Zhu3D 3.3.4

[Heinz van Saanen]

Name: Zhu3D
Version: 3.3.4
Type: KDE Scientific
Depend: Qt 4.x
License: GPL
More Info:
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=43071

Description:
 Zhu3D is an interactive OpenGL-based mathematical
function viewer. You can visualize explicite
functions, parametric systems and isosurfaces. The
viewer supports zooming, scaling and rotating as
well as filed lighting or surface properties.
Special effects are animations, transparency,
textures, fog and motion blur. Equation systems
can be solved with a fast adaptive search.

You have up to 8 lights, background settings,
wire-modes or illumination models. For picture
rendering and textures all common formats are
recognized. User-defined functions can have any
amount of parameters, can be nested or recursive.
For special purposes if-clauses and boolean
operators are supported. Isosurfaces can use
different volume-based algorithms.

Zhu3D runs under Linux/Unix, Windows 98-Vista and
Mac OS X and is fully localized for English,
German, Spanish, French and Chinese. It supports
API's like KDE, Gnome, Motiv or Windows. All these
settings can be changed dynamically at runtime.
The application comes with extended help files and
a lot of examples.

HARDWARE:

For basic viewings even a slow PC without
HW-OpenGL may be sufficient. However, goddies like
motion blur or animation are a challenge for every
GPU. Isosurface tessellation needs a lot of
CPU-power and automatically utilizes multicore
CPU's therefore.

COMPILING:

All unnecessary dependencies are strictly avoided.
You just will need Qt >=4.2 and OpenGL >=1.2
whereas OpenGL may be a software implementation
like Mesa. The qmake easily can be taylored for
special needs, what supports packagers.

VERSIONS:

Versions with odd numbers are considered as "pre".
These are not intended to be buggy, but my testing
facilities are limited. So packagers should wait
for an even number. A Windows version is
available. Thanks to Victor Fernandez for hosting.


Have fun, Heinz van Saanen

Changelog:
 What is new in 3.3.4

- The number of threads can be changed dynamically
now. The upper limit is 2 x "real" CPU-cores, what
may speed up hyperthreading CPU's. Beyond this
limit things would slow down normally
- Inroduced upper limits: CPU-cores=8 and
threads=16 for now
- The signum function returns 1,-1 or 0 now, what
is more common in mathematical terms
- Nasty and quite random bug during start up under
Windows. Fixed
- When under heavy load Windows sometimes behaved
strange during animations. Fixed
- Small improvement in debug code
- Code cleans up in parser/solver interfaces
- Updated language files. Thanks to Yanqing and
Henri for Chinese and French again
- Reworked examples. Reduced complexity again
where possible. So you won't rely on high-end
hardware for real-time operation except some
examples dedicated to benchmark purposes

What was new in 3.3.2

- On erroneous inputs the function- and the
user-defined editors consequently lock each other
too now. So users are strictly forced to correct
blunder before working on elsewhere
- Additional check for loading invalid or
syntactically wrong Zhu3D-files. Load empty system
in such a case
- Benchmarking during a slideshow is quite
senseless. Blocked
- Simplifications/code shrinks in inits and error
handling
- Some small speed/size optimizations in critical
iso-parts
- Exe size and memory footprint are though recent
improvements smaller than many versions ago. A
goody for older PC's
- Re-enabled automatic language setting for MS
Windows as the newest Qt-Win fixes this issue.
Update to Qt 4.3.3 when facing troubles
- Reduced examples-complexity wherever sensefull.
Older HW reacts quicker and mostly in realtime now
- Updated/shrinked language files