How Camp wrote:
> I've been monitoring the POV-Ray newsgroups for nearly a decade, and I've seen a
> number of prolific users come and go.  I'm curious what software POV-Ray users
> tend to migrate toward after they 'move on'.  Do most convert to high-end
> render packages (I think H.E. Day did this), or is there another open-source
> package that eventually steals away the POV community?
> 
> I wonder if such users 'outgrow' POV-Ray as an artistic tool, or whether they're
> mostly casualties of 'lack of time' syndrome (as I perpetually seem to be).
> 
> (Not that I'm advocating such an evolution.  I've heard you can catch the H1N1
> flu if you don't use POV-Ray regularly...)
> 
> 

I think we can do little more than speculate on this.  Gilles Tran was, 
at the time, fairly open and specific about why he moved to another 
software.  He is a particularily 'pure' example in that his interests 
and goals as an avowed amateur artist remained fairly consistent, but he 
needed to explore a new approach. To the best of my recollection, he 
said, in effect, that the POV 'process' that he, as much as anyone, had 
embraced, had become as much a hindrance as a 'calling.' And that 
certain limitations were standing in his way.  He is an exploring kind 
of guy.  For other stars I suspect the picture had less purely to do 
with software and would have been complicated at least as much by rl 
considerations.

Myself, I still embrace Gilles' amateur-artist ideology.  When I first 
started working with POV I was excited and inspired by the POV creative 
process and the sense of exploration and discovery toward achieving 
professional results in free space.  I doubted I could ever catch the 
superstars, but I thought I might close the gap.  It is still thrilling 
to me to see POV attract some astonishing new talents, and to see the 
spirit of exploration in free space continue.  But the gap has widened. 
  The 'friction point' for innovation seems well out of my reach at this 
point. I undersand little of the innovations that excite the top talents 
now. But I still plod along. I still think it is a meaningful endeavor.

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