Warp wrote:
> 
> 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.

I tried very hard to word my message in such a way that no-one would
take offense... I guess I failed.  I certainly wasn't trying to be rude
or impolite.
 
>   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.

Lightflow is only superior to PovRay in *certain areas* (those were my
exact words), and I didn't mean to suggest that the Lightflow example
images were the only proof of this.

>   Perhaps no offense is intended here, but still this is a hit under the
> belt. This is low.

No offense was intended and, looking back, perhaps I should have worded
it differently.

>   Come on. This is insulting. You clearly don't know what you are talking
> about.

Admittedly, my programming skills aren't exactly spectacular, but I'm
not an idiot either (on rare occassions, I *do* know what I'm talking
about;-).

>   Distributed rendering: This has been discussed before. It has several
> problems. 

Of coarse it has several problems, but it's not impossible.  Anytime you
download a file or fill out a registration form online, you are engaging
in *cross-platform networking through a well-defined protocol*.  The
well-defined protocol is key, but, imho, that would be the only
stumbling block.

>   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.

No offense, but this is one aspect of the PovRay license I do not like. 
But, I can't blame the PovTeam for protecting there interests.
 
>   "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.

Again, this was poor wording on my part.  I'm certain you know more
about radiosity than I do, and I'm not being sarcastic.  However, is the
PovRay radiosity view-independant?  Is it fast?  And, I personally think
that tesselation might be the answer (it could at least be an option for
the user, but I suppose 2 separate radiosity algorithms would be messy).

>   So these are pretty bad examples. Sorry.

It's not your fault;-)
 
>> PovRay *needs* an accessible api
>   No, it doesn't. Why it should?

Why should we be limited to using PovScript?  What if I want to use a
more powerful scripting lang, such as Python, or even something
proprietary?  With no api, I would have to write a translator, and
having to parse a scene twice would really slow things down (for complex
scenes).  Also, an api would be cleaner & faster for 3rd party
front-ends/modellers.
 
> : 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.

What problems (this must have been before I entered the PovRay scene). 
I'm sure these problems could be solved.

Hookflash

Post a reply to this message