Octane 1.23-v6

[oguzbir]

@Faizol
You all are right...

Actually the problem lies from the start. Since Octane used to have less paid customer these days. And I think the developers, mainly radiance could cope with the some customers answer every question and than continue coding process.
As far as i can see, after 2.2 release people noticed, anticipated the potential of octane after purchasing one or more 400 series GTX Cards and the demand got huge every day. In order to face huge demand and accelerate the processing process the company got bigger in short time. There is absoultely no problem from that. I love the way it evolves. And hail every developer.

The stress should have got more and more after every user purchase. Us, most users lets say have no programming backrounds but we can think of how hard would it be to create such thing. There is a proverbish saying in Turkish, "There is no need to re-discover America". This is simply just the opposite.

What I would demand from the developers is that there might be a public informing thread not realtime ofcourse but maybe on a scheduled basis.
The surprise insights of v5(or was it v4?) were perfect. Since I'm all fine with the current release.
I'm aware of the next version is worked on, and is based on the new kernel rendering tecnique.
And I believe, when the time is right refractive sofware will release insights.
What I think is that creating new render engine algorithm is just another thing, like starting everything from ground up.
So there we'll have new problems arise with the new engine. So it seems imposibble to list of things to expect with v6

We'll just have to wait patiently. After it is done. Than we will have our wishlists.

[steveps3]

I actually work for a software house and we know exactly what is going into the next version of our software before we start coding it. It really is the only way to work. There is no point keep on piling in new features because if you do that, the code will never be finished.

There should be a definate, version 6 will include this, this and this. We are currently x% towards the goal. Simply saying that the package could contain pretty much anything is not the way to work.

[oguzbir]

I actually work for a software house and we know exactly what is going into the next version of our software before we start coding it. It really is the only way to work. There is no point keep on piling in new features because if you do that, the code will never be finished.

There should be a definate, version 6 will include this, this and this. We are currently x% towards the goal. Simply saying that the package could contain pretty much anything is not the way to work.

I suppose it was all said before the new algorithm is going to be somekind of a MLT but more efficient to work with the GPU (CUDA).
The main focus should be simply this, nothing more. All of the other parts of the software will and should depend on the new architecture.

But I agree with you about the "we're % towards the goal" type of thing. But in that case company procedures would be taken into account. Does the refractive folks would want to publish the progress while there are growing number of cuda developers out in the industry.. I think all are pushing the limits of the GPU coding system and trying to find loopholes to best fit for the software.
Since we don't own the company. We have no right to say. But we can demand. Just kidding.

Lets see what the time will bring.

[matej]

I hope that 6 will bring more than "just" MLT. Especially in the workflow flexibility field - exporting fixes, node importing fixes, ability to duplicate nodes, easier management of resources, less crippling Graph editor...

Anyway, I'm sure we will have to wait longer for it than we've waited for 4, 5... So constantly nagging for it is of no use, but (and precisely because of that) it would be nice to have some updates on the roadmap from the developers, from time to time.

[Faizol]

I don't think there's any problem with wishlist for the next version. As per "keep adding features", that symptom is probably true for a newbie programmer, not seasoned programmer (I am a coder myself). Radiance has been working on Luxray (or was it smallLux gpu renderer?) for five years before he started this Octane so it's unfair to simply generalize that this problem is because of the impromptu inclusion of new feature set into the development. Also wishlist doesn't equal to pressuring programmers to release early info of the next version.

As per changing the main kernel during the development, I can see the reason why it's done now instead of later in the development process. The introduction of the new APIs in CUDA 3.2 toolkit would require some changes have to be done anyway, only then the full capacity of GTX 480 (fermi) and above would be fully utilized. Plus since the MLT itself is not guaranteed to solve the fireflies problem, might as well to try the "evolved" version of the algorithm into the main kernel. And modular programming employed will help to minimize the "reinventing the wheel".

There's a major milestones set for the full 1.0 version on the refractive homepage as a general guideline. As per release .23, there's already an announcement on it by Radiance before the beta version was released. Among the tidbits that I remember was true command line rendering mode (aka silent mode), lighting and several others.

[Necrosis]

All I can say is: Calm down, octane was allready way underpriced for what it delivers and the customer support is great too...

So it's to be expected that either customer support or development speed will go down.. it's either one or the other..


And for the octane render team, You guys take it easy too, stress is counter productive after all...

[steveps3]

All I can say is: Calm down, octane was allready way underpriced for what it delivers and the customer support is great too...

I'm not really sure that I can agree that the customer support is great. You only have to look at the forum to see the number of people complaining about the software crashing when their internet fails or not being able to get their licence code. In fact all of the questions I've asked have been answered by other users, not the support team.

Great software, so so support is my opinion.

[matej]

All I can say is: Calm down, octane was allready way underpriced for what it delivers and the customer support is great too...

So it's to be expected that either customer support or development speed will go down.. it's either one or the other..

Why is this expected? Because the software was underpriced?

Support and communication with userbase went down (and it's now quite shitty, not great) because of the office move, but mainly because the team lost some members, and the development speed will also go down because of that. All we can do is to help each other with our problems and hope that the core development team will be fully re-manned soon.

[Timmaigh]

All I can say is: Calm down, octane was allready way underpriced for what it delivers and the customer support is great too...

I'm not really sure that I can agree that the customer support is great. You only have to look at the forum to see the number of people complaining about the software crashing when their internet fails or not being able to get their licence code. In fact all of the questions I've asked have been answered by other users, not the support team.

Great software, so so support is my opinion.

I disagree, i can say from personal experience, that support is great... i did a stupid mistake, used exclamation mark in my original forum name...that caused an issue and octane would not start for me...so i wrote an email to support and it was promptly fixed by Radiance himself... i did not even now at first, it is him, who wrote me back, the office opening hours stated in Pacific Standard Time led me to false assumption there is some kind of office in US, assigned to licensing and providing support....but obviously Refractive is still very small company and Radiance has -alongside coding new kernel- to solve issues like mine...which i am sure must be too much of burden for one person... so please be more patient, he probably works 24/7

[steveps3]

Hence the fact that you now have a teachers pet attitude. Where as the rest of us live in the real world.