Refractive Software® is discontinuing Cubix Xpander support

[bob30]

The problem with Cubix company is that they have not been enough intelligent to understand the market, as some of customers here

Octane render clearly is not Arion (who has "unleashed" its beast yesterday), nor is Thea Render who have proprietary formats for their materials and plays also with hybrid CPU + GPU.

I would say that Octane has no competitors, as it is now. The software is nearer the open source rendering than the high professionalized rendering software of Maxwell or other. But for quite equivalent quality and better speed.

Big companies with rendering vision like Luxology or Maxwell clearly stated that they were not going to engage themselves in GPU rendering by now, and for cause...

All are more or less tied to their particular market. Luxology is partnering with Intel, and so deals with CPU research and development, Maxwell don't want to lose his userbase, so they are all saying that GPUs rendering is not interesting. On the other side, Random Control understood the importance of GPUs but is tied to its Fry software, and so Arion is released to the same price than Fry.

So, for concluding, i would say that if Cubix made the price of its XPander PCI 2.0 (2000$) at the price of its Xpander PCI 1.0 (900$) and if the XPander PCI 1.0 was reduced comparatively; let's say to 300-450$, they could have gained Octane's market, but also LuxRender market which is going to GPUing too.

So, more customers, more money, but for more customers, more realistic and cheaper price are really needed, because octane's customer are not mainly 3D companies or 3D professionals with a lot of hardware investment capacities.

My two cents

[cakesson]

Announce in time for santa to pick me up one?

[hmk]

I see on the Cubix site they see things somewhat differently...
http://www.cubixgpu.com/Blog/1/27
Possibly it would not be a good idea to air dirty washing here.

This is bad.
The logic tells me that cubix story is more valid than refractive's.
If lack of support was a problem, then the duty of refractive is to warn their clients when they knew about it (assuming that this happened alot to the point they found no other solution but breaking their partnership with Cubix), not to mention customers starts to complain on the forum when that happened.

But since this did not happen and it poped out of the blue, then I believe the cause was another thing, and the only valid issue on the table is Cubix part of the story which is a business to business problem that has nothing to do with the product or the support.

This is bad because it shakes the trust in what Refractive software says/announce about any other issue/subject.

When I first bought Octane I posted a msg that this company (Refractive Software) has a great future, I hope I was right.

[radiance]

Hi all,

The reasons why we're not continuing with the Xpander products is as said, they are hand made, too expensive and the company is too small to support our userbase, and we have had customers with support issues, even people waiting for a few weeks to get a reply.

I've finally visited cubix (as i'm in the US currently) and was a bit suprised by the lack of resources.

I think we need a more established company, with a larger production capability, cheaper products, with a more compact form factor and flexibility. (especially support for mac laptops, iMacs, etc....)

We're currently working with another company on something that's more akin to an external USB drive (albeit a bit bigger) and stackable.

Obviously cubix is not happy with this decision, i can understand that, but we need to move on.

Yours,
Radiance

[pixelrush]

Well youve got me confused because the info I found says Cubix Corp of which CubixGPU is part have been around since 1975 and has 200+ employees.
The building I looked at via Google maps looks pretty substantial.
They seem to have free telephone, email and return to base support.
Could be I missed it but I cant recall anyone here saying they have any problems with Cubix?
Still its obvious you guys need to go your separate ways for whatever reason.
I am not sure I would have posted the news in quite this way though.

[p3taoctane]

I was one of the early purchaser's of a Cubix Box. I thought it would be a great system for laptops. Grab the Cubix box.. grab the laptop.. away ya go.
Never has worked and never was able to get the support I needed to get it working. Still have not. They required me to send in my laptop to get it to work.

Sorry thats like Octane saying please send in your machine so we can get Octane to work on your machine.

I think they mean't well and had a great idea... they just could not pull off the support needed to get it functioning at level that was dependable. If I was in Octanes shoes I would do the same thing.

I wish Cubix luck but if there is a better solution I am up for it.

[Carl S.]

Cubix tested the configuration I wanted to order on a mac pro before I ordered it to be sure it worked. I took the steps to make sure they knew it would work and I did not order blindly without a confirmation it would work on my specific system. They then called me on the day I received it to see if I needed support in installing it, which I did not and haven't needed since. The guy was extremely nice and helpful. I have never had a company call me out of the blue after delivery to help install. I did get conflicting dates on shipping and one box shipped after the other. Everything else has been flawless and I have rendered literally 50,000 to 100,000 unbiased HD frames since then. No complaints here.

[pixelrush]

p3taoctane,
Seems you had it running properly at one time. Evidently there were problems after this???

The help at Cubix has been patient an sound. Had to chaneg something in the display class regsitry for windows 7

Up and running on all three

Thanks Mike at Cubix

Peter

[p3taoctane]

That was true at first. They were indeed patient until I ran into problems that were not easily solved with an email. The harder the problem the less attention it got.

I think GPU is in its infancy and there a lot of things that evolve as it grows. Its a hard thing to support perfectly. As I said I wish Cubix well and I am sure I was a bigger a problem to them as I might feel they were for me. Always two sides to every story.

In this case I'm just on Radiance's side, thats all. May not be on other issues. I do not mean to slam them. But I do understand where Radiance is coming from.

[pixelrush]

It really not for me to say what you should do but I would be extremely reluctant to say things in public that might appear to assert either company's position. I fear too much has been said already that may lead to someone being sued. If you have been dissatisfied with Cubix customer service on a personal level in the past for some reason I think you would best keep that separate from this affair... just my few cents
It would be better if this thread was removed altogether in my opinion.