News on displacement

[renato]

See here:

 

http://www2.nextlimit.com/newsletter/summer07/newsletter_sum07.html

 

looks impressive.

[AJLynn]

...but I still want to know how this is different and why it takes so long to code...

[wodewil]

I think thats because it is rather paralax mapping then normal displacement.And paralax is avalaible with DX10 ( I think ?) so they have to recode it.... or they dont have idea how to do displacement code

[rivoli]

...but I still want to know how this is different and why it takes so long to code...

 

I vibe you won't get an answer to any of your questions, but hey.. that's what we all love about nl.

[Devin Johnston]

...but I still want to know how this is different and why it takes so long to code...

 

I believe it all has to do with how many people they have working on Maxwell, from what I've been able to pick up they have about 7 people working on it at any given time. That doesn’t mean all 7 of those people work on it full time, just that 7 of them are doing something sometimes; and out of those people at least one or two probably don't do any coding at all. It makes since that with the less than stellar performance of Maxwell over the last two years that NL's desire to continue the Maxwell project has taken a hit. They probably have a certain number of new customers every month but not enough to make it worth wile to put full support behind their product. In the end this means that they aren't able to spend the time developing the code like they should and it takes them far longer to do simple things. Add to that fact that they don't seem to test anything until the last minute or sometimes not at all and when they do find problems they either have to delay the update or just send it out angering the already neglected community. So even if this is a new method of displacement and they really want to get it out they are probably to swamped with every day things that need work to spend any time messing with it.

[Adehus]

Maxer, you may be right, but for the sake of comparison consider Fry. From what I gather about Fry's development, the sole developer is Chema. He may have some help, but his team is certainly no larger than NL's... and it seems like he's adding new functionality every time I visit his site! Fran's render with the 'bloom' feature is sweet! And look at the sss renders, Fry is still capable of adding features that make me think, "I want that".

 

Low sales and resulting low morale may be part of NL's problem, but I think it has more to do with the personalities of the management and just a general lack of competence. NL's development of Maxwell has never been smooth or efficient (and it may not have moved forward at all in any significant sense- I still think the beta was the best version for my purposes), and IMHO any expectations of NL getting any better are simply a result of daring to believe that they *can* do better.