On 25-5-2013 0:10, waggy wrote:
> Shay wrote:
>> Many members of the POV community have a fascination and familiarity with
>> Beginnings. They understand and are able to discuss nascent ideas and basic

>> appreciated because the path from Beginning to End cannot be seen. To each his
>> own, but obviously this short-attention-span focus has a hard time maintaining a
>> community.
>
> This is a fascinating observation.
>
> I had some experience with something like this regarding the f_mandelbulb
> function I posted several years ago. There was some good discussion about
> implementation (Beginnings), but almost no feedback from users. For all I know,
> no one but me has ever used either the SDL include file or the source code
> patches I posted. Although I have implemented some other weird variations
> (quaternion and bicomplex versions) for my own amusement, I haven't bothered to
> post them for the apparent lack of interest. But back to the topic at hand.

I wonder if it is lack of interest at all. I am almost sure it isn't. 
The point about users is that available code like yours must then 'fit' 
into a scene a user might build. It is not enough to play around with 
it, as enjoyable that could be otherwise. I have this same experience 
with the code I posted in the past (the cobblestones macro, or the very 
complex isosurface landscape macros). As far as I can tell, I may be the 
only one to use them :-) Inversely, I have a huge pool of code from 
others. Some I use regularly; some, once in a while; some, never. It all 
depends on the project under way.

>
> Here's why I have never entered any of the ray tracing competitions, ,snip> But, the
fact that I won't
> complete it in time becomes obvious a week or two before the deadline, so I
> abandon the project, often before having something suitable even for posting as
> a work in progress.

I can very well understand this indeed.

>
> Perhaps extending the competition period will help. It's hard to say at this
> point. The current topic has proven to be particularly difficult for me to come
> up with a suitable idea.

Well, the current topic runs until mid August, so why not have try? I am 
sure your mandelbulb code could be used for that for instance.

Thomas

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