How about a compromise regarding the recent debate:

The scene viewport (angle and aspect ratio) should be set within the 
SDL.  By some convenient coincidence, this is already the case, so no 
change to the SDL would be necessary in this regard.

If you want to render to non-square pixels, you must specify so in an 
INI file or via commandline parameter.  I'm sure better keywords could 
be found, but since I can't think of any we could just use:
Pixel_Squat = 0.5 // Pixels are half as tall as they are wide

Whenever you set either the width or the height of the image, POV checks 
your pixel aspect ratio (the Pixel_Squat value, which defaults to 1.0 
{square pixels}) and adjusts the other dimension accordingly to give an 
appropriately scaled image.

So, if you're rendering for a target where the pixels are half as high 
as they are wide, then you would specify the above Pixel_Squat = 0.5, 
and an 800x600 image would be rendered at 800x1200 to give the 
appropriate image.

This approach allows scene authors to control their scene aspect ratios, 
and scene consumers / perusers to easily scale images for their native 
displays.

Images won't necessarily fill your screen, but then neither do movies or 
TV shows (unless you get really lucky).  Live with it.

-- 
Chambers

Post a reply to this message