was too
> expensive for my budget back in the day. A couple of years ago they
> released the version 8 and it was just 200 EUR (~ 233 USD), so finally
> gave it a go. I remember this one from the early 90s as well, so at last
> I can see and try myself what it is about. The render output is
> surprisingly close to that of POVs btw.

I vaguely remember Real 3D - when I was in high school (late 80s), I 
worked for a retailer that sold Amigas and Amiga software.  We may well 
have carried it.  (We did carry the Video Toaster, for example - so it's 
not much of a stretch that we'd have had Real 3D as well).

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 25/07/2020 21:14, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Sat, 25 Jul 2020 01:22:56 +0100, Stephen wrote:
> 
>> The image will do. :)
> 
> I wish I still had it somewhere. :)
> 
> 
> 
I'm sure that if you give Chris a smile and a curtsy. :)

-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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On Sat, 25 Jul 2020 21:31:54 +0100, Stephen wrote:

> On 25/07/2020 21:14, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Sat, 25 Jul 2020 01:22:56 +0100, Stephen wrote:
>> 
>>> The image will do. :)
>> 
>> I wish I still had it somewhere. :)
>> 
>> 
>> 
> I'm sure that if you give Chris a smile and a curtsy. :)

We had actually talked about it years ago - he said he didn't have the 
render any more, unfortunately.

I still have a CD somewhere with a bunch of old stuff from OzCIS, but I 
don't think I kept anything that was uploaded to file libraries.

-- 
"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 25/07/2020 22:57, jr wrote:
> when the server is finally updated, maybe there will be an opportunity to change
> policy, and require a valid email address when registering to post to this site.
>  not an unreasonable (or uncommon) requirement.

If we keep the NNTP server after the move (which is likely I think) then
it's possible I will implement something along those lines. I'll mention
however that this doesn't mean the email address has to be displayed
publicly (I don't think any forums do that by default). Those who post
in our forums here with valid email addresses visible are doing so by
choice.

-- Chris

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On 26/07/2020 06:24, Jim Henderson wrote:
> because of some technical product expertise I had, and the sponsored 
> account status meant that I didn't pay the by-the-minute charges that 
> CompuServe charged.

Compuserve charges were exorbitant over here in AU (about USD $35/hr). I
didn't have an offline reader when I started hanging around GO GRAPHDEV
reading messages and downloading images and for the first few months I
felt like was helping fund their CEO's new Ferrari.

I got OzCis which helped a bit but even then with only a 14.4k modem I
had to be wary of what binaries I downloaded (or uploaded), which is
likely the primary reason I don't have a full archive of all the images
from the early Compuserve days.

-- Chris

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On Sun, 26 Jul 2020 10:42:03 +1000, Chris Cason wrote:

> On 26/07/2020 06:24, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> because of some technical product expertise I had, and the sponsored
>> account status meant that I didn't pay the by-the-minute charges that
>> CompuServe charged.
> 
> Compuserve charges were exorbitant over here in AU (about USD $35/hr). I
> didn't have an offline reader when I started hanging around GO GRAPHDEV
> reading messages and downloading images and for the first few months I
> felt like was helping fund their CEO's new Ferrari.

Yeah, I had a CIS account of my own at some point (71321,1461 - I 
remember it like it was yesterday), but once I got the sponsored account 
(76702,1452 - shown in your listing from the forum), the other one fell 
into disuse.

> I got OzCis which helped a bit but even then with only a 14.4k modem I
> had to be wary of what binaries I downloaded (or uploaded), which is
> likely the primary reason I don't have a full archive of all the images
> from the early Compuserve days.

One of the 'perks' of being involved in the forums I was there was that I 
got in on some special offers given to CompuServe SysOps - including a 
really good price on a 14.4k modem.

I was an OzCis user as well, but when OzWin came out, I didn't switch - I 
preferred the text interface, and the Windows interface was too 
cumbersome to use (I believe we had a conversation about that once 
before. ;) )



-- 
"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 Sun, 26 Jul 2020 10:25:25 +1000, Chris Cason wrote:

> I'll mention however that this doesn't mean the email address has to be
> displayed publicly (I don't think any forums do that by default).

Web-based forums generally don't have to, but in connecting them to NNTP, 
the value for the 'from' address needs to match (generally) so you can 
tie the accounts together.

On the web side, it can be hidden, but on the NNTP side, at the very 
least, a From: header is required for all posts.  But there's no 
validation checking unless the server specifically has some code to do 
that (which I haven't observed myself - but as innd, for example, is open 
source, there's no reason it couldn't be).



-- 
"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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hi,

Chris Cason <del### [at] deletethistoopovrayorg> wrote:
> On 25/07/2020 22:57, jr wrote:
> > when the server is finally updated, ...
>
> If we keep the NNTP server after the move (which is likely I think) then
> it's possible I will implement something along those lines. I'll mention
> however that this doesn't mean the email address has to be displayed
> publicly (I don't think any forums do that by default).

yes, the site(s) will have to comply with Australian (?) data protection law,
one assumes.

> Those who post in our forums here with valid email addresses visible are
> doing so by choice.

I know.


regards, jr.

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