POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.unix : State of Povray 3.8.0 (?) Server Time
8 Oct 2024 10:37:21 EDT (-0400)
  State of Povray 3.8.0 (?) (Message 1 to 9 of 9)  
From: Hj  Malthaner
Subject: State of Povray 3.8.0 (?)
Date: 5 May 2019 15:23:40
Message: <5ccf383c@news.povray.org>
Hi all,

I had a scene file that kept crashing povray 3.7.0.8 which I had been 
using for quite a while so I went to github to look for something newer.

There is a branch called release/v3.8.0
I've downloaded and compiled a version from it. Worked fine on the scene 
file that kept crashing 3.7, and all the other files I used it with 
since. Didn't find any problems yet.

I just wanted to ask, what is the official view on this version? 3.8.0 
seems not to be released as something official anywhere.

The download page ( https://www.povray.org/download/ ) still points to 3.7.0

Besides that I wanted to say, big thanks to all the developers for 
working on this! I had my first contact with Povray mid of the 90s and 
was using it occasionally, since about 8 years quite seriously now. It's 
a tremendous tool and I hope it will stay around some longer :)

Best regards,
Hajo


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From: Bald Eagle
Subject: Re: State of Povray 3.8.0 (?)
Date: 5 May 2019 16:35:01
Message: <web.5ccf47fc24ac88ae4eec112d0@news.povray.org>
"Hj. Malthaner" <han### [at] nospamgmxde> wrote:

> I just wanted to ask, what is the official view on this version? 3.8.0
> seems not to be released as something official anywhere.

Well, I'm sure clipka or someone else from the dev team will chime in at some
point with specifics, but 3.8 is still under development with various changes,
improvements, and new features being tested.

> Besides that I wanted to say, big thanks to all the developers for
> working on this! I had my first contact with Povray mid of the 90s and
> was using it occasionally, since about 8 years quite seriously now. It's
> a tremendous tool and I hope it will stay around some longer :)

Absolutely - there are so many people who have stuck with POV-Ray and done a lot
of long-term, focused, grueling, and sometimes thankless work to keep this whole
thing going.

The best thing you can do to ensure that it continues on, is bring attention to
the project, bring new people in, and keep using it and sharing the results by
posting links, images, and attributions on the web.

"Rendered with POV-Ray 3.8    2019   H.J.M.      www.povray.org"
or something like that.

I'm sure there's a way to send money as well.   ;)


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From: Hj  Malthaner
Subject: Re: State of Povray 3.8.0 (?)
Date: 5 May 2019 16:59:03
Message: <5ccf4e97@news.povray.org>
On 5/5/19 10:30 PM, Bald Eagle wrote:

> Well, I'm sure clipka or someone else from the dev team will chime in at some
> point with specifics, but 3.8 is still under development with various changes,
> improvements, and new features being tested.

Ah, thanks. For being in development, it sure has amazing stability. 
There was one moment when I was wondering about the default scale of the 
bricks pattern, but I must admit I was too much in a hurry to check if 
it was my fault or if it really changed from 3.7 to 3.8 (I assume it was 
my fault)

> The best thing you can do to ensure that it continues on, is bring attention to
> the project, bring new people in, and keep using it and sharing the results by
> posting links, images, and attributions on the web.

Sadly, I'm often laughed at or considered a weirdo in the art groups 
where I post my works. PovRay ... I know it as the backend of many tools 
and for superb rendering quality. But in the communities it is not known 
at all. They all urge me to use Blender. That sure has it's merits too, 
but I just grew up with PovRay.

I think I have tagged all images in my blog and on DA with "povray" but 
I felt a bit shy to put a more prominent note. My blog certainly has 
some links to the povray pages though - just almost no one reads it ;)

I'll try making it more prominent in the notes of my better works. 
Thanks for your reply!

-- 
Some of my PovRay works:
https://www.deviantart.com/antarasol/gallery/42758766/3D


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From: Le Forgeron
Subject: Re: State of Povray 3.8.0 (?)
Date: 6 May 2019 12:18:53
Message: <5cd05e6d@news.povray.org>
Le 05/05/2019 à 21:23, Hj. Malthaner a écrit :
> Hi all,
> 
> I had a scene file that kept crashing povray 3.7.0.8 which I had been
> using for quite a while so I went to github to look for something newer.
> 
> There is a branch called release/v3.8.0
> I've downloaded and compiled a version from it. Worked fine on the scene
> file that kept crashing 3.7, and all the other files I used it with
> since. Didn't find any problems yet.
> 
> I just wanted to ask, what is the official view on this version? 3.8.0
> seems not to be released as something official anywhere.
> 

IIRC, release/v3.8.0 is an aborted branch (it was active, then head was
switched back to master),
current development continues in master branch.

Current state on master is 3.8.0.alpha


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From: Hj  Malthaner
Subject: Re: State of Povray 3.8.0 (?)
Date: 6 May 2019 17:20:41
Message: <5cd0a529@news.povray.org>
On 5/6/19 6:18 PM, Le_Forgeron wrote:
 > IIRC, release/v3.8.0 is an aborted branch (it was active, then head was
 > switched back to master),
 > current development continues in master branch.
 >
 > Current state on master is 3.8.0.alpha
 >
I see. Seems I got a pre-alpha version then. I'll switch to the master 
branch if I should spot any problems. So far it's working fine for me.

This was the scene that crashed 3.7.0.8. Rendered with 3.8.0 (?) now:
https://www.deviantart.com/antarasol/art/Marsfield-Starport-v2-3-794190194

This also was rendered with 3.8.0 (?)
https://www.deviantart.com/antarasol/art/Mobile-Repair-Platform-v3-21-795539876

Both scenes use quite a number of features and look fine. So the state 
of that branch surely is quite good.

-- 
Some of my PovRay works:
https://www.deviantart.com/antarasol/gallery/42758766/3D


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From: Mr
Subject: Re: State of Povray 3.8.0 (?)
Date: 8 May 2019 14:25:02
Message: <web.5cd31d6724ac88ae884ec9560@news.povray.org>
"Hj. Malthaner" <han### [at] nospamgmxde> wrote:
> On 5/5/19 10:30 PM, Bald Eagle wrote:
>
> > Well, I'm sure clipka or someone else from the dev team will chime in at some
> > point with specifics, but 3.8 is still under development with various changes,
> > improvements, and new features being tested.
>
> Ah, thanks. For being in development, it sure has amazing stability.
> There was one moment when I was wondering about the default scale of the
> bricks pattern, but I must admit I was too much in a hurry to check if
> it was my fault or if it really changed from 3.7 to 3.8 (I assume it was
> my fault)
>
> > The best thing you can do to ensure that it continues on, is bring attention to
> > the project, bring new people in, and keep using it and sharing the results by
> > posting links, images, and attributions on the web.
>
> Sadly, I'm often laughed at or considered a weirdo in the art groups
> where I post my works. PovRay ... I know it as the backend of many tools
> and for superb rendering quality. But in the communities it is not known
> at all. They all urge me to use Blender. That sure has it's merits too,
> but I just grew up with PovRay.


Indeed, your POV country needs YOU ! Please dust off your POV-Ray pride and
calmly defend this community's honnor by proving with serious work current
development's vitality and the credit POV-Ray still deserves. No one should have
to choose between Blender and POV, Lanuhum and I have been striving to make this
point clear for more than half a decade by working on bridging the two software
(https://povconverter.wordpress.com). It felt lonely at times, like kayaking in
the middle of a storm. I still hope it will change in the near future and
contuning this effort will finally let us reach that other shore. We could use a
few more hands, though.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Tsunami_by_hokusai_19th_century.jpg


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From: clipka
Subject: Re: State of Povray 3.8.0 (?)
Date: 10 May 2019 09:19:21
Message: <5cd57a59$1@news.povray.org>
Am 06.05.2019 um 18:18 schrieb Le_Forgeron:

> IIRC, release/v3.8.0 is an aborted branch (it was active, then head was
> switched back to master),
> current development continues in master branch.

Technically the branch is not aborted, but was merged into the master 
branch.


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From: clipka
Subject: Re: State of Povray 3.8.0 (?)
Date: 10 May 2019 10:13:49
Message: <5cd5871d$1@news.povray.org>
Am 05.05.2019 um 21:23 schrieb Hj. Malthaner:

> There is a branch called release/v3.8.0
> I've downloaded and compiled a version from it. Worked fine on the scene 
> file that kept crashing 3.7, and all the other files I used it with 
> since. Didn't find any problems yet.
> 
> I just wanted to ask, what is the official view on this version? 3.8.0 
> seems not to be released as something official anywhere.

The `release/v3.8.0` branch was the branch where preparation of the 
v3.8.0 release was happening, while changes slated for a later version 
was carried out in the master branch - until it was decided that v3.8.0 
still needed more work than expected, and that it would be too much work 
to maintain two branches for a prolonged time.

At that point, `release/v3.8.0` was merged into the master branch, and 
development of v3.8.0 is continuing there.


POV-Ray v3.8.0 has not been released *yet*, but (in contrast to v3.7.1) 
there is no intention to ditch it, and development continues.


As a POV-Ray developer, my personal(*) take on v3.8.0 vs. v3.7.0 is as 
follows:

In general, I would always recommend the latest tagged version of 
v3.8.0-alpha (see the "releases" section on GitHub; you can find not 
only Windows binaries there but also the corresponding source code) over 
v3.7.0.

We've fixed a lot of bugs, added various fancy features, and - probably 
most importantly in your case - we were able to eliminate most 
hard-coded limits

(*Chris Cason might chime in if the official POV-Ray dev team position 
deviates from my personal one.)


Admittedly, the v3.8.0-alpha versions do have some drawbacks:

- Occasionally a serious new bug might sneak into a tagged version; 
however, my gut feeling is that the community is pretty good at exposing 
such bugs quickly, and that we're good at following up with a fixed 
tagged version shortly thereafter.

- The v3.8.0 series is not "stable" yet, i.e. any new feature introduced 
since v3.7.0 may still be subject to change. (The probability for such 
changes vary between features.)

- The v3.8.0 series includes various changes under the hood that have 
not seen optimization yet, so it may be a little bit slower than v3.7.0. 
However, changes that significantly degraded performance were generally 
rejected, and other changes were made that by intention or happenstance 
improved performance elsewhere, so performance gains and losses can be 
expected to vary between scenes.

- There are no Windows installers for the v3.8.0-alpha series, and the 
Windows binaries are not digitally signed. Similarly, to my knowledge 
Linux distro maintainers do not provide v3.8.0 packages.


However, at least for Unix users who choose to build POV-Ray from source 
code anyway, I think the improvements significantly outweigh the drawbacks.


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From: Hj  Malthaner
Subject: Re: State of Povray 3.8.0 (?)
Date: 10 May 2019 17:53:30
Message: <5cd5f2da$1@news.povray.org>
On 5/10/19 4:13 PM, clipka wrote:
> Am 05.05.2019 um 21:23 schrieb Hj. Malthaner:
> 
>> There is a branch called release/v3.8.0
>> I've downloaded and compiled a version from it. Worked fine 

> The `release/v3.8.0` branch was the branch where preparation of the 
> v3.8.0 release was happening, while changes slated for a later version 
> was carried out in the master branch - until it was decided that v3.8.0 
> still needed more work than expected, and that it would be too much work 
> to maintain two branches for a prolonged time.
> 
> At that point, `release/v3.8.0` was merged into the master branch, and 
> development of v3.8.0 is continuing there.
> 
> 
> POV-Ray v3.8.0 has not been released *yet*, but (in contrast to v3.7.1) 
> there is no intention to ditch it, and development continues.

Thank you for the detailed answer. I indeed was first looking for a 
3.7.1 release candidate and was a bit confused for not finding any, but 
the branch named release/3.8.0

The version looks good to me though. It fixed at least one fatal problem 
which I had with one scene, and I can confirm, it performs about as well 
as 3.7.0, if there is a difference it is so small that I did not notice.

At the moment I'm happy with the version from the branch, but if there 
should show some problem I'll switch to the master branch as advised.

At the moment I'm using Linux, so I'll compile from the sources. Thanks 
again!

-- 
Some of my PovRay works:
https://www.deviantart.com/antarasol/gallery/42758766/3D


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