New 4.beta12 for Windows and Linux: Corrects width of arrows,
positioning of cones, and compatibility of old and new formats for
specifying lighting. See the Recent developments section at vpython.org.
The major problems remaining are problems on Windows, where details of
the graphics card and graphics driver matter a great deal. For example,
I was experiencing some programs locking up, not rendering new displays,
until I updated the graphics driver on my desktop machine. On my laptop,
with simple Intel graphics, some programs work only if I turn off
graphics acceleration, but in that case other programs don't run at all.
Yet on that same dual-boot laptop all programs run fine on Ubuntu Linux.
Another Windows problem is that sometimes dragging is quite sluggish.
For example, in the example program crossproduct.py, dragging the arrow
is very sluggish, with the tip of the arrow lagging far behind the mouse
location. But on Linux the dragging is completely smooth, and the mouse
doesn't get ahead of the arrow tip. So something quite fundamental is
wrong with the Windows rendering and mouse handling. Arthur Siegel is
struggling mightily to understand and deal with these issues, with
advice from Jonathan Brandmeyer. But this seems a VERY tough problem to
solve.
Bruce Sherwood
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