Is this an exception to "show what you have tried"?

Question

We can see that the community agrees that questions should show what you have tried, and I'm glad about this. However, this question asks for ways to model a situation that is never seen in everyday life. In this case "realism" is difficult to judge because the observer will have no way of knowing if the result is what would really be seen in such a setting.

From the question:

I'm looking for realism in order to discover unexpected effects, not just to pass as realistic to a casual observer. Obviously most observers (including me) won't know the effects to look for since they aren't familiar from everyday life, so I'm looking for "reasonably physically correct" rather than just "convincing".

Is this enough of a reason to justify making an exception to "show what you have tried"? Is there another way in which prior effort could be demonstrated, without knowledge of the correct outcome?

How should we deal with questions like this?

Answer 1

"Is this enough of a reason to justify making an exception to "show what you have tried"? "

Yes.
I think probably the lack of screenshots (or other results) in the question you refer to is due to the lack of a working implementation that the asker would have achieved.

Sometimes, you might have very few clues about how to solve a problem in a domain you are not familiar with. Then, there is not much to try except gathering information in the domain. cg.se is also a place for that purpose.
Problem solving is a continuous process, that generates many questions. The problem that the asker is trying to solve looks still "fresh" to them, but nevertheless already interesting.
As community members, why would we have to wait for more results before we can attempt to help and propose solutions to that problem too ?

The "show what you have tried" rule sounds to me like a way to ensure that the asker has provided sufficient personal effort before deciding to submit a question to cg.se. In the question you referred to, the clarity and details of the explanations of the problem show that the asker has spent some time thinking and analyzing their problem.

More generally, I don't think the rules to accept questions should be as rigid as to not being able to bear some exceptions.

"Is there another way in which prior effort could be demonstrated, without knowledge of the correct outcome?"

Of course, if the asker has already some working implementation of their own, they should provide details about their approach and results.

"How should we deal with questions like this?"

As it currently is, the question seemed to me interesting enough and of quality enough to be accepted in cg.se.