Planetside promised that the final version of TG2 will be by the end of the year 2007 and since we are very close to the end of the year and havent heard anything about the final release date....anyone got any ideas when will it be??....Oshyan??...Jo??...Matt?
Hehe I'm sure your not alone in wanting an update on progress towards a final version but I suggest we just continue figuring out what we have at hand now and just let them get on with it. Its an immensely complex job they have set themselves and I'm sure they don't need us "hassling" them for an update every few weeks. Actually its been very quite on that front for a while so I think most people have got the message :)
Richard
I assure you that I didnt had no such thing in my mind when I posted this msg....this is solely about personal issue that involves TG2
The final release is still scheduled for this year, although of course there is not much time left. We do not have a specific release date but I think it's fair to say we'll be using the remaining time to our advantage as much as possible. We have internal targets and will make a formal announcement as soon as we can do so with assurance that it will be met. For now we remain comitted to the 2007 timeframe.
- Oshyan
I'm just a little worried Terragen 2 will be finished in a hurry. It seems to be so far from a finished product to be released this year.
I guess what I'm really saying here is: I won't be mad if Planetside decides to push the release date in to 2008.
If they need more time, I'll be happy to give them more time.
With no offence intended, I would bet against the 2007 timeframe. Like sjefen, I would prefer that Planetside make a proper job of Terragen 2 - make sure all of the bugs are ironed out and the features are working as they should. Like cyphyr, I think we've got enough to be working out how to best use at the moment, so a 'finished' product is not urgently required. However, the announcement of a release date would certainly give everyone something to prepare for and to look forward to. I think a release near the end of January, like Windows Vista, would be best. However, I'm just me - I'm sure the people who are actually making Terragen would like to make their own plans. I certainly would if I wrote such awesome software! :D
Yeah, I hate to admit it, Dark Fire, but I've been quietly betting against it since last spring. I'm against the announcement of a date, though - I'd prefer (an) interim release(s). I think everyone benefits from that scenario - we get new goodies to play with, and Planetside gets both an indefinite period to polish the product as well as extensive Beta testing. I would point out the speed with which critical bugs were revealed and resolved in the last release as a perfect case in point. And my own experience is that an extended polishing period, even after R&D might call the product 'finished', is never a bad thing. No-one loses.
I do not have any objections against pushing the release date into 2008 but all I am saying is as said before people who pre-purchased TG2 might have to put in some more money for the license of the final release and I am kinda running short on money right now (right before Christmas)...the details of whether I need to save some extra bling and how much would make it easy to plan my Christmas....
I am sure you people can understand....still.....no pressure on Planetside staff......
I'm not sure I understand you but if you have purchased any flavor of Terragen 2, be it "Deep" or "Deep with Animation" are entitled to a FREE ;D upgrade to the final release version upon release. So you don't need to save any money. I'm assuming you've already purchased one of the available versions since it will cost you more to buy the final version when it comes out so er why wait ... go buy it now :)
All explained much better here (http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/tg2/prepurchase_tg2.shtml)
Richard
yeah I have purchased the Deep with Animation version but some time ago I read somewhere that when the final build will be released...the price will be higher than what is being offered now and people who has pre-purchased TG2 will have to pay the difference....I really hope, I am wrong....
I think you're wrong, but it's possible that Planetside will cook up a new feature that costs more. Anyway, none of that matters to me - I'm too poor to afford anything other than that merchandise I keep on mentioning. :D
You are wrong. If you read at the Pre-Purchase page (which cyphyr has given you a link to) it says:
When you pre-purchase Terragen 2, you unlock extra capabilities and remove limitations that are in the Technology Preview, Free Non-Commercial edition. You also secure yourself a copy of Terragen 2 "Deep" edition at today's price and are entitled to free updates.
EDIT: The price will be higher than what is being offered now, but that is only for the people that have not pre-purchased Terragen 2.
I too purchased the Deep + Animation Version (The Day it was announced it was available) I wouldn't mind 2008 either as there are still to many "Ghosts in the Machine" to coin a phrase as it where such as TG2 quiting on you when you hook up certain nodes in a particular order by way of an example. What we have now is not even the full product which has added complexities like Subsurface Scattering and features that may not have been announced at this time.
I would think that bug reports will be filed after the initial commercial release of TG2 for a good while. I look forward to seeing what the likes of 3D World Magazine have to say about TG2 when its released.
I close by saying "Close, but no cigar". End Of Line.
Regards to you
Cyber-Angel
/cheers 2 All,
Well I just got the deep version myself, and from I read, it said that is we buy the pre-Deep animation version that we get the final release at this price. Now I would figure that the deep version without animation will cost more, but if you have the deep animation version now you get it for what you paid 4 it.
Otherwise that would be the scame "called bait and switch", and I know PS would never do that to us. Not to mention Illegal, so I am more then sure they won't do it to us and make us pay more after we just bought the full deep version. So I suggest that you get the full deep version ASAP /winks. And relax, If like they are saying and it is so that if you have the pre-paid version no more money is needed, and it will be more then we are getting it for when released, so I for one am going to enjoy that fact.
Personally, As long as I get more textures soon for my imported models, I can wait till next year before they do the full release hahahahaha. Faster rendering as well above detail 1 and anti 3 would be nice.
PS: We Have a Monthly TGD2 Challenge going now each Month in Renderosity Contest Area now so go check it out if you have not yet /winks can use the support all you tgd2ers /smiles......It's all the way at the bottom of the Terragen Contest page.
DT
Rest assured that your pre-purchases entitles you to a free update to the final release of that product - e.g. if you already purchased Deep, you get the final release of Deep free, or if you purchased Deep + Animation you get the final release of that as well. The whole idea of the pre-purchase period is to give people a change to get an early look at the technology in unrestricted form, to help with pre-release testing, to give us some funding in-between product releases, and to give people a price break for having to put up with an unfinished product and as a thanks for helping us refine the product.
As far as the release this year, as I said that is still our plan. Certainly it may slip, and in terms of overall features some may feel that a release this year wouldn't be what they hoped for. But there will always be more to do, more to add, and some feature that a user might feel is "vital" that just doesn't make it in. Ultimately any software developer has to stop the "feature creep" at some point and just work toward a final release. It doesn't mean that more development and more features won't be added later, but development could go on forever without a final release and that's just not good for business.
What we are focused on is having a good, solid final product. It may not have every feature under the sun, but it will be a strong, capable product with the most important features. We will continue to develop Terragen after that release and any features that don't make it in this time can be added later. Terragen 2 will be updated, a 2.5 release may happen, etc. Purchasers of Terragen 2, including pre-purchasers, will be entitled to free updates through to the next major release.
- Oshyan
Thanks for the update Oshyan,
In the old FAQ I read, You said that TG 2's speed at release would be close to TG 0.9,
Now, I aint expecting that at all! (even though it would be nice) But How is the renderer looking right now?
I didn't write the FAQ, but I think there may be a key part of that entry you're missing:
Quote...it will only be slightly slower than v0.9 for equivalent types of images."
The bit I have bolded there is important - TG 0.9 couldn't do full planets and planetary-scale atmosphere, it couldn't do displacement, it couldn't do volumetric clouds, populations, etc, etc. So as long as you're not using any of that, render times - even now - shouldn't be too bad in comparison to TG 0.9. That will be especially so after the optimizations that are in progress now. But of course as soon as you add any of those more advanced features, render time is going to go up. ;D
- Oshyan
Ah, Yeah I missed that bit :D
Was getting hopefull there ;)
So, In all. What kind of improvements will we see in the renderer compared to now and release (at best guess)
Also! (I always wanted to know this) I'm still new to this sorta rendering software...so I was wondering why dose the renderer start of by plotting lots of dots on the screen?, Never quite understood that.
Thanks :P
Zionner
I'm not an expert at all but I believe the dots are GI calculations. The higher the GI settings the more dots and the longer the pass takes. If you turn GI off you shouldn't get any dots.
Maybe this is a good place to ask a question regarding rendering. Whenever i've used any 3d package that "renders" it works in a similair way to TG2, in that it will renders a small area in maximum details (taking into account you settings) and then move onto the next area, renders that etc. I've read in the last few months about some 3d software that renders the whole scene at once in a very low quality, then in the next pass the quality improves slightly, and it keeps going like this until you decide the quality is good enough and you stop the render yourself. What's this called, is this what an unbiased render is, if not what is an unbiased render? Also although i've never used software that renders like this it sounds like a better way of working then rendering small areas at a time in maximum quality, would TG2 benefit from this sort of render?
Quote from: Oshyan on October 25, 2007, 01:20:07 PM
Rest assured that your pre-purchases entitles you to a free update to the final release of that product - e.g. if you already purchased Deep, you get the final release of Deep free, or if you purchased Deep + Animation you get the final release of that as well.
I don't think this has been asked yet, so I'll ask it: will there be a free version of the final release too? The FAQ says:
"Having a version of TG that is free for personal non-commercial use has been very successful for us, and we would like to continue that with TG2."
While that expresses the intentions of Planetside, I still worry because T2TP is very good - I don't know any product of similar quality that has such a functional free version.
Also, what's happening to TG0.9? I know this is a bit off-topic, but TG2 will really signal the end for TG0.9. I remember reading somewhere about the possibility of a final release. I'm sure I can find some uses for TG0.9 - it would be quite handy for educational purposes, as it is very easy to use.
Lots to answer here, I'll try to cover it all, but in brief. ;)
Zionner, the major improvements to the renderer for the final release are going to be optimizations for speed and memory use, multithreading, bug fixing, and the addition of transparency for water, etc. There are going to be lots of other little bits, but those major categories cover pretty much everything of note.
As Reck said, the "little dots" are related to Global Illumination (GI) - they are the GI samples for the scene and their density is dependent on how high you set your GI detail. The higher the detail, the more samples are needed and the longer it takes. If you turn off GI you'll get less accurate lighting but it will render faster and the dots won't be calculated. We made the decision before release of the Technology Preview to default the GI to being on, but most renderers actually do not do this, so that's another reason that TG2 can be slower than other renders, but the results are often higher quality as because of this.
Reck, what you're talking about is called "progressive rendering". It *can* be in the context of an "unbiased renderer", although it does not have to be. In fact TG2's normal 3D preview is already "progressively rendered". If you watch it, it starts with low detail then gets progressively higher and higher quality. Normal rendering doesn't particularly benefit from this, except in the case where you might not know how much detail you need for a particular scene and so you could simply watch it until it looks "good enough". However there are several problems with this, not least of which is in a renderer that doesn't operate like an "unbiased renderer" I don't think the progressive approach is necessarily as efficient or at least easy to implement. Furthermore on the long time scales that these renders will inevitably still require (hours at least, for high quality and high resolution), you aren't necessarily going to be there to be able to say "OK, stop it there". Finally, in terms of unbiased renderers, I think you'll find they are invariably much slower than almost any other rendering approach for theoretically superior but often just "equivalent" results. They are in theory more "accurate", but in practice you can achieve similar or better results in less time with other implementations.
Finally, yes Dark Fire there will be a free version of the final release of TG 2. What features will be limited in it and how much is yet to be determined. TG 0.9 is essentially no longer being developed, although it is likely that we will continue to sell it as a low-end product.
- Oshyan
Planetside will not finish TG 0.9 and they will not finish TG2, moving to another app or version to force a bait and scam.
Just kidding :D
Amazingly though, this kind of thing actually happens but with big upgrades and no alphas to use but we have good working apps even if not at final versions yet so I'm not bothered if final release is later as long as work continues to add and improve.
I know that this question is a long way in the future but the license people have have for TG2 no matter what flavor, how far into Terragens future dose it extend at least till Terragen 3.0 which would be the next full release but would we have to get a new license. Like I said long way off but still it would be nice to know what the official policy (If one exists at this time) is.
As to the subject of unbiased renderer's form my understanding one of the more well known ones is Maxwell Render which uses a relatively new rendering method called "Spectral Rendering" which is to say it treats light like an Electromagnetic Wave which allows a spectral rendering application to do things a traditional RGB renderer can not such as Iridescence and Polarization.
Regards to you.
Cyber-Angel
Quote from: Oshyan on October 25, 2007, 06:48:25 PM... and the addition of transparency for water, etc. There are ...
Just a hope that the transparency will not be limited to water. At the moment alpha maps only work in a black white way, more like clipmaps. It would be useful for imported models to have greyscale control over transparency so hair for example could be rendered internally etc. Not a biggy though. :)
Richard
the terragen is ok even now... all i want is just the multi proc support so i could render in some normal speed. I hate when i apply some displacement and wait five mins to see what happened
@Oshyan - This is all very good news and helpful as well. Thanks.
Quote from: Cyber-Angel on October 25, 2007, 07:24:52 PM
I know that this question is a long way in the future but the license people have have for TG2 no matter what flavor, how far into Terragens future dose it extend at least till Terragen 3.0 which would be the next full release but would we have to get a new license. Like I said long way off but still it would be nice to know what the official policy (If one exists at this time) is.
Any license purchased for Terragen 2 will entitle you to "minor" updates, up to but
not including a 3.0 release. This is described on the license purchase page in the following way:
"Free updates to Terragen 2 "Deep" edition final release and subsequent minor updates (2.x versions)"
A discounted upgrade price will be offered to 2.x purchasers on a 3.0 release.
- Oshyan
Thank you for pointing that out since I haven't looked there in a long while :)
Regards to you
Cyber-Angel