As a paid Up (Deep + Animation) user I have this to say on this issue. What ever the said issue/s are that are affecting the release of the Beta and the fact that it is now the second week of April it makes one wonder how that will affect both the final gold release and subsequent versions of the product?
My feelings of late on the issue have lead down the road of adding the number of months already accumulated due to the issues (What ever they are) that are coursing the delay to the release of subsequent up dates and/ or the development lead time (that could be concurrent) and gold release of TG3.
Having looked at the current main page of the Planetside site (No offense to them any any way) one has a hard time discerning the direction intended for the product and also of things been made up as things go along: but most importantly it reminds one of the "Lights On" model of business, that is make just enough money to keep the lights on.
A prime concern is that of Interoperability and accessibility to allow flexibility of use in pipelines how for example is some thing created in TG2 meant to integrate with content created with Maya or any of the other software used in production and post production for that matter? How are to going to integrate TG2 backgrounds and elements from other software which is capable of other production deliverables such as crowd simulation or other type of work such as particles or other such thing?
You have issues with lighting match, shadows and other factors if away can not be found to import TG2 scenes into other software, if you can import animation, lighting and other data form package to package then surly there must be away for TG2 scenes to work in other software, unless it is envisioned that TG2 scenes be integrated via a lengthy and costly compositing process involving color grading and matching, shadow matching and so on I think that professional compositors have enough to do on feature production already without having to do things that should have be handled in the primary creation software in the first place.
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The above aside, I don't mind waiting for major kinks to be worked out that is all fine and dandy but how long is long enough? I know its the same old swan song about Planetside been a small company and all that but paying customers (Who paid up front) are only prepared to be paid so much lip service, before wanting to know what is going on as time goes on that is when rumor, speculation and yes conspiracy theories start to emerge and for the software under development to be technologically outdated.
Regards to you.
Cyber-Angel