overthere wrote:Just saw from the facebook page there is now at least some option for a permanent purchase which I appreciate.
Echoing Jonjambons comments as also having bought the 1 year all access - the 3 year upfront purchase price, particularly with a fairly unclear outcome in terms of which version / features that would represent is a bit off putting.
I love your product the free upgrade to V4 is very much appreciated and the speed that it gives to iterate is great.
From that position could I just say please, please look at your communication routes
, you managed to take a great, generous product launch and inject bad feeling into it for some people which is painful to watch.
As you move into the subscription era can I suggest you look at the general approach that Allegorithmic take with their Substance suite. Both in community communication and a rent to own scheme.
I think all of the above are fair points. Now consider the below:
Octane is updated now every few months. We have literally seen V4 stable and 20180 (V5) XB1 come out the same day, with another major version (2019 - V6) coming only months later. If this pace is going to continue (as it should), where's the clear cutoff for a perpetual licence holder to disembark from? - it's no longer delineated by version or even really by year (we have 3 major updates in 6 months , between 2 years).
The reality is that after 9 years of Octane (yes it's been that long) we and the community should concede that there is no practical perpetual licence when it comes to GPU support. Octane 2 and 3.07 (that was the latest build a little over a year ago) do not work on RTX 2080 cards, and never will. As 2080's gen cards become the norm, anyone stuck on V2 / 3.07 or is going to have a product that won't run on any new consumer GPUs.
This illustrates that Octane may - at any point / version/ update - be a just year away from needing a non-trivial upgrade to work on a new generation of GPUs, as has already happened with Turing. When this does happen, and it will - should we go back and update every possible version or release that a user may end up "owning" - depending on when a short maintenance period happens to end? 2018.1, 2019.3 etc? Or do we just ensure they are on the latest version, with the latest updates and fixes - and not waste resources going back to more and more outdated releases that are no longer years apart, but now just months apart.
Lastly - in the not too distant future we will have many features and modules which won't be baked into the core engine, but delivered online through a service that needs to be maintained and supported continuously - if it is going to operate continuously. This will eventually include LiveDB2 and auto-updates to Octane kernels and core as well (not unlike how Octane for Unity is handled today - its always updated).
None of the above means we can't snapshot Octane at key points after V4 - and offer that as a rent to own option . Now that we've committed to doing that, we will figure a way out - but there need to be some hard limits to this if we're going to stay at this pace for updates, features and releases.
As always - your feedback and thoughts are very welcome.
