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Comparing ray/doc/notes/ReleaseNotes (file contents):
Revision 1.66 by greg, Thu Mar 10 22:37:00 2005 UTC vs.
Revision 1.163 by greg, Sat Dec 12 05:20:10 2009 UTC

# Line 1382 | Line 1382 | care to support officially due to its machine-dependen
1382   Fixed bug that caused incorrect reporting of non-surface in set when
1383   mixing meshes and instances.  (Thanks to Jack de Valpine for discovery.)
1384  
1385 < Fixed innacuracy in calculation of diffuse transmission in the presence
1385 > Fixed inaccuracy in calculation of diffuse transmission in the presence
1386   of pure specular (Fresnel reflection) using "trans" material.  Thanks
1387   to Christoph Reinhart for pointing out the error.
1388  
# Line 1409 | Line 1409 | light-probe background for use in image-based lighting
1409   the user needed to specify the background glow as the alternate
1410   material for a distant illum source to behave properly.  (This still
1411   works.)
1412 +
1413 + Fixed some minor problems and inconsistencies with 16-bit/channel
1414 + TIFF i/o in ra_tiff.
1415 +
1416 + Created mksource program to generate distant sources for improved
1417 + image-based lighting with light probes.
1418 +
1419 + Changed ambient calculation so that -ad will not limit recursion
1420 + depth, and a minimum of 27 samples will be sent out for each stored
1421 + ambient value, or 3 samples if -aa is 0 (caching off).
1422 +
1423 + Added -oM option to rtrace to report material (rather than modifier)
1424 + for cases where actual material is aliased or further up modifier chain.
1425 +
1426 + Rearranged the way ray contributions are computed so that it might be
1427 + possible to use rtrace to derive daylight coefficients and optical
1428 + transfer functions.  The new -oTW option of rtrace produces color
1429 + contribution weights for each ray, which combined with the -ti (or -tI)
1430 + option permits the contribution of selected surfaces or sources to
1431 + be determined.  Using the -oTW option, one should also specify
1432 + options "-dt 0 -aa 0 -as 0" for optimal results.  In particular,
1433 + one cannot expect reasonable tallies with -ab >= 1 and irradiance
1434 + caching on (-aa > 0).
1435 +
1436 + The same code modifications included a change to the indirect computation
1437 + with caching switched off (-aa 0).  Whereas before, the number of secondary
1438 + rays after the first bounce were half of the previous generation, they are
1439 + now determined by the surface reflectance, making for a better and faster
1440 + calculation.  It should now be possible to compute many bounces with -aa 0,
1441 + which used to be prohibitively expensive.
1442 +
1443 + Added -T option to xshowtrace to trace rays to light sources.
1444 +
1445 + Added meta2bmp program to produce BMP files from metafile graphics.
1446 +
1447 + Added cct_x(t) and cct_y(t) to src/cal/cal/blackbody.cal to interpolate
1448 + CIE chromaticities for particular black-body temperatures.
1449 +
1450 + Increased maximum number of input pictures in pcomb and pcompos to 512.
1451 +
1452 + Created rtcontrib program for computing ray contribution coefficients.
1453 + This tool may be used to do standard optical ray tracing or daylight
1454 + coefficient calculations for annual simulations, among other uses.
1455 +
1456 + Added tilde ('~') output option as part of the -o* specification of
1457 + rtrace.  This permits ray trees to be parsed more easily in binary
1458 + output mode, as needed by rtcontrib.
1459 +
1460 + Implemented Russian roulette ray termination with -lr <= 0.
1461 + Made -lr -10 the default in rtcontrib.
1462 +
1463 + Made rtcontrib -f option search RAYPATH directories.
1464 +
1465 + Made it so -o option of rtcontrib can pipe -o output to a command.
1466 +
1467 + Added -if and -of options to total for binary i/o (following rcalc mold).
1468 +
1469 + Switched default options in rtrace to use Russian roulette.  (Rpict and rvu
1470 + still use biased ray termination.)
1471 +
1472 + Added rtcontrib -r option to recover partial output.
1473 +
1474 + Added -u rendering option for pure Monte Carlo sampling.
1475 + (Got rid of -DMC compile option, which this makes superfluous.)
1476 +
1477 + Changed -t option of rlam to accept strings as well as single characters.
1478 +
1479 + Fixed bug in rcalc with -l option where it would sometimes go into an
1480 + infinite loop.
1481 +
1482 + Fixed truly ancient bug in bounding box computation for cones, which
1483 + could (and did) cause missing segments.
1484 +
1485 + Added -z option to normtiff to output LZW-compressed files.
1486 +
1487 + Last change to total causes it to produce results when it sees an empty
1488 + line on the input.  This was not intentional, but I decided I like this
1489 + behavior so I documented it rather than changing it.
1490 +
1491 + =====================
1492 + Version 3.8
1493 +
1494 + Fixed Russian roulette ray termination, which was doing the opposite of
1495 + what it should have been doing, resulting in overestimated values below
1496 + minimum ray sampling weight (serious).
1497 +
1498 + Changed mksource to use 98th percentile (rather than 99th) for threshold.
1499 +
1500 + (Above changes included in 3.7.1 patch release.)
1501 +
1502 + Eliminated writing of EXPOSURE= line in ra_tiff -r when source TIFF
1503 + does not have STONITS set.
1504 +
1505 + Fixed bug in ambient calculation that caused black values for multiple
1506 + bounces in some scenes.  Thanks to Mark Stock for creating and sharing
1507 + the sophisticated test scene that demonstrated this problem.
1508 +
1509 + Fixed bug in antimatter using Russian Roulette sampling.
1510 +
1511 + (Above changes included in 3.7.2 patch release 22 Aug 2005.)
1512 +
1513 + Created fieldcomb script to combine alternate fields in a rendering
1514 + sequence.  (Development generously sponsored by Iebele Abel.)
1515 +
1516 + Added missing preload of mesh objects for more efficient memory use
1517 + during parallel rendering -- this was a serious oversight.
1518 +
1519 + Created ran2tiff program to automate exposure setting of animation
1520 + sequences using a moving histogram in combination with pcond, and
1521 + converting frames to TIFF.
1522 +
1523 + Eliminated SPEED macro from makeall and source tree.
1524 +
1525 + Added -pj option to vwrays to allow jittering of sample locations.
1526 +
1527 + Fixed bug in rtcontrib where it occasionally missed writing the
1528 + final bin file.  (Pretty serious, actually.)
1529 +
1530 + Added -Dfseeko=fseek to MACH= line for linux, as fseeko(3) seems to be
1531 + broken in current versions of Linux.  (Need to remove this later.)
1532 +
1533 + Rearranged struct's for better efficiency on 64-bit architectures.
1534 +
1535 + Added -i option to rlam so it works with binary input formats.
1536 +
1537 + Added rtcontrib -bn option to specify number of bins and fixed bug
1538 + in recovery of files containing multiple values per record.
1539 +
1540 + Added rtcontrib -fo option to write over existing files, which it now
1541 + refuses to do without this option.
1542 +
1543 + Made rtcontrib flush output when handed a zero-length ray vector,
1544 + to match behavior of rtrace.
1545 +
1546 + Improved color scale for falsecolor output.
1547 +
1548 + Added threshold test for Fresnel approximation to prevent its use
1549 + on smooth surfaces with unrealistically low specularities (less than 1.8%).
1550 + Water has a specular reflectance of 2.1% at room temperture.
1551 +
1552 + Removed NICE macro settings in rpict and rtrace, which was slowing down
1553 + the processes under Mac OS X (10.4) by about 60% due to processor napping.
1554 +
1555 + Made xform, replmarks and rad2mgf handle quoted modifiers and names properly.
1556 +
1557 + Fixed problem in genblinds, where it was generating slats that were too
1558 + wide with the +/-r option.  (Thanks to Helena Buelow-Huebe for discovering
1559 + this bug.)
1560 +
1561 + Fixed bug in ra_ppm for 16-bit/sample i/o, where it was getting the byte
1562 + order wrong (apparently).
1563 +
1564 + Added -V option to rtcontrib to report actual contributions, rather than
1565 + just ray coefficients.
1566 +
1567 + Fixed bug in ranimate that caused it to fail in continuation of renderings.
1568 +
1569 + Renamed librt.a to librtrad.a, to avoid conflict on Solaris. Almost
1570 + everything now gets linked to -lrtrad instead of -lrt.
1571 +
1572 + Fixed problem with large sample sets, so -u+ option now is truly random.
1573 + Thanks to Rick Mistrick and Younju Yoon for identifying this problem,
1574 + which was related to a poorly designed hash function.
1575 +
1576 + Changed -u+ to be the default setting in rtrace (only).
1577 +
1578 + Fixed binary i/o for rlam and vwrays under Windows.
1579 +
1580 + Added tmCvLums() to tone-mapping routines using a 16-bit lookup table
1581 + on IEEE floats, which is also used to improve speed of COLOR conversions,
1582 + especially on machines with slow log() calls.  The first call to
1583 + tmCvLums(), tmCvGrays(), or tmCvColors() initializes the table.
1584 +
1585 + Created optics2rad.csh script to convert from Optics 5 material output
1586 + to something correct for Radiance.  Built on old glazing.cal function,
1587 + which is actually incorrect so removed from the distribution.
1588 +
1589 + Fixed nuisance bug in ximage under some SGI machines that caused it to
1590 + choose an inappropriate visual and display incorrect colors.  (Thanks
1591 + to Oskar Itzinger for debugging the problem.)
1592 +
1593 + Fixed long-standing inaccuracy of pcompos -t and +t thresholding options.
1594 +
1595 + Fixed bug in handling of views with tabs rather than spaces.
1596 +
1597 + Fixed bug related to alias of alias.
1598 +
1599 + ****** COMPATIBILITY CHANGE ********
1600 + Changed default sky turbidity in gensky from the original default of
1601 + 2.75 to the CIE 110-1994 standard value of 2.45.  Thanks to Marilyne
1602 + Anderson of MIT for pointing out this discrepancy.
1603 +
1604 + Added -o option to ra_xyze to produce original pixel values.
1605 +
1606 + Fixed bug in tracing of virtual sources, where intervening glazing was
1607 + not being accounted for properly.
1608 +
1609 + Added -h option to pcompos and pcomb to eliminate verbose headers.
1610 +
1611 + =====================
1612 + Version 3.9
1613 +
1614 + Added -spec option to falsecolor to restore original spectral color scale.
1615 + Also added "-s auto" option to automatically set the maximum value.
1616 +
1617 + Added byte-swapping input and output to rcalc.
1618 +
1619 + Additional error-checking for source surfaces.
1620 +
1621 + Re-fixed bug in octree code that caused it to allocate 8 times as
1622 + much memory as it actually used(!) -- this was pointed out way back
1623 + in 1999 by Erik Reinhard and Erik Jansen, but the fix they gave me
1624 + got lost in the slightly broken release process at the time.  This
1625 + should make a big difference in memory usage, especially for the
1626 + new mesh primitive.  (I measured 30% less memory usage.)
1627 +
1628 + Corrected ray weights for material mixtures.
1629 +
1630 + Reduced the default -n setting for obj2mesh to take better advantage
1631 + of the smaller octree structure size.
1632 +
1633 + Fixed bug in shadow cache where it was adding surfaces with antimatter
1634 + holes cut in them to the obstructor list.  Thanks to John Mardaljevic
1635 + for discovering and reporting the problem.
1636 +
1637 + Adding ability in mkillum to incorporate BSDF data in calculation.
1638 + Internal interface (raypcalls) now used in place of rtrace process(es).
1639 +
1640 + Fixed pixel alignment in pcomb for size reduction and enlargement.
1641 +
1642 + Allow rtcontrib user to set -P and -PP options for persistent rendering.
1643 + The only caveat is that -n setting > 1 requires -PP rather than -P.
1644 +
1645 + Added -c option to rtcontrib to facilitate cumulative calculations.
1646 +
1647 + ****** COMPATIBILITY CHANGE ********
1648 + Fixed long-standing bug in source.cal, which caused it to produce
1649 + reversed anisotropic photometric distributions due to the
1650 + misorientation of the y-axis.  Thanks to Zack Rogers for discovering
1651 + and helping debug this problem.
1652 +
1653 + Fixed long-standing bug in replmarks, where triangles with X-side
1654 + aligned with Z-axis would cause incorrect rotations.  Thanks to
1655 + Zack Rogers for finding this error.
1656 +
1657 + Added rsensor program to compute sensor signal for daylighting controls.
1658 + Funding for this component was provided by the Architectural Energy
1659 + Corporation in Boulder, CO, and directed by Zack Rogers.
1660 +
1661 + Added "planisphere" (stereographic) fisheye view type for traditional
1662 + daylighting analysis.  Feature requested & explained by Axel Jacobs.
1663 +
1664 + Modified -c option to rtcontrib so it can take a number of input
1665 + rays to average over, rather than only produce a single accumulated
1666 + record (which can now be done with -c 0).
1667 +
1668 + =====================
1669 + Version 4.0
1670 +
1671 + Added -n option to rvu to provide parallel rendering.
1672 +
1673 + ****** COMPATIBILITY CHANGE ********
1674 + Changed ".pic" extension to ".hdr" in all sources and documentation
1675 + to improve interoperability with other software, since this has become
1676 + the de facto extension for Radiance RGBE and XYZE pictures.  Since file
1677 + extensions were never more than a convention in Radiance, this does not
1678 + affect operation, but may require the update of scripts, etc. written
1679 + by others that assume the ".pic" suffix for Radiance output.
1680 +
1681 + Added -N option to objview to support multiprocessing.
1682 +
1683 + Improved sampling of circular sources (source, sphere, ring types) with
1684 + quite a bit of help from David Geisler-Moroder.
1685 +
1686 + Added "rpict" and "rvu" variables to rad, and made these as well as
1687 + the "oconv", "mkillum" and "pfilt" variables accept an alternate
1688 + command path in each case.  Change suggested by Lars Grobe based
1689 + on similar Radzilla (radz) facility by Carsten Bauer.
1690 +
1691 + Fixed rad -v N specification to use actual view name if one.
1692 +
1693 + Fixed error in mkillum calculation where it neglected indirect
1694 + source contributions from BTDF illum's.
1695 +
1696 + Added GMT and LATLONG header lines for Greenwich Mean Time and
1697 + degrees North Latitude / East Longitude.
1698 +
1699 + Added gendaylit to distribution (finally).
1700 +
1701 + Added ability in vwright(1) to get view from command line arguments.
1702 +
1703 + Created genklemsamp(1) utility to generate samples suitable for
1704 + BSDF-based annual calculations.  This is the first Perl script to
1705 + be added to Radiance.  Hopefully, others will follow.
1706 +
1707 + Added klems_int.cal file to compute Klems bins for windows.
1708 +
1709 + Created gentregvec utility to sample a particular sky and
1710 + evaluate average radiance over the standard Tregenza sky patches.
1711 +
1712 + Created dctimestep program to compute a set of sensor values or
1713 + a combined image for a particular time using the daylight
1714 + coefficient method.
1715 +
1716 + Created src/rt/rayfifo.c for first-in/first-out handling of
1717 + multiprocessing by raypcalls.c.

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