Talk:POV-Ray

Most of this talk page needs to be archived. Discussion about if POV was open or otherwise has been resolved by the November 6th release Of POV 3.7 under the AGPLv3. I've no idea how to archive this and am wary of falling into the http://xkcd.com/386/ trap. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.212.29.89 (talk) 11:20, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

If the source is freely available, and there are codeforks, how is not open source? Perhaps it should read "The software is open source under the terms of the POV-Ray license"? --cprompt

Probably because the POV-Ray License says it is not open source. Don't want to get into legal entanglements :) In short they say it is not open source because when it was first developed, it was done so under a non-OSS license (since the GPL was virtually unheard of at the time), and it would be unfair to those who contributed to the code to go changing the license now. -- Wapcaplet

Fair enough.

--cprompt

Some remarks:

"A Turing-complete C-like scene description language ..."

POV SDL is not C-like. It has nothing of the typical C-like features. The syntax of for example #while and #if conditionals is quite different. And don't be fooled by the #include statement, it has nothing to do with a pre-processeor. I would just leave out the "C-like" in the quoted line.

On at least two occasions POV-Ray is referred to a modeller. Although with the addition of macros, functions and loops it has gained better tools for making models, POV-Ray is still "only" a render engine. This may be also be the cause of some errors in the 'primitive' chapter

Regarding the last paragraph of the primitive section. " The primitive system in POV-Ray also has a number of weaknesses. For example, objects which cannot be accurately described by the geometric primitives present in POV-Ray must be approximated using a mesh of polygons."

If it couldn't handle the triangle primitive or the mesh object, one couldn't make these objects at all. So I don't see the availability of mesh as a weakness.

" POV-Ray is not as well-equipped as some other rendering software to handle complex objects with many polygons."

Actually it is a lot better at that than many other rendering tools. One can declare a mesh once and then instantiate it many times without using much more memory. The meshes used can be as big as the amount of RAM in a machine permits.

" "Bending" of objects in POV-Ray cannot be done without resorting to exotic techniques, such as tesselation"

Bending is not a rendering but a modelling feature (altough it could be done with curved light rays). Yet some objects are 'bendable', like isosurfaces, bicubic_patches but it takes some heavy scripting.

I'd just leave out this whole paragraph.

Well, the SDL resembles C. Someone familiar with reading C code would have little trouble interpreting POV-Ray SDL. Feel free to take it out, or rephrase it.

I don't see where POV-Ray is actually called a modeller. Modelling is mentioned in the context of CSG; POV-Ray is compared with "other modelling software", which could probably be better explained; you're right in pointing out that there is often some confusion about the difference between a modeller and a renderer. Believe it or not, I had a university professor, whose specialization was computer graphics, who did not grasp this distinction; he said on several occasions that the three kinds of "modelling" were "polygonal, raytracing, and radiosity." I took an entire graphics course from this guy :-)

Anyway, I agree with many of the points you make here. That whole section is pretty vague and could use some clarification; please feel free to rewrite it!

-- Wapcaplet 19:31, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)

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Is it proper to signify all the trademarks in this article with "tm" ? Wikipedia doesn't seem to have a policy on this, but from what I understood of the Trademark article, "tm" is primarily supposed to appear in material produced by the trademark owner. It doesn't seem proper for an encyclopedia. I haven't removed the "tm"s (not wanting to start an edit war ;-) but I believe they should go.--Ejrh

I agree, I was never really comfortable with having them in there either. -- Wapcaplet 16:14, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC)

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Ok... I can't resist.... shouldn't this article be banned for inherrantly not being NPOV? Running away fast..... - UtherSRG 16:25, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC)

This sounds like a weapon that destroys otherwise well-written Wikipedia articles =D Ed Cormany

I agree. I think we should move this article to NPOV-Ray immediately. -- Wapcaplet 18:14, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

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I'm not sure why there's so much confusion about the licensing of POV-Ray. Why does it have to be connected to the GPL in any way? I think instead of making such unclear statements in the article as "While the programs source is in the open, it cannot be redistributed(?)" (complete with question mark), or "not sure if that means GPL or not...", it'd be better to leave them out entirely. POV-Ray is licensed under the POV-Ray License. Nuff said. Leave it to the articles on open source and free software to explain the nuances. I don't fully understand the POV-Ray license myself, but we shouldn't try to explain it if we don't understand it :-) -- Wapcaplet 22:08, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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Even the POVray folks themselves say it's not Open Source - the legal document attached with the release has a section entitled "WHY ISN'T POV-RAY OPEN SOURCE ?" and goes on to say "While the POV-Ray™ source code is freely available, it isn't 'open' according to the currently popular definition of the term (meaning that it isn't available to create derivative works).". So User: Paullusmagnus' restoration of the "not open source" sentence was correct. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 13:10, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I am not really comfortable with the sentence "POV-Ray is freeware, and although the source code is available for modification, it is not considered open source by most people." There's not really any room for opinion on the issue; POV-Ray is not open source. The authors of the software and its license say it is not, and they are the only authority on the issue. The reference given for the sentence in question is taken straight from the POV-Ray license. I am changing the sentence to reflect this. If we must relate the license to open source in some way, we should at least be clear on matters of fact. -- Wapcaplet 01:15, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

On further reflection, using the definition "open source software is any software whose source is available", POV-Ray could be considered open source. The POV-Ray License is not, however, an open-source license. -- Wapcaplet 01:20, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The term "open source", as applied to software, was invented by Christine Peterson in 1998, and popularized by the Open Source Initiative in the ensuing years, as a substitute for the term "free software", to refer to software whose users have a specific set of freedoms, including the freedom to create derived works; in the few weeks after the term was invented, they edited the Debian Free Software Guidelines slightly to create the Open Source Definition. The term has been consistently used by a broad open-source community during the eight years since then to refer to specifically the meaning defined in the OSD. Please don't spread confusion by inventing your own subtly-different definitions for the term, such as "any software whose source is available". It would be great if POV-Ray were open source, and maybe some day it will be, but neither the open-source community nor the POV-Ray team is currently trying to confuse the issue by claiming that POV-Ray is open-source. Kragen Sitaker 19:03, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

using the definition "open source software is any software whose source is available", Windows could be considered open source. http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/licensing/default.mspx --anon 01:27, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

According to that page, Microsoft source is available to participants in the programs listed. Povray source is available to all. —Tamfang 06:24, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

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Would be nice to show some samples of photo-realistic work on this page. There are some great ones out there, and the photo-realistic stuff is what wow's people the most if they are new to raytracing. 62.253.128.12 19:43, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

I just added a such a picture to the page --Gilles Tran 15:52, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Gilles Tran, the POV-Ray legend. :) 213.88.236.193 (talk) 13:56, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Friday; February 8, 2008, http://www.wikipov.org/ The POV-Ray OpenWik is down —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mattclare (talk • contribs) 14:16, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I thought it quite ironically amusing that an article about POV-Ray should have so much "POV" in it! I just cleaned out a lot of the blatant unbalanced praise that was in there (including of my favourite POV-er of all time, so I'm not being mean) but I'm still not sure if the current state is appropriate. WP:NOT a repository of links; so what criteria makes an artist notable enough to appear on here? Maybe artists featured on the POV-Ray hall of fame? Perhaps even no artists at all, and focus on links to artist directories. I don't know at the moment... comments? BigBlueFish 19:22, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Keep all external links. I'm not going to make a long-winded argument in support; just in general, for any piece of software, I want to see the longest list of external links. Biased or whatever, I don't care -- I'll make my judgements when I get there. At minimum, move all links rm from article to a list. John Reid 21:47, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

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Being the author, owner and representer of the web page, as well as the software, of HTTPov, I cannot add it to the External links section as another distributed rendering system. However, I feel it does fill a void left by POV-Anywhere, linked from there, as it is able to communicate via HTTP. One thing I can do, though, is to casually drop the link http://columbiegg.com/httpov/ in the vicinity of some neutral and independent Wikipedia editors, and see what they think of it. After all, Wikipedia was one of my very first stops when I searched for such a system a year ago. Tamarinen (talk) 14:13, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

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Per Wikipedia WP:EL I'm going to remove most of the links here, Wikipedia is not a directory.

• Offical: The links are extraneuos because they can be gotton to from the main pov site.
• Other POV-Ray resources: keep the dmoz link, everything else must go fourms(usenet) are not good and people can use google to find pov objects
• Collective galleries and competitions: everything goes, if contestss are notable put them in the article
• Notable POV-Ray artists: same as above, shuold wikilink if notable
• Unofficial patches an the rest: wp not directory for patches, add-ons, if they are notable maybe they can be put in a seprate artice like List of POV-Ray Add-Ons.

Thats it, this is a couple years old so i'm going to make the changes now. →(_Speak•^MorgothX•_Havoc) 06:59, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

"POV-Ray was the first ray tracer to render an image in orbit, rendered by Mark Shuttleworth inside the International Space Station.[3]"

C'mon, surely this is not in the slightest bit noteworthy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.40.46.110 (talk) 15:59, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

It was a big deal at the time. I recall they had to make a special version to prevent heat buildup on the laptop. Anyway, the article about it is here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tachoknight (talk • contribs) 19:08, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

The category states POV-Ray is Freeware, however, since 3.7 the license has changed to the open source AGPL 3. I suppose the category can be changed to something like "free sofware"? I don't know the category, so please have a look and make the edit! Smile4ever (talk) 19:01, 1 January 2014 (UTC)