v1.5.0

Highlights

Wavefront kernel architecture for the Metal backend on
Apple Silicon, with full spectral mode inside the wavefront
pipeline. The default backend is now wavefront (was
megakernel through v1.4.0), beating megakernel by ~25% on
cornell-class workloads at 1080² Picture.

Glass dispersion in spectral mode now defaults to
per-wavelength forking. Four monochromatic sub-paths cover
the hero wavelengths at the first dispersive refraction,
each refracting at its own Cauchy IOR. The cheaper
terminate-secondaries strategy stays available via
--spectral-terminate or the GUI's Glass radio.

Mac infrastructure work queued since v1.4.0 also lands:
adaptive multi-pass kernel (useAdaptive=ON now takes the
saturation-friendly path instead of the ~6x slower strip
path), spatial chopping for 16K renders, a new
physically-cringe-rendering-cli headless GPU binary, OIDN
device-buffer fix so denoising actually runs on every Mac
OIDN render, and cmake --install for typeable-from-$PATH
install.

Three new scenes: closed-cornell-glass,
closed-cornell-spec (Cornell box with a fourth wall
behind the camera, eliminates dark camera-facing patches
in specular reflections), bright-cornell-glass (entire
ceiling promoted to the area light).

Install

Download the bundled per-OS zip for your platform. It
contains the binary plus Scenes/, models/, spd/,
luts/, and lib/ (OIDN runtime), all pre-arranged. The
binary needs those folders next to it at startup.

• Windows: pcr-v1.5.0-windows-x64.zip →
  extract → double-click physically-cringe-rendering.exe
  (GPU GUI), frank-based-rendering.exe (CPU GUI), or run
  frank-based-rendering-cli.exe /
  physically-cringe-rendering-cli.exe from a terminal.
  SmartScreen warns the first time. Click More info →
  Run anyway.
• macOS (Apple Silicon):
  pcr-v1.5.0-macos-arm64.zip → extract →
  from a terminal in the extracted folder, run
  xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine . to clear the Gatekeeper
  quarantine flag, then double-click
  physically-cringe-rendering (Metal-backed GPU GUI) or
  run ./frank-based-rendering-cli /
  ./physically-cringe-rendering-cli from terminal.
• Linux: pcr-v1.5.0-linux-x64.zip →
  extract → chmod +x if needed → ./physically-cringe-rendering
  (GPU GUI) or ./physically-cringe-rendering-cli
  (headless GPU). GPU paths need OpenGL 4.3.

Standalone binary downloads

Individual binaries are also published (no bundled folders).
They're useful when you already have the data folders from a
previous version and just want to swap the executable. For
first-time install, prefer the bundled zip above.

Verify a render

Each PNG carries embedded tEXt metadata (Software, Backend,
Scene, all render parameters, render time, Architecture,
WavefrontMode, WavefrontDispersion, Spectral, HeroSamples).
Read it with exiftool yourimage.png (or any tool that
handles PNG tEXt chunks) to confirm provenance after the
fact.

Changes

Full Changelog: v1.4.0...v1.5.0