Terragen 2 Release Announcement Discussion

Started by Oshyan, December 12, 2007, 07:10:04 PM

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Dark Fire

Quote from: Oshyan on February 16, 2008, 11:36:07 PM
If it were taken out I really don't know if it would be brought back later. The simple fact is it is an extremely basic, problematic and quirky node and any such error-prone and limited-use node is likely to be removed for support and stability reasons. I understand that you find it useful but compared to the amount of complaints and questions it has generated, its evident usefulness overall seems quite low. It was developed as an experiment and included in the Technology Preview as part of the overall experimental nature of the release. As many other things have evolved and been changed or even removed over the lifecycle of the Technology preview due to testing and feedback, so too may this be affected, and if so it would be for the overall greater good of the end product.

- Oshyan
I personally think that the planet surface shader should be removed. It is quite a random node, and I'm fairly sure that it was behind all of the errors that cropped up in my video podcast. Also, I have encountered very few errors while not using it, and it doesn't seem to encourage the best use of the other nodes...

moodflow

Hi Planetside.  Do you have any sample renders showing transparency of water and/or materials out yet that we could see?  I'd love to see how its going to look.   8)
http://www.moodflow.com
mood-inspiring images and music

Tangled-Universe

Quote from: moodflow on February 26, 2008, 01:48:03 PM
Hi Planetside.  Do you have any sample renders showing transparency of water and/or materials out yet that we could see?  I'd love to see how its going to look.   8)

So am I! ;D
Please...?  :'(

;)

PG

Anyone even know how to use the planet surface shader successfully? :D I doubt it's a bug in the function but no matter what settings I use all I get is a big dark blue mass
Figured out how to do clicky signatures

moodflow

Quote from: PG on February 26, 2008, 04:31:28 PM
Anyone even know how to use the planet surface shader successfully? :D I doubt it's a bug in the function but no matter what settings I use all I get is a big dark blue mass

I've used it successfully, but have gotten much better results using power fractal stacks and masks.
http://www.moodflow.com
mood-inspiring images and music

Dark Fire

The last two posts prove my points - the planet surface shader is buggy, and it discourages creativity (stuff created without it makes Terragen look better, which should increase investment in it and hopefully allow Planetside to expand, thus making everyone happier). :D

Cyber-Angel

I have a question which doesn't seem to have been asked before (I did a search but couldn't find any thing) I maybe buying a new system shortly but am not sure weather I should have it RAID configured or not which is aggregate on the final release of TG2 or one shortly there after is going to be RAID compatible (The Configurations open to me are RAID 0,1, and 2) is it planed to make TG2 RAID compatible, if not I won't bother getting my new system RAID configured?  ;D

Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel   

Oshyan

Most application software does not need to be specifically "RAID compatible". The general purpose of RAID is in fact to be *transparent* to the applications and only managed by the operating system or, in some cases, dedicated hardware and drivers. So your question isn't really applicable and that's probably why it hasn't been asked before. RAID 0 (striping) is unlikely to provide any significant performance increase in TG2 specifically since disk access is already generally avoided.

- Oshyan

nikita

Raid can provide higher data rates than usual. That can be an advantage if your system has to do a lot of disk swapping (when more memory is needed than you have as physical ram).
But hard disk access is about 100 times slower than accessing ram and will increase render times accordingly. So if a lot of disk swapping occurs, disk access and therefore rendering will be faster.. but more like "it only takes 4 months to render instead of 3! hooray!"

If you have money left and want to spend it on something to improve TG2s performance, it will be cpu and memory. And it should have a 64bit os if you want to use 4GB ram or more.

Cyber-Angel

Quote from: nikita on March 07, 2008, 09:21:21 PM
Raid can provide higher data rates than usual. That can be an advantage if your system has to do a lot of disk swapping (when more memory is needed than you have as physical ram).
But hard disk access is about 100 times slower than accessing ram and will increase render times accordingly. So if a lot of disk swapping occurs, disk access and therefore rendering will be faster.. but more like "it only takes 4 months to render instead of 3! hooray!"

If you have money left and want to spend it on something to improve TG2s performance, it will be cpu and memory. And it should have a 64bit os if you want to use 4GB ram or more.

I have no problem with getting a 64bit OS but my understanding is that TG2 will be a 32bit application until some time after the gold release this year, meaning that for the foreseeable future after the Gold Release TG2 will have the same 2GB Application Address Space limits as all other 32bit applications; meaning that until TG2 is 64bit ready it will not be using system resources of a 64bit system to their potential this seems counterproductive to efficiency and time management and resource (Human and System) management.

The workstation I am looking at has the scalability required and has dual CPU capability so once TG2 has its multi-threading on stream it should handle things with ease I will start with 4GB of RAM (DDR2 SDRAM FBD MEMORY, 667MHz, ECC (8 DIMMS)) to start with as I have been through the RAM vs Price metric for the system I am looking at and 4GB seems to be the most cost effective in my price range, more will be added latter when its most cost effective for me to do so if for nothing else to have sufficient head room for system, CPU and Render performance.

I only asked about RAID out of interest as setting up seems overly complex when ordering the system so I will leave well alone, I think I will go with XP Pro (64bit) rather than Vista as there are major driver issues with that OS that I can not do any thing about my Printer and Digital Camera are among the concerns, I have searched both on Google and there are no Vista drivers for them.

;D

Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel                 

nikita

Quote from: Cyber-Angel on March 08, 2008, 07:03:26 AM
I have no problem with getting a 64bit OS but my understanding is that TG2 will be a 32bit application until some time after the gold release this year, meaning that for the foreseeable future after the Gold Release TG2 will have the same 2GB Application Address Space limits as all other 32bit applications;
32bit systems actually have a 4GB address space, but XP takes 2GB for itself so there are only 2GB left for applications. On 64bit systems, windows can allocate the full 4GB to a 32bit app while taking the address space it needs for itself from elsewhere. So, you can already benefit from a 64bit system, even if the application is only 32bit. :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64bit#Pros_and_cons

Cyber-Angel

Quote from: nikita on March 08, 2008, 07:47:30 AM
Quote from: Cyber-Angel on March 08, 2008, 07:03:26 AM
I have no problem with getting a 64bit OS but my understanding is that TG2 will be a 32bit application until some time after the gold release this year, meaning that for the foreseeable future after the Gold Release TG2 will have the same 2GB Application Address Space limits as all other 32bit applications;
32bit systems actually have a 4GB address space, but XP takes 2GB for itself so there are only 2GB left for applications. On 64bit systems, windows can allocate the full 4GB to a 32bit app while taking the address space it needs for itself from elsewhere. So, you can already benefit from a 64bit system, even if the application is only 32bit. :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64bit#Pros_and_cons

Thank you for the information that is some thing I didn't know before a shall take time to read it properly in future.  ;D

Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel 

Will

Yea I use a dual boot, since x64 doesn't work well with Itunes or x-fi driver but it allows for crazy high poly counts while sculpting.
The world is round... so you have to use spherical projection.

neuspadrin

I run 64bit vista ultimate on my desktop, and 64bit ubuntu (with vmware xp pro 32bit) on my laptop.  64bit has come quite far in driver support etc so its quite usable.  Also the ability to run 32bit programs has become a lot more stable and I have yet to really hit a program that doesn't work.  Terragen runs great, and I mostly can't wait til it can use multi-core.  Also Terragen is still usable in a 64bit os, it just still has to run with 32bit limitations until the 64 bit edition comes out.

Another quick note: If your planning on 4 gigs of ram, yes 32bit "technically" supports it, but odds are you'll not have the ability to use all of it within windows due to how memory is added n such.  Like the graphics memory is loaded first (so i have 1gig of graphics ram, so I was already down to 3 gigs of my 4 gigs of ram, then another chunk goes off too to from something else, so i registered like 2.65 gigs of my 4 gigs of ram).

So, if you want to use all 4 gigs, or are thinking of maybe more (since ram is cheap, i plan on buying another 4gigs later), i highly suggest 64bit. 

Orangebugpro

I'm also using 64bit Vista Ultimate.  I have not run into any driver or software issues so far.  I've got about 3 64bit programs installed on my machine, and countless 32bit programs, none of them have any issues running.
I've got a quad core CPU, the Intel C2Q Q6600 so I too am waiting for multi-core.
aaand I've got 6gigs of ram, which I almost never use up.  ;D