_PopArt Posted November 15, 2005 Share Posted November 15, 2005 We have decided to reveal the release date to our customers now so that you can plan your parties, religious ceremonies and other forms of celebration well in advance. haha.nice... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adehus Posted November 16, 2005 Share Posted November 16, 2005 AJLynn- Hilarious... a perfect parody of their emails. If anything, though, maybe too modest? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3dworks Posted November 16, 2005 Share Posted November 16, 2005 at only 6 days before release, not even one screenshot of the new interface was posted! they really make it hard to wait for it... and of course this way they continue to feed all kind of bad speculations about if they really can deliver on day 22. markus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted November 16, 2005 Author Share Posted November 16, 2005 What if anything do you guy's think will happen if they push the release back again? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted November 16, 2005 Share Posted November 16, 2005 What if anything do you guy's think will happen if they push the release back again? This thread will keep growing. Not much else. Whatever there was to happen from their delays and lack of candor has already happened. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Msamir Posted November 16, 2005 Share Posted November 16, 2005 This thread will keep growing. Not much else. Whatever there was to happen from their delays and lack of candor has already happened. Yeah i agree, people will complain for a while then become excited before the release date. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GeraldH Posted November 19, 2005 Share Posted November 19, 2005 Now we'll see...pushed back to December...with a Release Candidate (RC) version due out next week. ...release the pigeons! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Msamir Posted November 19, 2005 Share Posted November 19, 2005 did you see their white paper ? http://www.maxwellrender.com/whitepaper/index.htm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3dworks Posted November 19, 2005 Share Posted November 19, 2005 did you see their white paper ? http://www.maxwellrender.com/whitepaper/index.htm finally some (even if very small) screenshots of the new interface from NL i'm rather positively surprised to see such an advanced stand-alone environment after all. especially the material handling seems to be rather evolved in the last months. what i hope is that all the features (especially cooperative rendering) will already work on OSX. anyway, the move to give us a RC in the meantime is good. can't wait to do more tests with my barcelona pavilion project markus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buffos Posted November 19, 2005 Share Posted November 19, 2005 Every announcment they make, cements my point, that they intentionally lie continuesly!!!! Today they actually postpone it to an unspecified date. Decemeber when?? 25?? I am also 1000% sure that Maxwell 1.0 wont make it before March 2006. Why? Just look at the facts, and the answers we have from NL. I pretty well know the pattern now. 1) Without a beta phase, what do you think this RC bring? How many bugs?? I am pretty sure, basic stuff will be uncovered that will keep them busy for at least a month 2) Many basic functions are unknown to be supported. So its pretty safe to assume they did not make it. If they did they would brag about it. For example Displacement maps. Or the bugs with clipmaps. or... or.... 3) I am pretty sure that the reactions about many missing features, will overhelm the initial euphoria about the newcomer. I am sure they know its not possible to actually make v1 avaliable anytime soon, and they do their favorite action LIE. I am pretty sure, NL lost all the credibility they have. It does not matter if you try to make something really great. If you spoil everything around you then you better do nothing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adehus Posted November 19, 2005 Share Posted November 19, 2005 I hate to say it, but I pretty much agree with you Buffos. Still, this would be more disappointing if it weren't so easy to predict... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3dworks Posted November 19, 2005 Share Posted November 19, 2005 ... 1) Without a beta phase, what do you think this RC bring? How many bugs?? I am pretty sure, basic stuff will be uncovered that will keep them busy for at least a month 2) Many basic functions are unknown to be supported. So its pretty safe to assume they did not make it. If they did they would brag about it. For example Displacement maps. Or the bugs with clipmaps. or... or.... 3) I am pretty sure that the reactions about many missing features, will overhelm the initial euphoria about the newcomer. I am sure they know its not possible to actually make v1 avaliable anytime soon, and they do their favorite action LIE. I am pretty sure, NL lost all the credibility they have. It does not matter if you try to make something really great. If you spoil everything around you then you better do nothing. come on, give them a chance... i was disappointed too by the way they treated their early customers (myself included - i bought 2 licences) and by the repeated delays, but... let's wait only 3 days and then we will see what they did and what not! most of the bugs have been marked as 'fixed 1.0' in the dedicated bugs forum, so this could be a good sign, no?! i don't know how big their internal beta team is, but i'm pretty sure that they have had their beta test cycle aswell. of course i'm sure too that we will discover lots of them, but that's happening more or less with all complex software at it's first release. i agree on the fact that NL may not be the best 'communicators' around, but what they are finalizing now still looks like to become a really great piece of software! just my 2 cents... markus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted November 19, 2005 Share Posted November 19, 2005 I'm with Markus on this (but, remember, I'm gullible). A few things: They have marked most of their bugs corrected, and they sure have had a lot of time to fix bugs. They're actually being a good bit more ambitious in terms of features than they said they would be. They do have a beta team that's had versions of this for a while - they're presumably under an NDA but you can ID some of them and see how long they've had the new betas from forum posts. A "release candidate" prerelease is, conventionally speaking, a candidate for release - it's like saying "No promises yet, but we think this is a version we could be shipping as 1.0." Or maybe in this case, "We know there are issues but it's 95% and it's way better than the beta." A lot of companies don't do this, it says something about the current mental state at NL, but it gives us something to work with that's better than the beta, presumably compatible with the same files and material libraries, and it's more responsible than just shipping 1.0 now and releasing bug fixes later. And it allows us to see their progress, which will hopefully make us feel better about having given these guys our money. So yeah, I'd have liked to have seen the 1.0 release by now, but since I was fully prepared for them to miss the Nov. 22 date, this actually makes me feel a lot better, because they have an attainable goal now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted November 20, 2005 Author Share Posted November 20, 2005 I've got mixed feelings about this, here's what I think: Positives: - Moving from beta to something closer to final release - Possibly able to do production work - Cooperative rendering should be working - Development of stand alone application is much further along that anyone suspected - Whitepaper indicates massive improvements in material creation and speed seems to have at least doubled since beta release Negatives: - one more delay that everyone working at NL knew was coming, this however didn't stop them from creating another false deadline that they knew they couldn’t reach - The development of the stand alone software has taken Maxwell to a place that none of us expected. The continued development of Maxwell as a render package instead of simply a render engine may have slowed NL's ability to fix all the existing bugs that the beta still has. - The fact that if NL had come out in October and simply told the community their intentions the mistrust that now exists may have been avoided. Now even the most diehard believers in NL may finally see that they have no clear direction and that despite all of their talk and promises there word means little. I'm excited to be getting a new version of Maxwell to play with, but I still feel that NL is not being honest with its paying customers. I think it's quite obvious that this little game of pushing back release dates is going to continue to go on and on. All I'm asking for is honesty, these people know what's going on in their company and for some reason feel it necessary to try and deceived us as to the status and functionality of their product. I don't think all of this is done in the name of keeping Maxwell a secret from competition, if that were the case they never should have sold a pre release version in which several promises were made and have since been broken. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted November 20, 2005 Share Posted November 20, 2005 I'm excited to be getting a new version of Maxwell to play with... maybe...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hazdaz Posted November 22, 2005 Share Posted November 22, 2005 So is today the day??? (not sure if it was posted that it was pushed back again or not - too many pages to read everything) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted November 22, 2005 Share Posted November 22, 2005 It was pused back again. Latest is there will be a new prerelease version some time this week with the final some time next month. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ricardo Eloy Posted November 22, 2005 Share Posted November 22, 2005 This is starting to get tragically funny... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted November 22, 2005 Author Share Posted November 22, 2005 I expected them to keep today as the day they would release the RC, but anything is possible with NL and it wouldn’t surprise me if they released it on the 24th Thanksgiving Day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_PopArt Posted November 22, 2005 Share Posted November 22, 2005 I think NL's lack of communication is going to get them, sooner, or later, into some trouble. They've generated a lot of interest in the render engine, and they keep upping the stakes, but its not a niche product like realflow, so i really hope they change their approach soon, at least for their sake. The forum administrator guy is starting to look, once again, very irrational and stressed out, not a good sign, not very professional...we've been there before... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted November 22, 2005 Author Share Posted November 22, 2005 The owners of the following actions will be banned immediately without warning. - Making BULK posts under any section - Making posts not related to usage of Maxwell Render (please use Off Topic section) - Using targeted slang language. I think your right PopArt I've been watching the Maxwell forum for a while today and the number of people who are upset has grown significantly. It's actually gotten so bad that Tom who is one of the beta testers just posted this: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hazdaz Posted November 22, 2005 Share Posted November 22, 2005 Wow I can not believe it was pushed back again. See that is where you can tell these people are very inexperienced when it comes to dealing with customers. You are ALWAYS better to over-estimate the amount of time it takes and then ship it sooner... than announce an unrealistic date, and pushing it back again adn again because you can't meet the date. They were better off saying "before Christmas" than what they are doing now. Bad customer relations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buffos Posted November 22, 2005 Share Posted November 22, 2005 I was banned for protesting to what was a really irrational approach of customer-merchant relationship. After my ban, i told them, with the nickname fonaklas, that i expected user solidarity, and that by letting them do what they want, and lie after lie, we would be in trouble. I was laughed at, and banned again (after just that post). It is obvious now that the product is very very far away from beeing completed. If you read the forum you will see, that they said in a post, that the famous procedural materials, that we would be able to program (they told us in C) are not beeing delived in version 1. Displacement maps either. I bet IES support that was promised neither. So i ask. What was going on all that time? If suddenly they found many many problems, that they had to start all over again, they should have said that, and offered the possibility for any of us to refund in case they wouldnt like to support that effort. I really think that the final V1, as promised by NL months ago, wont be seen before summer. We will see some version of maxwell, but not what was really promised. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted November 22, 2005 Author Share Posted November 22, 2005 If that's the case buffos I think they probably spent a few months trying to fix problems that they thought wouldn’t be that difficult to overcome. It may have turned out that the way things were they simply couldn’t fix what ever was wrong and had to start over. That to me is irrelevant to what is going on now because they have created this situation them selves. We've moved past the point of it being a small annoyance and now to a lot of people this is becoming a serious and disturbing problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adehus Posted November 22, 2005 Share Posted November 22, 2005 If I were a reseller, I'd be awfully unhappy right now... I suspect that this is where the real problems for NL will originate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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