In 2.56 I have an icosphere with a Hair Particle system, rendering a group of objects rather than strands.
However Blender’s display shows the particles slightly larger than they appear in the render. This makes it impossible to frame a ‘close-up’ on a particle.
Any ideas why they might appear a smaller size in the render?
You might have encountered the infamous off-by-1 error in coding.
It might be that the render takes the particle data from a prior frame… hence off-by-1.
Could you check if frame 2 of your animation matches your render image?
If so, it most certainly is a bug and you should file a report.
In the viewport the groupobjects are shown with a bigger scale. It is not the hair lenght, the viewport perfectly matches the render for them. I am almost cartain it is a bug.
If anyone else wants to take a look or play around, here´s the blend.
Thanks for testing it. I’ve gone back to using a regular emitter, using ‘no physics’ and dead particles (like the old days!). That doesn’t have the same problem. ‘No physics’ doesn’t seem to create any (visible) particles using a hair system.