Lots of good discussion in this thread. We are certainly reading all of this and taking all feedback into account.
Regarding the cost of the current TG2 pre-purchase options, the fact that "TG1" was never released, etc. - these are perfectly valid and important concerns. There are many things in the history of TG and Planetside as a company that have created problems in making consistent releases, contributed to delays in development, etc. I have only been working with Planetside for a few months now but I've been involved with TG's development for years from the outside, and have been following TG almost since the beginning. I'll admit I have a pretty biased perspective as an employee, but I honestly think we are in a better place than ever before to create a quality finished product in a reasonable amount of time.
We have also comitted to a 2007 release for the final Terragen 2 product. This means that when you buy one of the pre-purchase options now, you will get a free update to the final release equivalent of your purchased product (TG2 Deep or Deep + Animation) when it is released in 2007. Whether you feel confident making that kind of purchase now based on the release date promise is entirely up to you.
There is no doubt that Planetside's long-term history is spotty at best when it comes to release dates. However we set a date for the Technology Preview and we met that date. There are issues in the current release that we are aware of, some of them serious enough that we are comitted to fixing them and releasing an update to the free Technology Preview. We are showing that we can execute on our promises and we will continue to do so through to the 2007 final release.
We do not expect everyone to buy in the pre-purchase period, of course. Those that do will save money in the long-term and will have more frequent access to development updates leading up to the final release (as compared to the free Technology Preview releases), as well as being able to use TG2 commercially in the meantime. The cost-savings is an acknowledgement that purchasing at this time requires faith in Planetside and we of course want to reward our early adopters and supporters.
When TG2 is finalized it will be even more capable than it is now, it will be much more stable and better able to interoperate with other applications. These factors combined will make it a competitive professional-level product and if you consider the prices of other such products in the market, it makes sense that we would not be sticking to $200-300 for the full version.
Whether you purchase now at the reduced price, counting on our release date promise, or wait to ensure that we will meet it and purchase at the higher price is a personal decision. We appreciate the early support, but we recognize that the Technology Preview is not a full enough demonstration of product delivery and quality for many people to buy at this time.
I am confident that we have overcome past issues and will be able to continue delivering product releases and updates on time. We will continue to only make firm release date promises only when we are as certain as possible that we can make them and so we will not be able to release a specific date in 2007 until a later time.
Regarding the issues with the 3D preview and the lack of a true replacement for the top-down terrain view in TG 0.9: Some have already mentioned the difficulties in providing such a top-down view and making it effective in a planetary context such as that which TG2 uses. This is definitely a significant issue, and there are others also involved such as the computation time of displacement-based terrains. We will definitely be investing time in improving the options available for placement and adjustment of cameras, objects, terrains, etc.
Finally, on the subject of the Function Nodes and seeing the "insides" of the higher-level shaders: Although it's true that the higher-level shaders are essentially built using low-level functions, they are not created directly this way and so they can't be directly viewed in this way. The basic building-blocks may be largely the same, but the actual construction and connection process happens at an even lower level which I don't think we presently provide a visualization for in TG2. It may be possible in the future to allow an inside view and adjustment of these things; that remains to be seen.
We do hope to implement a macro-type system (similar to World Machine) that would allow anyone to create a sort of higher-level shader with its own set of controls which then hook into internal nodes and settings in potentially complex and interesting ways. Thus sophisticated shader writers could create simplified controls for average users and distribute their macros/shaders for others to use if they so desire. This is also similar to some functionaly MojoWorld provides, I believe. Given an expansion of the Function Nodes and other controls (graph-based shader controls, etc.), this very well might provide the functionality that is hoped for.
As far as the Function Node documentation goes I will be honest, as the primary documentation writer I unfortunately don't have much of a clue how each node works.
The connection of nodes is a straightforward thing, it works exactly like the rest of the network. So documenting that specifically is obviously not necessary. What you seem to be talking about is something like the current Node Reference, but of course including the Function Nodes. We do intend to document the function nodes and all other nodes over time. These will all be available in the node reference. But of course it takes time to do this. There are 100's of nodes overall, including the function nodes, and each has potentially 10 or more settings of its own. We would welcome any serious contributors to the node reference. If anyone is interested in and feels qualified to contribute to this reference please contact me privately.
I have to say that I have been extremely impressed and pleased by the amount of information that has come out of the community in the short time since release. In less than 2 weeks we already have multiple tutorials, image-based setting references, and over 1000 posts in discussion on the forums here in about a week of being open. We certainly will continue to take responsibility for full baseline documentation of TG2, but I think ultimately the knowledge gained here through experimentation and sharing will be at least as valuable. Just having seen so many things already that are beyond what I had seen achieved in the prior test cycle, I am convinced that there is not much new that I could tell many of you.
- Oshyan
