Sounds silly, I know, but I keep hearing about the photon patch, and I
have no idea where it is. I'm *very* interested in checking it out;
unrealistic light reflections were always my biggest beef with
ray-tracing technology, and that seems to have been taken care of. I was
also wondering how easy it is to integrate into the Superpatch code.
More to the point, is Ron going to do so with the next release?

Lummox JR

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On Thu, 22 Jul 1999 15:09:04 -0400, Lummox JR wrote:
>Sounds silly, I know, but I keep hearing about the photon patch, and I
>have no idea where it is. I'm *very* interested in checking it out;
>unrealistic light reflections were always my biggest beef with
>ray-tracing technology, and that seems to have been taken care of. I was
>also wondering how easy it is to integrate into the Superpatch code.
>More to the point, is Ron going to do so with the next release?

http://nathan.kopp.com/patched.htm

Nathan's working on integrating it into the superpatch.  I'll then work
on integrating his version of the superpatch into my version, along with
about a dozen other things I've not yet gotten around to doing.  I just
lost the code for my incredible crackle speedups due to an IDE cable 
failure on my Linux box, so my schedule (what schedule?) is slipping yet
again.

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Bad news with good anyway.
I had a loose cable for a IDE hard disk long ago and it wrote garbage to
the drive which was then total unreadable nonsense. I now watch those
hardware connections carefully.
P.S. I'm finally doing more with the S.P. but now my "Official"
pvengine.exe is getting idle. Not too concerned. Though I have had
unexplained glitches now and then, goes with the territory.

Bob


Ron Parker wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 22 Jul 1999 15:09:04 -0400, Lummox JR wrote:
> >Sounds silly, I know, but I keep hearing about the photon patch, and I
> >have no idea where it is. I'm *very* interested in checking it out;
> >unrealistic light reflections were always my biggest beef with
> >ray-tracing technology, and that seems to have been taken care of. I was
> >also wondering how easy it is to integrate into the Superpatch code.
> >More to the point, is Ron going to do so with the next release?
> 
> http://nathan.kopp.com/patched.htm
> 
> Nathan's working on integrating it into the superpatch.  I'll then work
> on integrating his version of the superpatch into my version, along with
> about a dozen other things I've not yet gotten around to doing.  I just
> lost the code for my incredible crackle speedups due to an IDE cable
> failure on my Linux box, so my schedule (what schedule?) is slipping yet
> again.

-- 
 omniVERSE: beyond the universe
  http://members.aol.com/inversez/homepage.htm
 mailto://inversez@aol.com?Subject=PoV-News

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Ron Parker wrote:
> 
> Nathan's working on integrating it into the superpatch.  I'll then work
> on integrating his version of the superpatch into my version, along with
> about a dozen other things I've not yet gotten around to doing.  I just
> lost the code for my incredible crackle speedups due to an IDE cable
> failure on my Linux box, so my schedule (what schedule?) is slipping yet
> again.

Ah. Excellent news.
Well, as long as the next Superpatch is being held up, that gives me
more time to eke out a more complete isoblob/function patch. The isoblob
is almost ready, I think, for more thorough tests. However, the
function-normal patch it currently relies on has a slight problem with
atan2(), which for the life of me I can't explain; even workarounds on
that one tend to screw up for some reason. (The problem is apparently
with the function normal itself, not with the actual function or the
interval solving--and the problem makes absolutely no sense, since it
seems dependent more on the ray than on the function arguments or the
order thereof, or even on transformations).

Lummox JR

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> about a dozen other things I've not yet gotten around to doing.  I just
> lost the code for my incredible crackle speedups due to an IDE cable
> failure on my Linux box, so my schedule (what schedule?) is slipping yet
> again.

Oh my God! This is terrible news! Do you remember any of your stuff? I mean,
do you have it in your head? Or is it lost forever?

This is a good reminder of how important backing up is. I unfortunately have
no where to back up to, so if my HD dies, I'm screwed. :(   I actually have a
long history of losing everything. Three times I lost stuff to viruses. Then
I have had format problems, where I don't back everything important up, and I
scream when I realise it, only to know that that info is gone forever. Once,
my HD really did kaplunk. Funny though, I only lost 1 file... the rest of the
HD could be read just fine...

--
Anthony L. Bennett
http://welcome.to/TonyB

Graphics rendered
by the Dreamachine.

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On Thu, 22 Jul 1999 23:37:18 -0400, TonyB wrote:
>> about a dozen other things I've not yet gotten around to doing.  I just
>> lost the code for my incredible crackle speedups due to an IDE cable
>> failure on my Linux box, so my schedule (what schedule?) is slipping yet
>> again.
>
>Oh my God! This is terrible news! Do you remember any of your stuff? I mean,
>do you have it in your head? Or is it lost forever?

Well, as it turns out it wasn't an IDE cable (which was also bad) but the
cache memory on the motherboard had come loose.  I realized this after about
half a dozen attempted reinstalls with the same results :(

Anyway, I do remember what I had done, fortunately.  In fact, I think the 
second time I can do it even more efficiently and with code that's not quite
so ugly.

>This is a good reminder of how important backing up is. 

Yes, and you'd think I'd have learned my lesson by now.  The drives in that
machine are over five years old, so drive failure is a very real possibility.
I've already had two fail, and the platters from one of them are hanging on 
my cubicle wall here as an example for the others. :)  On the other hand, the 
price was right. (Total investment in that machine so far: $0.  It's now a
Pentium 166 with 64M of memory and half a gig of HD space.  I keep hoping
someone will give me a bigger obsolete hard drive.  Maybe a gig or two. :) )

I've been meaning to copy that code to my Windows machine for a while now, 
just so I can build it there.  I just hadn't gotten around to it yet when 
disaster struck. :(

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Ron Parker wrote:

>
> I've been meaning to copy that code to my Windows machine for a while now,
> just so I can build it there.  I just hadn't gotten around to it yet when
> disaster struck. :(

Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.
Should have taken that time to get CVS going and mirrored on both machines.  ;-)

Source Control: just do it.

--
"My new computer's got the clocks, it rocks
But it was obsolete before I opened the box" - W.A.Y.

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On Fri, 23 Jul 1999 09:35:32 -0700, Jon A. Cruz wrote:
>Ron Parker wrote:
>
>>
>> I've been meaning to copy that code to my Windows machine for a while now,
>> just so I can build it there.  I just hadn't gotten around to it yet when
>> disaster struck. :(
>
>Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.
>Should have taken that time to get CVS going and mirrored on both machines.  ;-)

Probably wouldn't have been mirrored had it been running, but it would at least
have been on a separate drive.  In any case, it was only a few dozen lines of 
code and a couple hours of work.  No biggie.

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