"swampie" <nomail@nomail> schreef in bericht 
news:web.45fff7343a09fa7d662071b70@news.povray.org...
>
> Lot's of better comments this time. The reason for a contest is it spurs
> actions that day to day " Hey, what if we did this?" evolution won't see
> the need for. In other words, the pressure of a contest brings out the 
> best
> and worst of a tool you are competing with.
Yes, I would agree with that, but we need to define better the term 
'contest' then. Is its primary purpose to systematically go to the utmost 
limits of the program? Personally, I don't think so. It might happen, sure, 
but it is not the reason for doing a contest in the first place, unless you 
want it to be part of an ongoing testing/developing scheme. However, that 
would not be really a contest anymore. And don't forget that POV-Ray already 
evolves from the many, many comments and requests generated in all these 
newsgroups. So, frankly, I continue playing the devil's advocate and see 
where this may lead.

> While I agree ( from an American
> viewpoint) that too much competition can be bad, even to the point of
> causing damage, I think POV is safe here. As for improvements being up to
> the POV Team, I'm sure they would appreciate the inputs that a competition
> would cause. After all look how good they've done so far!
Oh yes! I certainly agree with that.

> As for me
> starting my own contest, I'm afraid I'm a pauper. Usually the best 
> interest
> in a competition comes when a major player advertizer offers a major 
> prize.
Aah! The goodies! :-) Yes, that can be an incentive, I won't deny that. 
Shouldn't be an overruling reason, though :-)

> ( I'll bet that Johnny Yip of the 2004 competition hasn't thrown away that
> prize yet!)
Of course! and rightly so!
>
> Thanks to all,
And to you.

Thomas

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On Sat, 17 Mar 2007 22:50:34 EST, "swampie" <nomail@nomail> wrote:

>Comments Please?


Instead of having a contest, how about having a round of ping-pong?  One player
creates a basic scene, and then another player takes that scene and adds his/her twist
to it.  The scene then goes back
and forth between the players for a predefined number of rounds.  Each pass between
the players can be posted in povray.binaries.images and povray.binaries.scene-files so
that everyone can observe the
progress.

Perhaps instead of just two players, it could become a round-robin event among a group
of players.  It would have to be somehow decided ahead of time who will be in the
group and the order in which to
pass the scene.  We'd probably have to account for players missing their round and/or
provide a time limit in which to complete changes.

I think either one of these ideas would be fun.  It would likely have to be POV-Ray
only, since that would be the common software in use amongst us all.  There would be
no winners or losers, just a
fun way for different talents to collaborate on a common scene.

What do you think?



Kyle

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"Thomas de Groot" <t.d### [at] internlDOTnet> wrote:
> While I believe this is an interesting discussion overall, let me put here a
> blasphemous thought in this context: Why a contest or a competition? While I
> enjoy participating in a contest or two once in a while, I must say that
> they distract me also from the current rendering projects I am working on.
> That is why I love p.b.i. because you can show whatever you want to show and
> get response at the same time. I don't care very much about the contest
> spirit itself. Personally, I am much more interested in the evolution of
> concepts and styles people are showing us here.
>
> Thomas

I agree with this somewhat.  I have my own little pet projects that I work
on from time to time.  As for contests, I prefer challenge type contests to
outright contests (i.e., CGSphere, 3DRender lighting challenges
(http://3drender.com/challenges/index.htm), etc.)  occasionally people post
pseudo-challenges here, or will ask how to do something and unwittingly
provoke a spontaneous challenge from the community.  While prizes and glory
are nice, I much prefer seeing what people are able to come up with and
praise/criticism on what I come up with.
To me this all describes the nature of POV-Ray and the majority of the
community (IMO) and the spirit of POV-Ray as the "underdog" raytracer that
is capable of kicking the big boys butts in the right hands.

-tgq

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"Kyle" <hob### [at] gatenet> schreef in bericht 
news:589003dq1kbn9gjvq4834llibshptidukf@4ax.com...
>
> Instead of having a contest, how about having a round of ping-pong?  One 
> player creates a basic scene, and then another player takes that scene and 
> adds his/her twist to it.  The scene then goes back
> and forth between the players for a predefined number of rounds.  Each 
> pass between the players can be posted in povray.binaries.images and 
> povray.binaries.scene-files so that everyone can observe the
> progress.
>

A couple of years ago, some people did just that in this community, but it 
pettered out fairly rapidly as far as I can remember.

Thomas

Post a reply to this message

> You ask why? The last line of my post is why. I am for pushing POV-Ray to a
> higher level than what it is and right now it is the most impressive Free
> software that I know of in the world. The real question that comes back to you  >
guys is why not take POV to higher 
levels? I appreciate your comments but
> would > like some thinking on cranking> up POV.
>
A couple of points:
Pushing POV-ray to another level sounds great, but I'm just not sure HOW a
competition would achieve this end.  Using every advanced feature in POV
just to see how much it can take is no guarantee of a breath-taking scene.

> I would like for it to become a
> standard educational tool for math, art and design, the world over.

Do you have kids at school or know any teachers that might enjoy using POV?
Tell them about it or offer to give a class at a local high-school.

Now, while we're on the subject of competitions, does anybody know what's
happened to the IRTC, beyond their notice of being "ON HIATUS" ?

And as for the Linux/Windows dichotomy ;) I use both and am quite
comfortable with both command line (how I learned to program in C) and
Fully-fledged visual tools such as Visual Studio

Post a reply to this message

"Thomas de Groot" <t.d### [at] internlDOTnet> wrote in message 
news:4600ede4@news.povray.org...
>
> "Kyle" <hob### [at] gatenet> schreef in bericht 
> news:589003dq1kbn9gjvq4834llibshptidukf@4ax.com...
>>
>> Instead of having a contest, how about having a round of ping-pong?  One 
>> player creates a basic scene, and then another player takes that scene 
>> and adds his/her twist to it.  The scene then goes back
>> and forth between the players for a predefined number of rounds.  Each 
>> pass between the players can be posted in povray.binaries.images and 
>> povray.binaries.scene-files so that everyone can observe the
>> progress.
>>
>
> A couple of years ago, some people did just that in this community, but it 
> pettered out fairly rapidly as far as I can remember.
>

This?
http://hof.povray.org/capriccio.html
It was a group project, but not quite "ping-pong" like Kyle described.

Kyle has an interesting idea, imho.  It could be similar to my "Give me 
seven sentences" idea that I posted in p.o-t a few weeks ago.  In other 
words, one person posts a seed, and then others take it and add to it, with 
the possibility creating multiple branches.  In that way, no one is ever 
held to any sort of responsibility.  You can either add to it or not.  It 
certainly wouldn't be a contest, but the results may be interesting, and 
depending on who joins-in, it could be a learning experience for a lot of 
us.

Post a reply to this message

On Wed, 21 Mar 2007 09:33:40 +0100, "Thomas de Groot" <t.d### [at] internlDOTnet>
wrote:

>A couple of years ago, some people did just that in this community, but it 
>pettered out fairly rapidly as far as I can remember.

I remember that from back when I first started out with POV-Ray, but I couldn't find
the posts anywhere when I was searching yesterday.  It seems that google does not
crawl the povray.binaries.image
news group.  A little more digging and I've found the series that I was looking for,
possibly the same one you are referring to...

http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/thread/%3C427baf44%40news.povray.org%3E/?ttop=240090&toff=1450

I guess it was called POV-Pong back then.  Too bad that thread didn't continue.  It
looked like it was going to be good.

We should definitely organize something similar.  Jeremy's addition to the idea sounds
promising as well.



Kyle

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"Kyle" <hob### [at] gatenet> wrote in message 
news:oms203pnr1q3er2kca39u0fj1mp5tur6hm@4ax.com...

> Too bad that thread didn't continue.  It looked like it was going to be 
> good.

    Yeah, looks like Loki hasn't had a free evening for some time now. Poor, 
hard-worked guy...  ;)

     ~Steve~



> Kyle
>

Post a reply to this message

I like the "round-robin" variation of the ping-pong idea.  I don't see why
it would need to be "instead of" a contest.  It could just be one more
interesting event for anyone who wanted to participate. The trick would be
to keep the organization simple and get started soon.  If nobody else
starts a round by Sunday, 03/25/07 12:00 GMT, I will.  If anyone else would
like to go first, feel free.  My whole thrust with respect to the "IRTC in
Limbo" issue is: more image making and friendly exchange; less
territorialism, debating, finger-pointing and recrimination.  3D-RTC/TINA
CheP is good because it is actually happening and people can enjoy it.
Round Robin Creative POV will be good for exactly the same reason.  It's
true enough that any undertaking in which numerous people are going to
participate will need some ground rules and an organizer or two to make
decisions, but IMHO the IRTC proper sometimes went WAY overboard in this
regard.  Adding judging and prizes to a participatory event should ADD to
the enjoyment, not DETRACT from it.  This is supposed to be FUN for crying
out loud!  If anyone who doesn't want to actually start a round-robin event
would like to toss out suggestions on how to improve one (without making it
more complicated), I'll watch this thread and accommodate the wishes of
prospective players as far as reason and circumstances will allow. For the
sake of brevity, I'll respond to suggestions collectively on
03/25 (should I be the one to start a round) rather than responding
individually. My thanks go out to the many people who are making positive
contributions to keeping the "social ray-tracing" phenomenon alive.

Best Regards,
Mike C.

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Hey, here's an idea for the topic!

http://news.povray.org/povray.text.scene-files/thread/%3Cweb.45ff13a5e7f00d1334d207310%40news.povray.org%3E/

Just pick a date in the future and plug in the Dow Jones Industrial Average
(to two decimal places) in that file, and render!



"Mike the Elder" <zer### [at] wyanorg> wrote:
> I like the "round-robin" variation of the ping-pong idea.  I don't see why
> it would need to be "instead of" a contest.  It could just be one more
> interesting event for anyone who wanted to participate. The trick would be
> to keep the organization simple and get started soon.  If nobody else
> starts a round by Sunday, 03/25/07 12:00 GMT, I will.  If anyone else would
> like to go first, feel free.  My whole thrust with respect to the "IRTC in
> Limbo" issue is: more image making and friendly exchange; less
> territorialism, debating, finger-pointing and recrimination.  3D-RTC/TINA
> CheP is good because it is actually happening and people can enjoy it.
> Round Robin Creative POV will be good for exactly the same reason.  It's
> true enough that any undertaking in which numerous people are going to
> participate will need some ground rules and an organizer or two to make
> decisions, but IMHO the IRTC proper sometimes went WAY overboard in this
> regard.  Adding judging and prizes to a participatory event should ADD to
> the enjoyment, not DETRACT from it.  This is supposed to be FUN for crying
> out loud!  If anyone who doesn't want to actually start a round-robin event
> would like to toss out suggestions on how to improve one (without making it
> more complicated), I'll watch this thread and accommodate the wishes of
> prospective players as far as reason and circumstances will allow. For the
> sake of brevity, I'll respond to suggestions collectively on
> 03/25 (should I be the one to start a round) rather than responding
> individually. My thanks go out to the many people who are making positive
> contributions to keeping the "social ray-tracing" phenomenon alive.
>
> Best Regards,
> Mike C.

Post a reply to this message