POV-Ray
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| Developer(s) | The POV-Team |
|---|---|
| Initial release | July 1991 |
| Stable release |
3.7.0 / November 9, 2013
|
| Preview release |
v3.7.1-beta.5 / March 25, 2017
|
| Written in | C++ |
| Operating system | Cross-platform |
| Type | Ray tracer |
| License | AGPLv3 |
| Website | www |
The Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer, or POV-Ray, is a ray tracing program which generates images from a text-based scene description, and is available for a variety of computer platforms. It was originally based on DKBTrace, written by David Kirk Buck and Aaron A. Collins for the Amiga computers. There are also influences from the earlier Polyray raytracer contributed by its author Alexander Enzmann. POV-Ray is free and open-source software with the source code available under the AGPLv3.
Sometime in the 1980s, David Kirk Buck downloaded the source code for a Unix raytracer to his Amiga. He experimented with it for a while, eventually deciding to write his own raytracer, named DKBTrace after his initials. He posted it to the "You Can Call Me Ray" bulletin board system in Chicago, thinking others might be interested in it. In 1987, Aaron A. Collins downloaded DKBTrace and began working on an x86-based port of it. He and David Buck collaborated to add several more features. When the program proved to be more popular than anticipated, they could not keep up with demand for more features. Thus, in July 1991 David turned over the project to a team of programmers working in the GraphDev forum on CompuServe. At the same time, he felt that it was inappropriate to use his initials on a program he no longer maintained. The name "STAR" (Software Taskforce on Animation and Rendering) was considered, but eventually the name became the "Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer", or "POV-Ray" for short, inspired by Dali's The Persistence of Memory.
In 2002, POV-Ray became the first ray tracer to render an image in orbit, rendered by Mark Shuttleworth inside the International Space Station.
Features of the application and a summary of its history are discussed in an interview in February 2008 with David Kirk Buck and Chris Cason on episode 24 of FLOSS Weekly.
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Wikipedia