[Radiance-general] Radiance pmap extension on Windows

[Lars O. Grobe]

Hi Valère!

> I am using desktop radiance2.0b on windows. As I need to simulate a room
> with a deep lightpipe, I would like to use the photon map but I can't find
> any version of it I can use on windows.

I think it would be worth to find out the status of the current attempts 
to update the photon map extension to the Radiance 4.x code base. I am 
not sure whether Jan or anyone else involved at Fraunhofer ISE is 
reading, but probably they are the only ones who know about the project.

First, I would immediately stop using Desktop Radiance. We are in 2011 
now, and I think the old releases are interesting mostly for historical 
reasons now.

Second, I do not know how well a patched Radiance 3.7 (the latest 
official patch of the pmap) compiles on Windows. It used to work find on 
Mac OS, but Windows is quite different from everything else. You may 
still consider to use a virtual machine (e.g. Virtualbox, available for 
free) to get a complete Linux environment on a Windows machine.

Third, as I am doing some experiments on light pipes and the pmap, I 
would really be curious whether we will have some validation data once a 
Radiance 4.x pmap is to be released. There used to be caveats which I am 
still trying to understand.

I imagine that once we have a complete pmap patch for Radiance 4.x, 
people will get it useable in cygwin & Co., too. Still, probably it 
would make sense to get your hands on a Linux installation for now. And 
using a virtual machine is the easiest way to go for people not having 
access to a native installation.

Cheers, Lars.

btw: I changed the subject line, please make sure to avoid subject lines 
such as "Re: [Radiance-general] Radiance-general Digest..." when replying.