release 4.0 ?

[maucinti]

Brad,
Just curious about next release. Can you tell us anything about progress and date of release ?
Thank you

maurizio

[BHawthorne]

We have a new programmer tasked with Nthusim Plus development. Immersaview has allocated time for it right now. Uncertain if it'll be designated 3.6 or 4.0 yet Depends on how many bugs we can get squashed and features we can get done on the wish list. I'll email Andy tonight to nail down a bit more detail on where the software engineers are at the moment on it.

[Guest]

hi there

any News on release date for 3.6 (4.0)?

furthermore i have a question re. the brightness on overlapping parts of projectors.
we have a 3 projector Setup on curved wall. therefore 2 overlapping Areas in nthusim. now flying by day (prepar3d) the blend brightness is just fine, however flying at night, even with the darkest blending brightness we still see the overlapping brightness of the projectors. is it planed to have even darker blending modes in 4.0? or are we doing something wrong in General as to the blending...?

thanks for your help

regards
oliver

[BHawthorne]

At issue, even when it's totally black color, projectors will still push light. For example, set your desktop black and project it. You'll see it's a function of how the hardware works. DLP projectors still project a slight bit of light even with black. This isn't really anything that Nthusim can fix outright. It's a function of how black is projected via DLP projection. That black is still around 2-3% light and then you get an area where they overlap and it becomes around 4-6% light. There is no true black in projections.

[BHawthorne]

Also, on 4.0. I need to double check 2 things then Ed will get back with me. Then it can be pushed live. Last week was a mess because of previous commitments and this week is Thanksgiving holiday. I'll try to fit in time for it in between the turkey this week though.

Part of the problem with Nthusim development is that it's done in spare time. No one works on Nthusim full time as a day job. We mostly do Nthusim for the love of flight and racing sim hobbies. It doesn't make enough money to be a full time job or have a full time staff. That has been an impediment to the release schedule in the past. Even so, I do my best to keep on top of international customer service regardless of time of day or night.

-Brad

[Guest]

thanks brad for your swift reply. i'm sure i'm not alone when saying that we appreciate all the hard work that is put into this great software!
about the "brightness" blending, so is there any way to get rid of this brightness surplus? we tried with pieces of metal in front of the lense to reduce the field of projection, however it is not very "clean" as there are shadows being generated by the edges of the metals... any other suggestions or ideas?

regards
oliver

[BHawthorne]

There is a bit of a trick I use. A strip of black electrical tape that conforms to the edge of the blend works on each projector lens. Just make sure that you don't get too far into the edge where it starts effecting where the blend ramps. You mostly need to be taping off the excess beyond the center point of the edge blend. This is what I use on my personal setup and I find it really cuts down on the sharp change where the overlap ends in dark content.

[BHawthorne]

I think I have a few pictures I did on my setup using this trick. I'll dig around for them in the next day or so. I was planning on making a how-to for this awhile back.

[Guest]

thanks for the insight. that would be great to see a few pictures, hope you find them.

[maucinti]

Brad,
Ok, you had no time for Thanksgiving...but what about a Christmas present for all of us ?

anyway, merry Chistmas.

Maurizio