After a long break in releases of 3.8 beta test candidates, development is resuming, though not at the pace of past releases. That said, we hope to have a 3.8 release ready before the end of the year.
One impediment we have yet to overcome is code signing for the Windows platform. Currently we have no means of doing so as our previous key has expired. The difficulty is both cost and the need for flexibility in verifying us as an organization. Despite the fact that we have a company registered in Australia (Persistence of Vision Raytracer Pty. Ltd.) and it is visible on the ASIC website, it is our experience that the verification process gets hung up by the fact the company doesn't sell anything, have a street address, or have a phone number.
While we do not generally sign beta releases, it is our policy that official releases for the Windows platform are expected to be signed.
David K. Buck - the creator of DKBTrace, the pioneering raytracer that was the genesis of POV-Ray - has created a KickStarter campaign to fund creation of an open-source IDE for PigeonTalk (PigeonTalk is a smalltalk implementation created by David that is aimed at being a programming environment to explore computing).
"I chose Smalltalk as a language because it provides the most immersive experience I've encountered. Smalltalk allows you to create, use, and explore software in a very hands-on way. It's an ideal environment for learning and playing with software.
This Kickstarter project is to provide a development environment for this Smalltalk which I'm calling PigeonTalk. The development environment would run in a web browser and would communicate with the Smalltalk engine using WebSockets. Once this is available, PigeonTalk becomes a viable programming environment that others could use."
We wish David the best in this endeavor and are hopeful the Kickstarter will meet its goal as POV-Ray itself would not exist if it were not for David's kind contribution of the DKBTrace source code.
POV-Ray 3.8 is now in beta-test. You may obtain beta releases via our GitHub repository. Discussion regarding the betas should be directed to the beta-test group in our forums.
30 years ago today, on July 29 1991, the first beta of what would become POV-Ray became available in the GRAPHDEV forum on CompuServe. See "The Early History of POV-Ray", "The Original Creation Message", "The Name" and "A Historic Version History" in our v3.6 documentation for more details about the early days of this project.
The POV-Wiki is now back online ... ... [read more]
Following more recovery work since the server crash we're happy to say our ... ... [read more]
The www.povray.org site is now back in read-write mode ... ... [read more]
Our server recently experienced a catastrophic hardware failure ... ... [read more]
New Release: Blender to Persistence of Vision ... [read more]
The folks at the open-source white_dune 3d editor project let us know that they've added POV-Ray export capability. Neat! It looks like a useful tool, definitely worth checking out.
You can find their github repo here or if you prefer you can go straight to their project website for downloads.
