Wish List for next incremental release

Started by The Geostation, January 11, 2007, 11:10:24 AM

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Mutlay


Dark Fire

Quote from: The Geostation on January 12, 2007, 02:59:22 AM
Quote from: 3DGuy on January 11, 2007, 06:29:14 PM
I still don't see what exactly is meant by this bliss effect... is it the reflection on the water.. the layer of clouds.. what?

Hi 3DGuy, it's the sun/cloud/sky interaction causing two sets of concentric circles illuminating the atmosphere - kind of like lines of electromagnetic flux.   There are some tutorials on how this is done, but is created through the use of tiny cloud particles in line with the camera.

Andrew Randle
The Geostation
How did that effect get called 'bliss'?

swiftstream

The person who invented it decided to call it that, I guess.

As for the wishlisted features, it's already possible to do foam--just add a surface layer beneath the water shader with appropriate breakup. I've been playing with this a bit. Transparent water would be nice, but hey, I'll let Planetside work at their own pace.

Dark Fire

Quote from: swiftstream on January 12, 2007, 07:50:05 AM
...but hey, I'll let Planetside work at their own pace.
You have a good point there - we have all become very greedy for new features because there was an enormous leap in terms of features and flexibility between the old Terragen and T2TP.

rcallicotte

Brilliant!  Thanks for the idea and I agree with you about Planetside.


Quote from: swiftstream on January 12, 2007, 07:50:05 AM
The person who invented it decided to call it that, I guess.

As for the wishlisted features, it's already possible to do foam--just add a surface layer beneath the water shader with appropriate breakup. I've been playing with this a bit. Transparent water would be nice, but hey, I'll let Planetside work at their own pace.
So this is Disney World.  Can we live here?

reck

Well this isn't necessarily for the next incremental release just something that would be nice at some point.... Aurora, as seen in this photo below.

http://xmb.stuffucanuse.com/xmb/viewthread.php?tid=3351

Dark Fire

Aurora would be cool. That type of effect may already be possible with a bit of work and some coloured clouds.

Will

Heh its just the high of the intial release we will calm down...evenualy :P Anyway I would think it nice to see a deformer that makes use of an alpha in future evenualy it would be helpful for doing things like footsteps, square crators (why not) and outher such things. Kepp up the good work Planetside :)
The world is round... so you have to use spherical projection.

The Geostation

Many thanks to Jo Meder for encouraging me to look into the "dreaded blue boxes" when I was asking for the "Distorted Perlin" function.   Here's what I finally came up with :) (I still need to do the textures, shading and atmosphere though).



This has pushed TG2 to an 11/10 rating for me  ;D

Andrew Randle
The Geostation
Andrew Randle
The Geostation

Will

cool, I wonder if you could invert that and make pits. intresting I gotta try that.
The world is round... so you have to use spherical projection.

Dark Fire

For me, T2TP is at least 100/10 already. It is truly unlike anything I have ever seen before.

Will

The world is round... so you have to use spherical projection.

Oshyan

Threads like this are always interesting and useful in my opinion. Obviously we can't address every wish, much less in the next version, but it's very good to know what people are most interested in seeing.

I can tell you that the next release will be focused primarily on bug fixes. After that the update schedule is less clear for the free, public versons, but registered users will definitely continue to get regular updates with new bug fixes and features.

We may release additional Technology Preview versions in the future with major new features. I definitely think this particular release has been a great success in helping us track down bugs and get a much wider testing pool for sussing out those rarer issues, so it's in our best interest to continue these sorts of releases when practical.

Primarily we are focusing on what will go into the final release of TG2. That is our clear priority, and obviously for good reason. Along the way it's extremely helpful to have some additional testing in certain areas, of course. But ultimately you should look toward the final release later this year to see many of your wishes granted - multithreading, foam, transparency, etc.

- Oshyan

Cyber-Angel

My feeling on this is that while some, if not many of the things we wish for the final release may not make it in do not disappear as I am sure there will be many point releases (TG2.1 etc), before the release of the next mile stone release (TG3) so I am sure that along the way we will see many of these feature been implemented along the way and features that we cannot envisage at this time.

What I do think that needs to happen is for a feature request tracker be put on the site, with ranking system say for 1-10 for priority ranking if need be a poll could be established by one of the Planetside staff where there are some features for the feature tracker that are tied with an equal ranking.

Such feature trackers are found on the sites for some other software (Sorry don't recall which one) this let the developers stay apprised of what the community for their software feels is of the most use, and conversely the community apprised of the development progress of the software; these trackers are part of the community lead software development model, similar trackers are used for the tracking of bugs in the software.

Unless there are commercial reasons not to do so I would also suggest a development roadmap for the development of Terragen as it will prevent the community form asking for features that are already planed, other software companies have roadmaps.

Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel

Will

I agree with out Cyber-Angel but I dont want the road map to end up like the one from Terragen .9x where it never really updated. But the poll is a good idea, I was watching the Softimage XSI testmonial video yesterday and a lot of the artists said that having their input in the releases of software was really nice.

Regards,
Will
The world is round... so you have to use spherical projection.