A Message From POV-Team Coordinator Chris Young 
                             February 5, 1997

      On July 12, 1996, the POV-Team released the "final" release of
POV-Ray 3.00 to the public.   It was the result of over 2 years of work
to turn POV-Ray 2.2 into 3.00 as various team members and I submitted 102 
updates to create 19 full revisions.  Well over 100 new features were added.
This was followed by 7 major beta versions consisting of over 70 intermediate
patches.  Dozens of new scenes were created.  Documentation was totally
rewritten.  Two totally new platforms were added to those officially
supported.  It was a tremendous effort by the finest bunch of programmers, 
artists and testers I've ever had the pleasure of knowing.  From Germany, 
France, Hungary, Australia, Netherlands, Canada, USA and who knows what 
other countries I've forgotten, the group of un-paid volunteers known as
the POV-Team has poured countless hours of their lives into this effort.
      The problem was: It wasn't finished.
      In some ways, it never will be.  There will always be bugs, design 
limitations, unclear docs, scenes that need revision and countless other 
changes.  At the time, we had to call it good enough.  The Team was facing 
serious burn-out if we didn't take a break.  The tutorial section of the
documentation was incomplete.  The reference section had a few missing
sections.  Naturally there were bugs to be fixed.
      We now are releasing this minor bug fix release POV-Ray 3.01.
It includes some excellent contributions of tutorials from several users
and lots of hard work by docs coordinator Dieter Bayer which finishes the
documentation.  Many bugs have been fixed and some minor revisions have 
been made in some scene files.  No new features have been added to the
core code.
      One change that may surprise you is a new warning message that
says that radiosity, halos, and atmosphere are "experimental features".
In the past few months it has become obvious to us that a major rewrite
is needed for halos and atmosphere.  We plan to begin work on that rewrite
and will try to have a new version 3.1 completed sometime in 1997.  Although
we will try to continue to support or emulate the existing form of halos
and atmosphere, it is very likely that the total re-design will make it
impossible to maintain full compatibility with the current design.  Although
we have no plans to change radiosity soon, if we ever do change it, the
chances are it will not be fully backward compatible either.
      There are other changes planed for 3.1 that we are sure you will
appreciate and they will not hurt backward compatibility.  We are not
yet ready say what new features will be added for 3.1 but we will try
to keep the list short for this minor upgrade.  In parallel with 3.1
work we are going to start development on 4.0 which will probably involve
a total revision of the code from C to C++.  Don't look for that release
until 1998 or later.
      It has been a real labor of love to produce this program and we 
continue to be excited and amazed by the wonderful images all of you turn 
out using our program.  We continue to try to make POV-Ray the greatest
program available in the field and we promise you it will always be free.
      The POV-Ray 3.01 files are currently available on CompuServe's GO
POVRAY Forum.  The files have been placed at ftp.povray.org but because
there are problems at that site, you will probably have to access one of
our mirror sites.  It may take several days until the files have propegated
to the mirrors.  Look for file dates of February 1st or later.
      Chris Young - POV-Team Coordinator