Octane 1.23-v6

[Faizol]

I repost back a reply from radiance dated back on December 10th. And it's not even a month from his reply date till today. Give the team some time, the team knows better than anyone else about customer service and loyalty and what it means to their business.

Also let's not forget that the next release will be using a just released CUDA 3.2, and refactoring the code to take advantage of the new API is not an easy task. Everyone wants to fully use all their cuda cores, not just 2/3 of them, right?

Perhaps you guys can ask trinity about refractive plans generally. Not sure though if she may be able to answer questions pertaining to octane development.

Hi guys,

We're working on the next release, due to the new people joining and the time it takes to train them development has lagged a bit during the last 2 months, but we're entering a stage where we will doing releases faster and more regular.
I'll post an updated development roadmap next week.

We will release a new version soon with many bugfixes and new features names v5b, which should fix all remaining bugs and add several new features (a lot of requested ones) after which we will work on the last major release and then go live with 1.0 final.

Radiance

[pixelrush]

I'm waiting with bated breath...just hope I dont go purple...

[Cronicash]

Imo i don't really think you have a choice unless its some other bias assumption in your own mind that makes you more content with another app. I believe refractive are at the forefront of what they do. Theres really nothing else in the same field to make a comparison/ judgment. Thea would be a nice engine to have as gpgpu but i don't see that happening all too soon. Still have allot of end users and sales at the end of the day. Updates are three months on average between but its still going strong... While a small minority of customers may suffocate due to development time scale, its only a drop in the ocean compared to what it will result in the end leading the way...

Customers buy the license for what it can do, not what it might be able to do later on (proposed bonuses?)... Bite your tongue hard enough or your opinion may become numb...

[pixelrush]

I am sorry I dont know you.
Are you part of Refractive?
They were at the forefront and producing new versions fairly often.
Then something serious happened we arent allowed to know about and we havent had anything since.
I was wondering, quite reasonably, if its coming back or not.
Will the original plan be delivered on? in what time frame?
2270 odd other customers might like to know this as well.
I didnt just buy Octane for what it could do I bought it because of what was stated in the roadmap for v1 and anticipated for v2.
These are fair questions to ask.
They ought not be too difficult for Refractive to answer.
I am sorry to say there is a bit of a credibility gap at the moment.

[Faizol]

No offence, but I would prefer the refractive team to spend time developing octane rather than spending their time answering a never ending questions about release dates and feature requests and so forth. We've seen before how some customers pushed the team to release the previous version too early and see what happened in the forum? The same customers accused the team of bad customer service even though the customers have been notified beforehand that the released was an early release and not feature complete.

What I don't understand is that how some of the guys here actually experienced how bad it is to work under tight deadlines with their customers keep on bugging them with unreasonable requests and yet the very same people do that to the team here.

From customer service point of view, Radiance has stated that a new release is in the work right now. And I think it is just fair to give him a chance to do that. It really is counter productive to keep on bugging the team on the release date and so forth. As per the agreed roadmap, it's been published long time ago and I believe it's a pinned thread in the forum for anyone to check on it.

[pixelrush]

Well I think you miss the point.
I am asking if the overall mission is alive and going to be completed.
To my mind most of the problems that transpired for Refractive were self generated though I suspect you would be hard pressed to get an admission of that let alone find out exactly what they were/are.
And yes customer service deteriorated very badly. Lets not pretend otherwise.
If anything Refractive have had a long period of grace now when no one has been asking whats going on or when the next release is out. In fact the forums have been very quiet almost as if people may have sensed the situation might be grave and are philosophical about it.
Refractive really need to re-establish some credibility through deeds rather than words after last year.
Making a statement reaffirming their business plan is intact wouldnt hurt either.

[vimaxus]

It's not stressing to demand a deadline!
We want to know the deadlines (at the very least a REALISTIC timeframe)
We don't want to IMPOSE the deadlines but there has to be some indication of when to expect it and in the past few months everything seems quite dead around here from the user perspective.

[Cronicash]

We need to be careful as not to give away too much of our developmennt roadmap and new ideas to competitors, so we can only post previews of new features like this one a few weeks or days before a new release.
I know it's not what you would like to hear but it's nevertheless important for us as a company...

Impatient much...

[Faizol]

geez...

Well I think you miss the point.
I am asking if the overall mission is alive and going to be completed.
To my mind most of the problems that transpired for Refractive were self generated though I suspect you would be hard pressed to get an admission of that let alone find out exactly what they were/are.

Seriously, do you really have to know the internal working of refractive software? What matters is if there ever was some internal discord or whatever, it was taken care appropriately (and peacefully) and the development can still continue. What rights do the outsiders like you and me have to know about refractive software's internal decision?

And yes customer service deteriorated very badly. Lets not pretend otherwise.

sigh... Didn't Radiace pointed out that a new release is in the working and will be released when it's ready? Didn't he mention the reason why the development was lagging for two months, and only the last few weeks that the development pace has increased? So what sort of customer service do you want?
Look, before this, radiance started octane alone. Then two other developers joined him. Couple of months later some developers left. Then a new developer joined in. Looking at the track record, the service was good when radiance alone was handling the development and the customer service. So is it unfair to give radiance another chance? Moreover when he clearly stated that a new release is on the way?

If anything Refractive have had a long period of grace now when no one has been asking whats going on or when the next release is out. In fact the forums have been very quiet almost as if people may have sensed the situation might be grave and are philosophical about it.
Refractive really need to re-establish some credibility through deeds rather than words after last year.
Making a statement reaffirming their business plan wouldnt hurt either.

What's the best statement other than releasing a newer version of octane? Plus, what's the point of hiring extra developers and PR people if refractive is not serious about octane software business? Also, a quiet "Release Candidate Testing Forum" doesn't mean that other forums are inactive. Refractive has announced about discontinued hardware partner and will be unveiling a new partner for that. Plus radiance has stated in other forum about a possibility of tying license to a piece of hardware. There's nothing philosophical about those activities.

Like many others have said, let the team do their job. They know that they are behind schedules due to what happened internally to refractive software and they are trying their best to catch up to their own milestones and deadlines. And the best customer service is by releasing a solid newer octane version. And I've said it many times before, due to API changes in CUDA 3.2, it's impossible to make a straight forward drop in replacement by substituting the previous API with the newer one.

[pixelrush]

I have the right to know if Refractive are going to deliver on their undertaking which I paid for in good faith as is the case of all Refractive customers including those still signing up.
I will be absolutely blunt about it without going into detail that I suspect a whole pack of lies were told about various things and events and I dont like that at all.
As I said there is a credibility problem.