The Ellis Family <cel### [at] voyageurca> wrote:

  Somehow I feel your article quite irritating and provocative. Don't know
exactly why, but it seems to be rude and lack politeness.

: #1. Very few people (actually, none that I know of) actually make money
: using PovRay and/or Moray.  In fact, most people seem to prefer to
: *share* their images/source with the rest of the Pov community.

  The fact that you don't know of any people who make money with povray, it
doesn't mean that "very few people" make money with it.
  Ok, it may be true that not many people sell lone images made with povray,
but povray is used in many other ways of creating graphics.
  I myself have created a small logo with povray. This logo is used in the
front page of the documentations created in the project I'm working on. I
have counted the making of the logo as working time, thus receiving more or
less directly money for it. The logo is quite irrelevant in the documents and
in the project and far from directly related to it, but still in an indirect
way I have received money for it. I have also made some graphics (background
images and so on) used in web pages related to the project. Again, not
directly related, but still at working time.
  So I have not sold any image nor I have been asked to make any image with
povray for profit, but still I have used povray and indirectly got money
for it.

: #2. Lightflow is vastly superior to PovRay in certain areas (just look
: at Lightflow's surface engine), and I think PovRay would definately
: benefit from a merger of some sort.

  It may be "vastly superior" or it may not. The visual appealing of a couple
of example images doesn't tell the whole truth about the quality of the
program itself or even the features those example images show.
  There are several images out there made with povray that show exceptionally
high quality rendering. Putting all of them in one place could perfectly give
the impression that povray is "vastly superior" to other renderers. For
example take the recent "city" irtc winner and a couple of other images of
similar quality, and there you are.
  You can give that impression, but it still doesn't mean that everything you
do with povray looks that good or that it's very easy to get that kind of
images.
  So example images don't tell the whole truth.

  And in my opinion, trying to mix up two different programs can only make
a maintenance nightmare (besides other problems).
  In my opinion, let lightflow evolve in its own path and povray evolve in
its own.

: #3. Given the huge delay between releases, I think it's safe to say the
: PovTeam is in need of more programmers.  And, let's face it, the author
: of Lightflow has, in a mere 5 years, single handedly implemented
: features (such as distributed rendering, an accessible api, and *real*
: radiosity) that the PovTeam can only dream about (no offense to the
: PovTeam intended; the entire Pov community appreciates their efforts).

  Perhaps no offense is intended here, but still this is a hit under the
belt. This is low.
  You are more or less directly saying, that the povteam is lazy and that
they don't know how to make programs fast enough, and that even one
lightflow programmer can do more in less time than a bunch of povray
programmers.
  Come on. This is insulting. You clearly don't know what you are talking
about.
  Your examples, for instance, are just... how could I say it... ridiculous
(the less insulting word that came to my mind).
  Let me examine them one by one:

  Distributed rendering: This has been discussed before. It has several
problems. One of them is that it can't be done in a portable way and it's
a lot platform specific. Why do you think lightflow is only available for
Linux and NT? What about other Unix users? What about Mac users? What about
OS/2 users? And so on... Would you like to see povray being a Linux/NT-only
program?
  If it could be possible to make distributed rendering easily and portable,
don't you think povray would have it already?

  Accessible api: You mention it as if it was laziness or incapacity that have
stopped the povteam from making a povray api. No, that's not the reason and you
should know it. Read the povray licence and the several articles about the
issue to see why there isn't a povray api.

  "Real" radiosity: This again. What the h*** is with this "real" radiosity?
There's no such a thing as "real" radiosity. All the algorithms for calculating
diffuse interreflection of light are only approximations, as any rendering
technique is.
  Ok, there's an algorithm called "radiosity" which uses a specific technique
for calculating the diffuse interreflection of light (of course only
approximating it), and one could talk about "real" radiosity if the program
uses this algorithm. But why this algorithm is better than stochastic
rendering in raytracing? Or other algorithms out there. What is it that
makes it more "real" than the other algorithms?
  In fact the bug-fixed and enhanced radiosity in megapov (and probably
pov3.5) does a pretty good job. I doubt that using the algorithm called
"radiosity" (which requires tesselation of objects) could do a visibly
better job. It might be a bit faster, but I don't think it would be
considerably faster. As a drawback you will get tesselated objects (which,
if not made with enough detail, can make straight-lined edges to objects and
consumes LOTS of memory if using lots of detail).

  So these are pretty bad examples. Sorry.

: Don't get me wrong, I like PovRay, but I sense a growing lack of
: interest amongst members of the PovTeam

  Please don't talk if you don't know a damn about it.

: Also, PovRay *needs* an accessible api

  No, it doesn't. Why it should?

: (I realize that this
: would be difficult to implement in a portable way)

  Thanks heaven.

: And, most importantly, there needs to be
: more interaction between the PovTeam and the Pov community.

  Have you been sleeping all this time? Check http://tag.povray.org

: Every 2 or
: 3 weeks, the PovTeam could report on the progress of the next release
: (is this too much to ask?).

  They have a good reason to not to do this. They have done it in the past
and got problems with it.
  The fact that you don't hear anything about the team doesn't mean they
are not working hard.

-- 
main(i,_){for(_?--i,main(i+2,"FhhQHFIJD|FQTITFN]zRFHhhTBFHhhTBFysdB"[i]
):5;i&&_>1;printf("%s",_-70?_&1?"[]":" ":(_=0,"\n")),_/=2);} /*- Warp -*/

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