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POV-Ray and such...

The following was a reply to a message posted at the comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing News Group:

The POV-Ray project started in May 1991 when I first proposed the idea to a group of people on CompuServe. They liked my DKBTrace raytracer but didn't like the fact that I was too slow adding new features to it. They were going to re-write a raytracer from scratch, but I suggested that after version 2.12 of DKBTrace, they could take the code as is and develop it from there into a new raytracer. The first name was STAR - an acronym for something or other. Then someone in the group came up with "Persistance of Vision". We liked it because of its reference to Dali (I believe the painting was actually called * Persistance of Vision * - am I mistaken?). Moreover, it seemed to symbolize the team who "Persisted" to achieve their "Vision". The third reference was to the + phycological + effect that seeing an image flashed on a screen causes you to retain that image in short term memory. Thus, your memory was a representation of reality but not really reality. They all seemed to fit together to make a nice name. Early on, we were abbreviating the name to PVRay, but we were concerned about a commercial product called PV-Wave. We agreed to change the abbreviation to POV-Ray and standardize on the spelling.

David Buck
dbuck@ccs.carleton.ca

* The Persistence of Memory *

1931
by Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali y Domenech
A surrealism painting. Contains melted pocket watches, water and eroded land in background. It was about this time that pocket watches were a passing era as the wrist watch became popular, outselling pocket watches beginning 1928.

+ physio-psychological? + This word was no doubt intended to be 'psychological'.

Here is my complete list of URLs written out (not links), some of which are at the Links Page in usual web-linking form.

http://www.netaxs.com/~ptdawson/ ;Paul Dawson homepage
http://www.netaxs.com/~ptdawson/snow.htm ;snowflakes
http://edcwww.cr.usgs.gov/glis/hyper/guide/1_dgr_demfig/nl10.html ;mt.st.helens
http://edcwww.cr.usgs.gov/glis/hyper/guide/1_dgr_demfig/index1m.html ;usa dem
http://edcwww.cr.usgs.gov/doc/edchome/ndcdb/ndcdb.html ;usgs data/programs
http://edcwww.cr.usgs.gov/landdaac/gtopo30/gtopo30.html ;global elevation maps
http://www.alltel.net/~jonl/dem.html ;dem2tga
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/postgrad/thomasc1/render/planets.htm ;space art
http://samadhi.jpl.nasa.gov/maps/ ;planetary maps
http://www.public.usit.net/rsuzuki/e/povray/iso/index.html ;texture/object functions
http://www.the-spa.com/shawn.fumo/povutils/ ;what else!
http://www.dhc.net/~swallace/review1.htm ;pov utility review
http://www.win.or.jp/~kom/indexe.html ;wilbot.inc
http://www.newcolor.com/darenw/dswpov/dswpov.html ;spectral dispersion
http://www.newcolor.com/darenw/dswpov/baddisp.html ;spectral dispersion
http://www.irtc.org/stills/1997-06-30.html ;motion blur?
http://www.rhein-ruhr.de/~schrammel/index.htm ;hf object add, texture-level-mapping
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jeffab/graphics.html ;pov links
http://user.baden-online.de/~mbachman/pile/new_eng.htm ;pov incs (the pile)
http://www.televar.com/~ceckak/pov_people ;pov-people
http://www.mindspring.com/~xenophon/raytrace/include ;plants'n'things
http://users.uniserve.com/~pvogt/ ;cool?
ftp://hbar.physik.uni-oldenburg.de/pub/win95/povray/digiart/digiart.zip ;digi-art
http://www.netlink.co.uk/users/snaffle/form/evolutio.html ;form (lparser type thing)
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/scorpius ;p-r rendered puzzles
http://www.mindspring.com/~maw01/aatxt/aaalpha/aaalpha.htm ;alpha channel
http://www.aimnet.com/~clifton/resources/downloads/spatch.zip ;spatch
http://quantum-optics.physik.uni-konstanz.de/rempe/privat/florian/cologram/ ;holography
ftp://terra.ru.com/pub/gamos/povray/ ;povpro (fast p-r executable)
http://www.access.digex.net/~justgus/ezekiel/povherm.html ;camera spline-like paths
http://www.mnsi.net/%7Ejschlic1/ ;mpeg encoder
http://www.dsuper.net/~jnichols/Index.html ;human modellor
http://www.inmet.com/~pwt/images.htm ;images link
http://www.haveland.com/povbench/index.htm ;pov benchmark
http://www.diardsoftware.com/ ;universe (space background maker)
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Heights/1107 ;gautam n. lad's website
http://www.interlog.com/~gautam/ ;another povray oriented link
http://www.spake.org/rtimes/ ;the render times
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lakes/1434/ ;chris colefax website
http://www.seas.gwu.edu/student/gritz/bmrt.html ; blue moon ray Tracer
http://tqd.advanced.org/3285/index.html ;online pov-ray tutorial
http://www.3dcafe.com/emporium/digitalm/digitalm.htm ;3d models
http://www.meshmart.org/ ;3d models
http://twysted.net/home.htm ;p-r dedicated
http://www.auburn.edu/~holmejw/links.html ;various links
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~dmb197/starwars.html ;starwars models
http://titan.informatik.uni-bonn.de/~wegener/burg.html ;castle project
http://www.ief.u-psud.fr/~lecoat/vrml/vrml.html ;new shapes
http://www2.ncsu.edu/bae/people/faculty/walker/hotlist/graphics.html ;displayer links
ftp://x2ftp.oulu.fi/pub/msdos/programming/convert/00index.html ;image converters
http://www.students.tut.fi/~warp/PovUtils/average/ ;targa averaging
http://www.carr.lib.md.us/~stevensl/ ;object builder (net-based)
http://www.algonet.se/~jhubert/TreeDesigner/ ;trees and more
http://www.best.com/~beale ;cyl-orb hf
http://www.erols.com/vansickl/rock.htm ;rock maker
http://stef.u-picardie.fr/ftp/pub2/ftp.povray.org/povray/utilities/ ;povray utilities
ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/povray ;povray ftp
http://www3.sympatico.ca/tapio.vocadlo/leveller/ ;hf editor
http://www.ridgenet.net/~jslayton/software.html ;wilbur dem
http://www.access.digex.net/~justgus/ezekiel/povherm.html ;curve generator
http://home.inm.ch/armin/elefont/elefont.htm ;ttf fonts to dxf
http://www.users.ezwv.com/~mclilith/download/w32avg11.zip ;Win tga averager
http://www.rz.fhtw-berlin.de/~s0049669/software.html ;POV texture viewer
http://www.mol.biol.ethz.ch/wuthrich/software/molmol/ ;macro-molecular maker
http://www.redbeard.com/redbeard/raytrace/POVRay-Util.html ;utility warehouse
http://members.iquest.net/~cyoung/index.html ;chris young homepage
http://math.berkeley.edu/~jlevenbe/raytrace.html ;more pov links
http://www.tisco.com/3d-web/papers/stereo.htm ;3d web
http://arachnid.cm.cf.ac.uk/Ray.Tracing/ ;ray-trace links
http://www.ch.cam.ac.uk/MMRG/people/mdm/torpatch.html ;torii slices

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