E-on (Vue) acquired by Bentley

[Tangled-Universe]

Seems E-on did find a heap of money for further development of their product portfolio, including Planetside's single most competitive program; Vue

http://www.e-onsoftware.com/news/?page=pressreleases&date=September+14%2C+2015

http://www.bentley.com/en-US/Corporate/News/Quarter+3/bentley+acquires+eon+software.htm

Let's hope Bentley's executives have no clue about CG/3D landscaping!

[TheBadger]

sigh,
Now Vue users are going to say its the "Bentley" of 3D.

[bobbystahr]

sigh,
Now Vue users are going to say its the "Bentley" of 3D.

Groan!
And now they have access to a real modeling software, microstation as well...wonder what kinda financial hit that'll be....

[Tangled-Universe]

Well let's sit and wait to see what happens.
I'm not overly convinced yet that this will be a good move.

Getting venture capital or being acquired by a company are financially interesting, but it remains to be seen what will happen to the software.

For Planetside, with only 1 piece of software in their portfolio, it would directly mean an investment into Terragen.

For E-on, with multiple pieces of software in their portfolio, it would mean they have acquired E-on for probably 1 of those pieces of software only and not all.

Yesterday I already said on Facebook that given Bentley's business in CAD etc., that the main reason for acquiring E-on is very likely LumenRT and *not* Vue.
Imagine what you can do with LumenRT and CAD pre-viz and presentations, even realtime over the net.
It's a unique way of selling stuff to your clients if you allow them to navigate realtime through the design themselves.

I think Vue is secondary for Bentley.

Nonetheless it all started with Vue for E-on, so I'm pretty sure that their CEO Nicholas Phelps made sure that Vue's existence is relatively safe and he keeps his big say in where the software goes etc.
It's a specialty type of software, like CAD also is, so I would be surprised if Bentley CEO's wouldn't allow Nicholas to remain captain of E-on's flagship Vue.

Let's see where this heap of cash leads to.
Big companies with big budgets tend to operate quite differently, especially in relation to return of investment etc. etc.

There's definitely still a challenge for E-on here.

[Tangled-Universe]

And I just received their newsletter, confirming my ideas on this:

Why did Bentley and e-on software merge?

There is a growing need across the portfolio of Bentley applications to add high-fidelity, real-time visualization and powerful natural scenery authoring capabilities which allow users to share projects, designs, and ideas in a more compelling, engaging manner. E-on's leading-edge immersive nature and visualization products will serve as a foundational technology for many exciting new products yet to be announced. With Bentley, e-on gains access to some of the most prestigious customers in the AEC/Infrastructure market providing a solid foundation for growth and investment.

What will happen with the E-on Software brand identity?

E-on software has a very strong brand identity in the DCC/CG market and will continue to remain as a branded identity under Bentley Systems.

How will e-on's products be sold and serviced?

All of e-on's CG products(VUE, PlantFactory, Ozone, and Carbon Scatter)will continue to be sold and serviced directly via the e-on software website. The high-end version of LumenRT, LumenRT GeoDesign will be sold and serviced directly through Bentley, while other versions of LumenRT will be handled by e-on software.

[Hannes]

Received the newsletter as well, and I'd like to say, that I have nothing to do with it!
See attached screenshot!

[bobbystahr]

LumenRT is what I see Bentley being interested in as well. I think it was the render engine DAZ was after when they bought Bryce because DAZ has gotten way better over the time since the acquisition; and Bryce has been essentially dead in the water development wise ever since...not even a mac version
That said Vue is indeed a secondary part of the deal but am happy for Vue-ers that it's development stays in original hands. Quite possibly they'll benefit from Bentley's R&R department...but Bentley is the big winner here. Though now maybe Vue can eradicate the bugs I keep seeing reported in every new release over at renderosity.

[bobbystahr]

Received the newsletter as well, and I'd like to say, that I have nothing to do with it!

hee hee hee

See attached screenshot!

got one of those as well...

[Tangled-Universe]

Though now maybe Vue can eradicate the bugs I keep seeing reported in every new release over at renderosity.

This is where TG shines over Vue, it's stability and much better thought-through backbone/core.
Vue is built on a crappy base, everything is losely tied together and requires lots of patches and tweaks internally to make it "work together".
If I were E-on I'd use this opportunity to rewrite the entire incoherent thing, but I don't want to play the devil's advocate of course

For a future proof TG something similar needs to happen, probably. Who shall say.
TG and Vue differ critically in their technology and it's why ones' strength is the other's weakness and vice versa.
Vue's latest version desperately tries to catch up with TG's displacement capabilities -and fails- and TG desperately needs a better indirect lighting and raytracing system.
However, these capabilities are kind of mutually excluded from each other at the moment as no one in the industry focuses on (physically based) raytracing REYES based geometry. Meanwhile, E-on and others find that their (physically based) raytracers can't cope with TG-like amounts of geometry. There's currently no method known to properly unify these intrinsically different architectures.

Perhaps a heap of money allows E-on to crack the problem.
A rewrite of Vue is necessary anyway (considering the enormous amount of bugs, quirks and stability issues) and allowing TG-like displacement capabilities likely require such a rewrite anyway.
They could kill two birds with one stone.
All in all it may take quite a while, if not very long, before they get that far as it requires pretty revolutionary insights/ideas, careful planning and time to write up.
Patience has never been E-on's virtue and under the financial umbrella or a large company I don't see that change much, like I meant to say before.

Of course this is mostly speculating, but I'm very sure that TG-like displacement capabilities is very high on E-on's list of features for Vue, as evident by their feature request board and tongue in cheek talk about TG work online.

The competition -in terms of resources and manpower- was already very uneven and tough.
I hope Planetside realizes they also need to switch gear and investigates similar possibilities (or others) for ensuring cash flow and viability of TG as you can not rule out that TG's unique selling point will get lost/competed away.

[bobbystahr]

Though now maybe Vue can eradicate the bugs I keep seeing reported in every new release over at renderosity.

This is where TG shines over Vue, it's stability and much better thought-through backbone/core.

Agree, plus the fact it's a complete planet...big like there.

Vue is built on a crappy base, everything is losely tied together and requires lots of patches and tweaks internally to make it "work together".
If I were E-on I'd use this opportunity to rewrite the entire incoherent thing, but I don't want to play the devil's advocate of course

For a future proof TG something similar needs to happen, probably. Who shall say.
TG and Vue differ critically in their technology and it's why ones' strength is the other's weakness and vice versa.
Vue's latest version desperately tries to catch up with TG's displacement capabilities -and fails- and TG desperately needs a better indirect lighting and raytracing system.
However, these capabilities are kind of mutually excluded from each other at the moment as no one in the industry focuses on (physically based) raytracing REYES based geometry. Meanwhile, E-on and others find that their (physically based) raytracers can't cope with TG-like amounts of geometry. There's currently no method known to properly unify these intrinsically different architectures.

Perhaps a heap of money allows E-on to crack the problem.
A rewrite of Vue is necessary anyway (considering the enormous amount of bugs, quirks and stability issues) and allowing TG-like displacement capabilities likely require such a rewrite anyway.
They could kill two birds with one stone.
All in all it may take quite a while, if not very long, before they get that far as it requires pretty revolutionary insights/ideas, careful planning and time to write up.
Patience has never been E-on's virtue and under the financial umbrella or a large company I don't see that change much, like I meant to say before.

Of course this is mostly speculating, but I'm very sure that TG-like displacement capabilities is very high on E-on's list of features for Vue, as evident by their feature request board and tongue in cheek talk about TG work online.

The competition -in terms of resources and manpower- was already very uneven and tough.
I hope Planetside realizes they also need to switch gear and investigates similar possibilities (or others) for ensuring cash flow and viability of TG as you can not rule out that TG's unique selling point will get lost/competed away.

I agree with all that...been testing out Vue since it appeared and am no closer to spending my children's inheritance on it than I was in '97 when it appeared...in fact I was closer then as it showed real promise, but all that happened was it kept getting way more expensive with every iteration and the free/learning versions came with a watermark/logo...big boo on that. I as well hope for adventurous moves from planetside re: lighting et al.

[Tangled-Universe]

Yes you're right their commercial model.
I heavily dislike it too. Vue is just way overpriced for what it offers, simply because much of the functionality is broken, works bad and/or is buggy.
Would it all work, quite smoothly and not too buggy/unstable, then I'd say it's a bit stiff priced.
Would E-on tackle the displacement challenge then this commercial model is the final hurdle.

[Hetzen]

The render cow pricing was the nail in the coffin at my last place for Vue. What TG has is a very concise programming language that doesn't need to go through script patches for each component to talk to each other. The structure is as low level as it can be. Which is it's strength, and may I say it, it's beauty. TG is currently about 15mb. How many gig is Vue now?

For all of Vue's features, there are reams of script to deal with for newer features to deal with, and when you are talking about a whole new way of building geometry, it's almost a re-build.

Their Max plugin was a seriously good feature, when it worked. You could jump from one program to another with the same scene. Problem was, it didn't always work. And that was a major problem in tight deadlines.

[Upon Infinity]

Maybe it's time for Planetside to go public.  Then they can increase their number of coders to...2. 

[Tangled-Universe]

  

[TheBadger]

Kinda nice that matt has not sold. Probably there are entities that have tried to buy TG and matt too.
Not that it is a bad thing to get big. But still nice that it is a private small business.

But I am curious what would happen if AutoDesk moved in.  given the feelings of a lot of TG users about AD, just curious if people would stick with it or leave. Bet the price would go through the roof. Maybe they would let us rent it