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I welcome feedback on backdrops
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Your post didn't strike me as "over the line"... And I tend to be sensitive to (and opposed to) the 'advertising in the forums' thing... Now if you come and start answering 20 posts a day, always finding a way to work in a plug for your store, then that would be a different story. There's a guy here who does exactly that for the DCC system he distributes, and I find it very annoying and it actually ensures I would never buy from him. <br /> <br />In general, I like the product, and am in the market for a backdrop, so I've done a lot of looking around. In many ways, I find your stuff very compelling. The pricing is good, and the ability to handle long runs, both by having long scenes to start with, and making some of them repeatable is a BIG plus. I also agree that sky isn't a big thing. I will be 'snipping' the sky out of any backdrop I buy, as my backdrop is already painted with sky... <br /> <br />The site could use some tweaking, as noted above (specs, installation notes, FAQ), but it's already more usable than a couple other notable backdrop vendors... <br /> <br />Now the bad news: The height issue is, quite simply, a deal breaker for me. 7.5" is just not tall enough (and the 13" ones, I understand, are just more sky which is the same thing). I think the missing element in your logic as you respond to that issue is that we're talking about creating a 3-D illusion in a 2-D plane... <br /> <br />Example. If we consider my office window to be a backdrop, the road that runs in front of our building is probably 100' away from the window. Now if I'm sitting in my chair about 2' from the window and look out at the road, the road appears to be 3.5 inches "above" the bottom edge of that window... Though I know in reality the area is totally flat and that road is about 5 feet below the level of my window in physical reality. <br /> <br />The mature maple tree the other side of the road and a little further down (call it 200 feet away) _appears_ to rise 10" from the bottom of my window, and in fact the base of the tree (the "horizon line at that point) only starts at about 4" above the base of the window. <br /> <br />The horizon line (i.e ground level from which everything rises up) is about 6" from the bottom of my window where I can see the furthest away on flat ground (maybe 1/4 mile). In other words, hills, trees, buildings, etc. at that distance don't even _start_ until 6" from the 2-D "bottom" of our "backdrop"... <br /> <br />Bottom line: If you had 24" backdrops, with the relevant proportion of scenery (i.e. not just an 8" scene with 16" of sky above it), I'd probably be inking an order! I've been looking for the right backdrop for a long time, and you've got everything right but the height... <br /> <br />I'd guess that I'd need at least 12-14" of scenery (from foreground where it 'joins' my scenery to top of scenic elements, excluding sky) to work with for it to look right. Consider that my track and "real" scenery are rising and falling while the "horizon line" would not. So with your current height, if my track is at 'ground' level, your scenery is up to maybe 6" above it. But if my track rises to 6" or higher (as it certainly does), it's now "so high" that there's no horizon or view behind it? Or, I have to cut and raise part of the backdrop, creating a very 'fake' looking change in the horizon line. <br /> <br />I understand your reasoning on the height issue, I'm just saying as a potential customer, no amount of rationalization will change the fact that it won't work for me. There's a reason most HO backdrops are a) in the 24" high range and b) ~66-75% of height is scenery versus sky.
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