Solstice

Version 0.10

Raise the minimum required versions of companion libs

solstice-anim minimum version is now 0.3, while solstice-solver minimum version is now 0.10.

Replace CMake with a POSIX Makefile

The build procedure is now written in POSIX make and can be configured via the config.mk file. A pkg-config file is also provided to link the library as an external dependency.

Compared to the CMake alternative, this Makefile adds support for static libraries and an uninstall target. It also enables compiler and linker flags for various hardening features, improving the security and robustness of generated binaries. More broadly, the motivation for this rewrite is to rely on a well-established standard with a simple feature set, available on all UNIX systems - reducing portability concerns and maintenance burden while remaining significantly lighter.

Proof-reading and editing manual pages

Write the man pages directly in mdoc's roff macros, instead of using the asciidoc markup language as a source for man pages. Unlike writing manuals with man's roff macros, and even more so with asciidoc, mdoc macros take care of layout, font handling and all the other typesetting details which, by construction, guarantee the consistency of all manuals without leaving the responsibility to the individual author. This also facilitates translation into other formats and documentation tools. These are the main reasons for writing manual pages with mdoc macros. A complete re-reading of the manual pages was carried out during the translation into mdoc, with several corrections and rewrites to make the manual clearer.

Raise the minimum required version of dependencies

Minimum required versions:

Rsys = 0.15
Star-3DUT = 0.4
Star-SP = 0.15
Star-STL = 0.7
libYAML = 0.2

Version 0.9.1

Raise the minimum required CMake version to 3.1, as version 2.8 has been deprecated since CMake 3.20.
Raise the minimum required Star-SampPling to 0.12. This version fixes compilation errors with gcc 11 but introduces API breaks.

Version 0.9

Add the -G option that saves and restores the state of the random number generator. This option can be used to ensure the statistical independence between successive runs.

Version 0.8.2

Fix man pages: the -D option of the solstice CLI was wrongly documented. The zenith and elevation angles were sometimes inverted.
Bump version of the StarSP dependency to 0.8.

Version 0.8.1

Fix the VTK of the receiver map: the receiver map was written as double while the type notified in the VTK file was float. This might produce errors on loading of the resulting VTK file. The VTK data type is now set to double to make it consistent with the type of the written values.

Version 0.8

Add the support of per-triangle absorbed flux density. The per_primitive attribute of the receiver file format controls which flux densities to output for each triangle of a receiver. Its value can be:

NONE: no per-triangle flux density is computed, i.e. no receiver map is output for the receiver. It was the behaviour of the previous version of Solstice when the per_primitive flag was undefined or was set to 0.
INCOMING: output the estimate of the per-triangle incoming flux density. It was the behaviour of the previous version of Solstice when the per_primitive flag was set to 1.
ABSORBED: output the estimate of the per-triangle absorbed flux density.
INCOMING_AND_ABSORBED: output both the estimates of incoming and absorbed flux density for each triangle of the receiver.

Version 0.7.1

Replace the roughness parameter of the mirror material by the slope_error parameter.
Improve the documentation of the sun direction.
Ensure that the per-receiver results are sorted according to the order of the receivers as listed in the submitted receiver file.

Version 0.7

Add the gaussian sun shape.
Add the microfacet attribute to the mirror material. It controls the normal distribution of the microfacets when the mirror roughness is not null. The supported distributions are BECKMANN and PILLBOX.

Version 0.6.1

Fix the solstice-input man page. The extinction parameter of the medium and the atmosphere was named absorption.
Rename the pillbox theta_max parameter in half_angle.

Version 0.6

Rename the absorption parameter of the medium and the atmosphere in extinction.
Add several global and per-receiver estimations. The outputs now fully describe the incoming and absorbed fluxes: overall flux, flux without material loss, flux without atmospheric loss, material losses and atmospheric losses.
Rename the pillbox aperture parameter in theta_max.
Fix the distribution of the pillbox sun: the pdf was wrong and its angular parameter was internally used as an angular diameter while it is an angular radius.
Fix the solver for non parallel sun: the angle between the principal sun direction and the sampled direction was not correctly taken into account leading to a wrong initial weight for the optical paths.
Fix the solver with shapes having perturbed normals: perturbed normals must be taken into account in the bounces of the optical paths only, not in the energy computations.

Version 0.5

Improve the performances of the solver up to 50% in situations where the radiative random walks bounce on many surfaces.

Version 0.4.1

Update the name of the output data in the solstice-output man page.
Fix an issue in "dump geometry" mode, i.e. option -g. Solstice might fail to export the solar plant geometry due to a wrong constraint on the pivots.

Version 0.4

Update the color of the paths output with the -p option. A path is blue, turquoise or yellow if it reaches a receiver, misses the receivers or is occluded before it reaches a primary reflector, respectively.
Add a new type of paths tracked with the -p option: a path is red if it travels unforeseen mediums.
Correctly handle the stacks parameter of the cylinder.

Version 0.3

Fix several issues in the output results. Refer to the Solstice-Solver 0.3 release notes for more informations.
Add the --version option.
Update the man pages to fix some issues and improve the output documentation.

Version 0.2.3

Update the solstice-input file format. The anchor and entity name cannot contain spaces or tabulations anymore.
Fix the reported sun directions in the solstice-output. For each submitted sun direction, solstice correctly outputs its Cartesian coordinates but always wrote the azimuthal and elevation angles of the first direction.
Update the solstice-output map page: add the missing <efficiency> grammar rule and fix the definition of the <map-side-data> grammar rule.

Version 0.2.2

Fix how the AsciiDoc tool suite is searched for on Windows; it was never found and consequently the documentation was not generated.

Version 0.2.1

Fix the install target on Windows: copy the solstice runtime libraries in the solstice installation path.

Version 0.2

Add the support of an optional normal map to the materials. It defines spatially varying normals in the tangent space of the surface. Currently, only the quadric surfaces are parameterizable: using a normal mapped material on the other shapes will produce unforeseen behaviors.
Add the support of spectral data to the materials: a material attribute can be either a scalar or follow a spectral distribution.
Add an optional atmospheric absorption after the first reflection of the light path; the sun description includes the atmospheric effect before the first reflector.
Write the man pages of the Solstice command line and its associated file formats.
Add the verbose option -v.
Update the output format of the simulation.