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Issue Nr. 4
Dec. 5th 2000.
Contents:
Ok, I'm two months late about my promises from the last issue of
the Rayfront-Announce newsletter, but finally, the point of no
return has arrived. Yesterday afternoon, the master CD went to
the factory for production. Pressing the release CDs and
printing the labels will take up to ten days, and then the original
release of Rayfront 1.0 is out of the door! The boxes are already
printed, and still need cutting and folding, but that should take
even less time.
This current delay was quite different from the others before, as I
didn't really miscalculate the amount of work for what I still
wanted to do, but there was some unexpected work that also had to
get done. It turned out that the Windows port or Radiance, that I
have licensed for inclusion from LBNL, didn't quite adhere to the
standards of robustness that I wanted to offer to my paying
customers. In a joint effort with the Radiance maintainers in
Berkeley, I hope I was able to fix the most severe problems
in the code by now. Those issues that only become evident during
everyday use of the Radiance core programs with Rayfront will need
to be addressed in an upcoming service release. At least one
upgrade will be free for registered Rayfront customers anyway, so
there's no need to worry!
As a first action after finishing the actual product, I have
uploaded the complete Rayfront user manual to the web site.
The purpose of this information is that everybody can see what
Rayfront can do for you, and where it has its limitations. It is
not my intention to sell my software to unsuspecting victims by
making empty promises. Rayfront is not the tool for everybody, and
I hope that it's limits are clearly enough documented in the
manual. Please note that the documentation you see there is really
*all* the documentation there is. If you're unsure what you want,
or if Rayfront is easy enough for you to use, just take the time to
check out this description, and then decide. As long as I have to
provide all the end user support myself, I definitively prefer
happy non-customers to unhappy customers!
In a few days, the web site should also be ready for ordering. I
have already signed a contract with a credit card handling company,
so that all I need are a few web forms to collect the required
information and then hand it over to them for processing. Once your
card data is checked in realtime, my fax machine will ring, and
I'll run to fix a package for you and put it into the mail. There
will be a money-back garantee for a certain amount of time after
the buy, so even if you find that Rayfront is not the thing you
really dreamt of after getting it, you still can return it without
loss. I don't offer you this garantee just because the credit card
companies want me to do so, but because I personally believe that
this is the right way to do business.
Find the download for the free update to Rayfront 1.0.1
The fine print of the Rayfront end user license is not phrased out
in every little detail. But it will go along the following lines:
One license includes the right for one person at a time
to work with the "editor" part of Rayfront, which is my internal
term for the actual user interface. You may install the program on
several machines if you think this helps you, but as soon as two
seperate copies are in use by more than one person simultaneously,
it is your obligation to purchase an additional license, or
several.
You may run "Rayservers" on as many (unix) machines as you
like, to process the actual simulations remotely. A
Rayserver is a daemon process that sits somewhere in your local
network, and waits for editor processes to send it simulation
requests. If a server receives such a request, and has access to
the project data the request is based on, then it will accept and
run the requested simulation on the server machine. In short, this
means that you can use as many machines as you like to run
simulations with the same Rayfront license, assuming you have the
hardware in place.
If you represent an educational institution, and plan to use
Rayfront for your teaching activities, please contact me. Most
likely, you can get a free site (or lab) license for Rayfront. This
is only partly for marketing reasons. Rayfront has grown out of an
educational context, and a number of universities have contributed
valuable time and resources to test the beta versions. I believe
that educational institutions are the places where the best ideas
grow, and students tend to try out everything they see at least
once. The quality and robustness of Rayfront is to a significant
part a consequence of that fact, and I hope that this will be still
the case for future versions.
If you are a student, and want to user Rayfront for your study
work, please contact the responsible person at your school. It is
likely that we can make an arrangement with your school as
described above, and you may then use Rayfront under the terms of
that school license. I am currently reluctant to offer direct
student licenses for seperate individuals, as this would cause a
significant administrative overhead on my side. If Rayfront is the
right tool for your work, then your scholl should be interested in
it anyway, and if it goes through school channels, then other
students there may profit from it as well. Of course, if all your
attempts fail, you can still contact me directly, and I'll see what
I can do.
If you have taken part in the beta testing program, and think
that you have contributed valuable feedback, please don't
immediately hurry off to buy a license. There are chances that you
have earned one already.
I assume that most Windows based Rayfront users will also want to
have a look at the Desktop Radiance package from LBNL, or
maybe already have it installed on their system. Normally, this
would have been a problem, since Desktop Radiance (more precisely,
the Windows binaries of Radiance included with it) is somewhat
unflexible with the way it uses a number of registry entries. The
original version of those binaries assumes that there will only be
one Radiance installation on each system at any time. This will
hopefully change in future versions, but at the moment, it's a
somewhat tricky situation.
I have modified the Radiance binaries that are included with
Rayfront to circumvent this problem. No program from the Rayfront
package actually requires any registry entries any more. All
programs are primarily configured by environment variables, which
Rayfront sets dynamically at run time. There are three areas
where such a configuration is required:
Finding other executables.
The unix binaries traditionally use the "PATH" environment variable
for this purpose, which is the standard for other software as well.
Some of the DR binaries use a special registry entry "BINPATH", that
tells them where the other programs of the package are found. Others
still use the traditional method.
The Rayfront binaries first check the normal "PATH" environment
variable. If nothing is found there, they check a "BINPATH"
environment variable. If that fails as well, they will look at the
same "BINPATH" registry entry as the DR binaries. And as a very last
resort, they will assume the default location "c:\radiance\bin".
Finding the Radiance library.
The unix binaries use the environment varible "RAYPATH" for this.
Some of the DR binaries check a special registry entry also named
"RAYPATH", others still use the environment variable.
The Rayfront binaries first check the environment variable.
If nothing is found there, they will look at the registry entry.
And as a last resort, they will use the default path
".;c:\radiance\lib".
Setting the monitor gamma.
I think you can already guess what happens here, except may be for
the name "DISPLAY_GAMMA".
Why all this effort? Since Desktop Radiance came first, it
has the "right of way", so to speak. When its original design was
made, the problem just didn't exist, because there were no other
programs on Windows widely available that would bring their own
Radiance binaries.
Rayfront is the new player, so we need to take some precautions in
order not to stomp on staked out territory. Rayfront itself doesn't
really require any environment settings, though it helps so set the
"PATH" environment variable to it's binary directory. It will make a
number of temporary modifications to the environment for those other
programs that it runs internally. The modifications to the Radiance
binaries described above make it possible to really keep those
modifications temporary. Your Desktop Radiance installation
will never even learn that there is a member of the same family
installed on the
same system!
Now that the support mailing list starts populating, I'll have to
hurry up on implementing the message archives as well. This will be
a significant part of the Rayfront support area on the web
site, where you can check if any of your problems with the
software has already been encountered (and possibly solved) by
another user.
I have mentioned the Mktis module for simulating daylight
redirection modules so many times in vain that I hesitate to do so
again. But then, I now have time to look to it, now that the
Rayfront development is finished for the moment. I'm not any
promises, as I can't really decide anything on my own here, but
I'll try to make it finally happen.
Issue 08 (2002 Sep. 9.)
Issue 07 (2002 Apr. 29.)
Issue 06 (2001 Jul. 10.)
Issue 05 (2001 Feb. 20.)
Issue 04 (2000 Dec. 5.)
Issue 03 (2000 Aug. 31.)
Issue 02 (2000 May 15.)
Issue 01 (2000 Mar. 19.)
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