Zhu3D 3.3.6

[Heinz van Saanen]

Name: Zhu3D
Version: 3.3.6
Type: KDE Scientific
Depend: Qt 4.x
License: GPL
Homepage: http://sourceforge.net/projects/zhu3d/
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, Motif 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 >=4.3 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 precompiled Windows version
is available.

Have fun, Heinz van Saanen

Changelog:
 What is new in 3.3.6

- An erroneous function input consequently locks
the other two editor fields too now. This closes
the last loophole for proceeding elsewhere after a
blunder input. The only remaining choices are
correcting or an exit throughout the application
- "File/New" was animated, when invoked during
animation. Fixed
- The column header for user-item spreadsheets was
not retranslated dynamically. Fixed
- Simplifications/shrinks in startup code
- Massive reduction of signal events in all
OpenGL-editors
- Shrinked exe-size for some KB again. The
rigorous upload limit in kde-apps is quite healthy
for smaller caches too:-)
- Added tooltipps for demo-mode
- Added packager-options for other default gui's
then KDE. Maybe especially interesting for
Gnome/Macintosh-packagers. Look at the file
zhu3d.pri for details
- Updated/shrinked language files
- Added extended compilations hints for Qt4 Win in
install.txt
- Extended data structures and file format for a
future extension. Older zhu-files will stay
compatible
- Raised Qt4 minimum version to 4.3.x. Older ones
may work, but this is not tested any more

What was 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