Possible support for photometric IES files or enabling similar in scene lighting effects.

[wfpokorny]

Summary

Users have occasionally asked that POV-Ray support photometric IES files (*.ies). Such support exists in other rendering software though what that really means in those tools and to POV-Ray is not clear to me. Creating this place holder issue for discussions - or links to discussions - on the topic.

EULUMDAT (.ldt) support too?

Environment

• All. Proposed feature.

Suggested Solution

For some discussion regarding .ies support see September 2017 newsgroup post at:

http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/message/%3C59c408ca%241%40news.povray.org%3E/#%3C59c408ca%241%40news.povray.org%3E

From 2001:

http://news.povray.org/povray.general/thread/%3CXns91238D5239EDCseed7%40povray.org%3E/

From May 2002 (DIALux tool associated, megapov patch discussion):

http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/thread/%3C3ce12f7e%40news.povray.org%3E/?mtop=144883

From 2007:

http://news.povray.org/povray.newusers/thread/%[email protected]%3E/

From January 2013:

http://news.povray.org/povray.beta-test/thread/%[email protected]%3E/

A somewhat related discussion around another approach from June 2015:

http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/thread/%[email protected]%3E/

(Note. I omitted newsgroup postings which requested support for the format but did not otherwise discuss possible implementations)