"Greg Kennedy" <ken### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> The default POV-Ray camera setting for "right" is a 4:3 ratio, designed to match
> the default 4:3 output (for 4:3 screens) leading to a 1:1 pixel aspect ratio.
>
> A common stumbling block for new users is attempting to render a 16:9 image,
> which leads to non-square pixels and the output appearing horizontally
> stretched.  This means a search in the manual until you discover the magic words
> "right x*ImageWidth/ImageHeight" to produce the desired aspect ratio.
>
> The rationale for 4:3 default in the manual FAQ section is pretty thin these
> days, as people are not rendering Windows XP startup screens any more, and it
> seems FAR more likely that users will want a 1:1 PAR by default (which they can
> change if needed for special cases).
>
> I suggest for 4.0, that the default for camera Right be automatically set to the
> same ratio as the requested image output ratio, which means 16:9 resolutions
> will work "out of the box", and that users wanting an anamorphic ratio should
> instead tweak Right themselves (overriding the default).

I, and others completely understand these little things that drive new users
crazy - since we were all once new users, and sometimes get caught making newbie
mistakes even now.

The Insert menu is there to solve many of these problems, along with example
scenes, and scenes posted my users to the forum.   There kind of is a FAQ that
covers stuff like this - maybe it should be made more prominent, and maybe a
VERY simple new user guide should be written walking someone through the various
necessary and sufficient steps to writing a basic scene.

The paradox of all of this is that the more you hand them, the less they learn,
and the more disconnected they get from the HOWs and WHYs of everything - which
just winds up kicking the stumbling block further down the road.

The Shadertoy community has some amazing content, and they write ALL of the code
for ALL of the elements of their scenes from scratch.   Camera, lighting, the
functions for all of the shapes and colors - everything.

So, I would say that there ought to be a two-prong approach, one addressing the
quick and easy copy-paste to speed the creation of a working scene, but with the
proviso and caveat that the user should work through a more technical version of
the scene to gain an understanding of WHAT they are doing with the various
commands, arguments, and values, and WHY.

Mindlessly plopping text into a .pov file without understanding any of it is a
sure recipe for greater eventual frustration, when they want to start really
making nice looking scenes, and still don't for the life of them know HOW.


That's the just way of things, I guess..

- BW

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