On 8-11-2016 0:33, [GDS|Enropy] wrote:
> My apologies man, I didn't know the posts were going here as my reader (iOS
> NewsTap) was not subbed to this group, I intended no disrespect. :)

Ah! so my initiative was not useless after all! My instinct proved me 
true. :-)

>
> Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
>> Why is our community in trouble? It seems to me that over the last
>> couple of years at least there has been quite a lot of activity by our
>> respected POV-Ray developers.
>>
>
> Beyond the google trends result that the searches for pov have decreased
> 100x since 2004, I am considering the volume of posts, new/extant pages
> about pov or with pov content, places I see Pov mentioned around the web,
> etc compared to the same from around lets say, 1994-1998 or so.
>
> There were once numerous Pov webrings, many new folks coming through all
> the time, loads of IRC activity, all kinds of unofficial patches,
> specifically pov supporting shareware...substantially all of that
> has...ebbed. :'-(
>
> Us old guys and the badasses writing the code are all that is left it
> seems. I have seen a lot go away over the last twenty something years.

Yes, and yes, and yes indeed. I find it truly sad and cannot explain all 
of it (see below for some thoughts about that). Partly it seems, people 
got just bored with POV-Ray when they had played extensively with it, 
and then just discarded the old toy for the next new shiny excitement of 
the day.

Talking of the IRTC, you know about the TC-RTC which replaced it? 
http://www.tc-rtc.co.uk/index/index.html and the discussions/news are 
also on irtc.general news group here. We certainly do not have a very 
large audience and participation but we struggle on...

>
>>
>> Maybe...
>>
>
> Anything that we can do which would drive more people to use Pov I am down
> for, and I think that will be achieved through having certain (I don't have
> a list) features combined with the quality of render, speed and one of the
> most important things....having plugins for commonly used modeling packages
> that interop with PovRay.
>
> Getting textures from app A to render in pov...thats one hellova sticky
> bit. Interop is a big, difficult thing, but ultimately you see that the
> fastest growing renderers grow precisely because of the properties I listed
> above.
>
> If I am missing anything let me know.
>
>>
>> There has been a drop of activity, mainly on the users side, with the
>> old guard turning away to other activities for instance but maybe also
>> because of age. Maybe that was due to the state-of-the-art of POV-Ray,
>> maybe not; I seem to remember some discussion about this in the past.
>> However, there has also been some new additions to the community, and I
>> think that - coming out of the "experimental" (?) stage - images have
>> become more complex/involved and/or needing more time and thought to be
>> composed. It certainly has evolved for me like that. And talking of age,
>> my own POV-Ray production is slowly dwindling over the years and that is
>> largely due to those same years accumulating on my shoulders. At
>> seventy, I am not as productive any more as I was twenty years ago.
>>
>
> I am merely 35 (for the next few weeks lol), but I look back fondly on my
> time with this community. Pov has a place, and as long as we can
> strategically select and implement certain things that we know directly
> influence render package adoption, as evidenced by many out there, Pov will
> live.

I certainly agree with that with all my heart.

>
> Pov was formed under a different precept that governs recent packages,
> primarily this has been discussed above already but put simply it comes
> down to speed, quality and interoperability.

I think this is the Achilles heel of POV-Ray when all, I repeat: all, 
the attention nowadays goes to game development with increasing realism 
(and speed).

>
> Pov largely has the quality, it can have the speed, and it needs the
> interoperability. It has a feature set that is just awesome, and if we can
> get the speed and interop part down, and get the word out, I think we will
> be golden.
>
>>
>> Again, I am not convinced personally that POV-Ray "slowly withers" but I
>> would like to hear other opinions on that.
>>
>
> If you do not think so, go to Google trends, type in pov-ray, select from
> 2004 until today.
>
> Its dire, man, dire.
>
> It has decreased 100x.

That is indeed quite true in the world at large; I was thinking about 
the - admittedly small - POV-Ray community. It would be worthwhile to 
dig up the discussions there have been upon this topic some years ago, 
when this was mentioned too. I don't remember exactly what was mentioned 
as causes for this but I think there was complains about "slowness", 
"involved/difficult/old-fashioned script programming", "ray-tracing not 
fashionable any more compared to other modelling developments", "useless 
for game development", and more such. They are probably still true for a 
large part of the modelling world. POV-Ray is for aficionados, the 
elite! :-)

>
>> To me it has opened several artistic doors as it gave me the possibility
>> to express almost perfectly what I dream about.
>>
>
> The worlds you make are pretty dang cool man. :)

Thanks indeed, Ian, much appreciated. The maker of SnowIce is well 
remembered by me ;-)


-- 
Thomas

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