So, as we stare into the fading embers of a dying year, I had a chance to go browsing through the old Planetside website (circa 2006) and get all nostalgic like I do this time of year. I noticed / remembered a few things from when I started down this landscape generating path.
Firstly, that nearly every single promise was delivered by Planetside from all the features they wanted to include and said they would include at some point save 1 or 2.. Most notably, the ability to create waterfalls and do subsurface scattering. Not that I lament the non existence of such features. I haven't had a need to include either in my scenes as yet and if I did, I'd likely be able to find a suitable workaround. Nor do I have any illusion of the complexity that would be included in order to implement these features, considering all the others that have been implemented so far (and considerably more important).
And secondly, I noticed back then, there was a road map for where we were all heading. We all sort of knew what the future held and features the development team was working on. This is something that seems to be lacking now. Or is this just the difference between being established and being a start-up?
So, I guess my question is: What's in store for the future of Terragen? It's already great at what it does. More stability and minor updates / bug fixes? Will it move in the direction of being an all-purpose 3D program? Is PS keeping things close to the vest to remain competitive? Is so, let me know, and I'll never mention it again. But also, it might be a good time for others to kind of pitch some ideas of what they might want included in any updates or future versions.
Personally, before new features get added, I'd like to see the Wiki get completed. After that, more GI (or maybe a checkbox for "True Lighting (not recommended)"
as per my last post on the subject. I might think of 1 or 2 more things in the next couple of days. Anyone else?
