i thought my original post about a month ago had the description of what
"everyone" thinks should be the result of a cylindrical camera.  i'll
state it again here.  actually, i think there should be tow cylindrical
cameras.

#1.  take for example your line of sight right now.  close one eye. 
imagine a line that runs from as low as you can see, through the center
of your vision, up to as high as you can see.  this line should be
definable in 3d space.  next, imagine a vector coming straight out your
eye in the direction of main interest.  this vector should go in the
direction vector of the camera.  now think about your field of view left
to right.  this should go in the angle of the camera.  rays are shot
outward, perpedicular to the line at all times.  of course, the line
should be definable to any length, the direction any vector, and the
angle from nearly zero, all the way to 360 degrees.

#2  my dream cylindrical camera would actually be a cylinder (in the
previous example, a line is a cylinder with infinitely small radius)
that would wrap outside the subject to be rendered and would shoot rays
inward or outward as set by the user.  rays would stop at the opposite
side of the cylinder in order to exclude subjects outside the radius if
shot inward.  in this camera, the center axis would be defined in the
same way as the line in example one.  the radius would be definable as
well.  rays for this camera would be shot perpedicular to its interior
surface if shot inward, and the exterior surface if shot outward.

any thoughts?

Nathan Kopp wrote:
> 
> "Peter J. Holzer" <hjp### [at] SiKituwsracat> wrote...
> > If you just want the same behaviour as in povray 3.1g, remove the whole
> > normalization stuff. I don't see any problems with that.
> 
> You see, this is where the problem comes in.  What behavior is deisred?  It
> seems that many people have different opinions as the the answer to that
> question.
> 
> Hopefully we can all come to an agreement.  Maybe someone should take a shot
> at describing the final behavior of the cylinder camera (how they think it
> should work) from the user's perspective (i.e. NOT using any code or math
> formulas in the description).  If everyone agrees with that, then maybe we
> can finally make this thing work "correctly."
> 
> -Nathan

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