Missing images on Pattern Summary page

[Christian Neumann]

A lot of the images on this page http://www.ldraw.org/cgi-bin/ptpatterns.cgi cannot be displayed. This affects all types of parts, and seems to happen after the files become official.

[Michael Heidemann]

Thanks for mention this. I also saw that in the past, but did not thought about what i saw.

A little investigation needs to be done for this, why that happens. Maybe it is long filename related?

[Magnus Forsberg]

I remember asking Chris about this phenomenon some time ago, and he gave this answer:

There is a problem with the images of official parts, due to the interaction with the peeron media server. I am looking into it.

[Chris Dee]

In the past, the parts update process generated images of every part in every colour, at several different scales, and the pattern reference pages merely serve up the colour 7 versions. Since we implemented a complete LDconfig file and with the growth in the library, the LDraw server lacks the disk space to accommodate them all. Last time I tried to run that step of the update, the filesystem filled, so that step is no longer run. Nobody at peeron has ever contacted me about the problems this causes for their inventories, and peeron has for several years failed to keep track of LDraw renumberings.

I think the easiest solution would be for me to create images for official parts using the same techniques as for the unofficial (Parts Tracker) images. That would also solve the problem of different sized images.

[Michael Heidemann]

Yes Chris, that sounds like a good way for us.

Does anybody know why Peeron is not maintained like in the past?

Is there something we can help on?

[Steffen]

Yes, regarding the images, I agree as well.
I always wondered why the official parts used a _different_ method.
I still dream of using brigl http://www.lugato.net/brigl/ for visualization on the PT instead of static images.

peeron seems to be slowly dying:

2003 - 11323 changes
...
2011 - 2770 changes
2012 - 243 changes
2013 - 22 changes

(from: http://www.peeron.com/cgi-bin/invcgis/history )

I've asked this question already here some years ago
http://forums.ldraw.org/showthread.php?t...52#pid2952

I cannot even see from their site which LDRAW parts update they're using.
It must be a fairly outdated one.

[Chris Dee]

This Parts Tracker enhancement has now been implemented (see, for example here). I'm currently generating images for all the official files, so in a few hours all pages should be correct.

[Christian Neumann]

Good news :-)
Thank you for fixing this, i hope others do like this feature as much as i do!

[Christian Neumann]

A lot of the images on this page http://www.ldraw.org/cgi-bin/ptpatterns.cgi cannot be displayed. This affects all types of parts, and seems to happen after the files become official.

It happened again, a lot (all?) patterned parts from the last update cannot be displayed, e.g. http://www.ldraw.org/cgi-bin/ptpatterns.cgi?p=3001 .

[Chris Dee]

Thanks for pointing this out. I think the refresh got missed in the 2014-01 update.

It's fixed now.

[Steffen]

if we would use a WebGL viewer for parts, then we do not need to pre-generate images anymore.

of course, then the part files need to be transferred, but these usually are smaller than images

[Stephen]

I don't think any part of the LDraw site should assume that support and availability for WebGL is ubiquitous. Even the sites that do (attempt) to provide interactive 3D representations of LDraw parts generally also provide fallback images anyway.