Fwd: VPython turns 5

[Steve Spicklemire]

Hi Folks,

I got this from Bruce Sherwood and thought others might be interested.

-steve

>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Bruce Sherwood <Bruce_Sherwood at ncsu.edu>
> Date: December 9, 2008 11:01:05 AM EST
> To: Steve Spicklemire <steve at spvi.com>
> Subject: Advertising
>
> -------------------------
>
> At vpython.org there is now available the Visual 5.0 release  
> candidate for Windows, Mac 10.5, and Linux. The native-mode Mac  
> version does not use X11 nor depend on Fink.
>
> Major new features include opacity, local lighting, and materials  
> such as wood. Of interest to researchers is the new "points" object  
> which is useful for representing data in 3D.
>
> Visual 5.0 was created by David Scherer and Bruce Sherwood.  
> Jonathan Brandmeyer while an undergraduate at NCSU provided support  
> in Visual 4beta for opacity, local lighting, and textures, and made  
> some important architectural changes, but had to stop work on the  
> project before it was completed.  Further development has led to  
> API changes which are incompatible with the Visual 4beta release,  
> so this release is called version 5 instead of 4.
>
> P.S. You will see shader errors and/or the inability to display  
> materials such as wood if your graphics hardware does not support  
> Pixel Shader 3.0. The key point is this statement in the Visual 5.0  
> help (see the "What's new" section or the "materials" section):
>
> Materials will work with graphics cards that support Pixel Shader  
> 3.0 ("PS 3.0"). For details, see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_shader#Hardware. Some materials  
> may work with graphics cards that support PS 2.0, but other  
> materials may need to be manually disabled; see instructions in the  
> site-settings.py module in the Visual package in your site-packages  
> folder. If the graphics hardware does not support pixel shaders,  
> the material property is ignored. If you think you should be able  
> to use materials but have trouble with their display or  
> performance, we highly recommend upgrading your video card drivers  
> to the latest version.
>