Hello all,
tl;dr Runtime for sky view factor calculation faster when scene.rad is added to oct
I am putting together some sky view factor calculations and ran into an unexpected comparison of run times. Background, I am using the helpful notes from this post: Any method to calculate sky view factor in Radiance?. Thanks @Compagnon_Raphael1!
So In running the most basic formulation of SVF calculation on my 5761 points without a scene file, the runtime is about 4 seconds…
oconv uni.rad > uni_no_scene.oct
cat points | rtrace -h -ab 1 -I uni_no_scene.oct | rcalc -e 'SVF=$1;$1=SVF;' > result_no_scene.txt
THEN, when I add my scene file into it the runtime drops down to less than a second…
oconv uni.rad scene.rad > uni_with_scene.oct
cat points | rtrace -h -ab 1 -I uni_with_scene.oct | rcalc -e 'SVF=$1;$1=SVF;' > result_with_scene.txt
The scene and the points are not necessarily near each other. I am just testing something out while I wait for a sensor point file to be written. Any thoughts on if this is a genuine speed up due to some behaviour with the oct or am I missing an error? The scene file contains three pieces of geometry. Each has different materials: 2 plastic and 1 glass. This brings me to my second question. Will the transparency of the glass be taken into account for this SVF calculation?
Thanks for any help out there!