OTOY Forums

Hi Goldorak, thanks for listening our ideas and already acting on them so quickly.

I fully understand your position (you have lot of DEVS (some very new included int he team ) and i don't want to sound ungrateful but i think rent to own should be 1.year plan also not just 3, bare with me for a moment.

Last year i got Foundry modo 11 perpetual license + 1 year maintenance plan. Then across year i got modo 11.2, 11.3, 12.0, 12.1 until my maintenance expired. I did not renew my modo license (it turned out that id does not fit for my projects) so i did not renew my license last month and now they released modo 12.2. When i install 12.2 my license manager says "wrong license version" so i can use it only as Demo, BUT when i run my 12.1 modo it runs fine 'coz my maintenance updates lasted till then and i've not been reverted back to modo 11. That i perfectly fine subscription model/system (IMHO).

By that system you get to know how much sure money you have for next fiscal year (since maintenance is payed 1 year in advance so basically customers are giving you money on blind/in advance without knowing how stable and feature pack product will they get till end of maintenance) and you can plan your updates/features more easily with your business cost numbers. Same system is used by Redshift (http://prntscr.com/lmobge) and Alleghoritmic and probably few more companies.

And i can assure you that if you continue with this great pace you showed last year 1-year plans will be renewed over and over again for majority of users/people so you don't need to "tie" users for 3-years only plan.
3 year in this business is A LOT of time and anything can happen so it's hard to cash out for 3-yars now and just hope for best. Also paperwork for accountants usually goes yearly so it's much easier/safer for paperwork to be sorted if we pay year by year.

Thank you very much for listening the users, and answering our questions over weekend, that is great dedication you have.

Hello

You are listening to your customer (Even if I'm still lost at this moment! ) Thanks OToy.

I'm a "basic" customer since V0 with one GTX680 (Yes I know ....! ).
My concern:
- an affordable model for my low requirement as it's for my pleasure
- continue to use the last version of my subscription. Go back to V4 in 2 years would be impossible. Like Substancepainter model?

I think I'm not alone.

Thanks again for you support and great job

eklein wrote:I read the update FAQ on perpetual license. It reads that the AA pass to own will revert to 2018.1 at minimum. If at the end of my 3 year AA pass to own I am on version 2021.1 it does not make sense to revert to 2018.1 at minimum.

It would much better if at the end of the 3 year AA pass to own. Your box licenses would stay at the latest octane version you had before the license expired.

Eric

I think we’ll be able to address that as you’d expect as soon as we are fully certain how we are going to split online only features coming further after 2018.1 off from a proposed future perpetual licence. It can be done, but we don’t want to promise details until we can be clear about it on the roadmap internally and externally. Part of why we wanted to limit perpetual licenses is because we foresee more and more critical pieces depending on online services in the coming years. We can comfortably push them out from 2018.1 since that’s already locked down.

Lewis wrote:Hi Goldorak, thanks for listening our ideas and already acting on them so quickly.

I fully understand your position (you have lot of DEVS (some very new included int he team ) and i don't want to sound ungrateful but i think rent to own should be 1.year plan also not just 3, bare with me for a moment.

Last year i got Foundry modo 11 perpetual license + 1 year maintenance plan. Then across year i got modo 11.2, 11.3, 12.0, 12.1 until my maintenance expired. I did not renew my modo license (it turned out that id does not fit for my projects) so i did not renew my license last month and now they released modo 12.2. When i install 12.2 my license manager says "wrong license version" so i can use it only as Demo, BUT when i run my 12.1 modo it runs fine 'coz my maintenance updates lasted till then and i've not been reverted back to modo 11. That i perfectly fine subscription model/system (IMHO).

By that system you get to know how much sure money you have for next fiscal year (since maintenance is payed 1 year in advance so basically customers are giving you money on blind/in advance without knowing how stable and feature pack product will they get till end of maintenance) and you can plan your updates/features more easily with your business cost numbers. Same system is used by Redshift (http://prntscr.com/lmobge) and Alleghoritmic and probably few more companies.

And i can assure you that if you continue with this great pace you showed last year 1-year plans will be renewed over and over again for majority of users/people so you don't need to "tie" users for 3-years only plan.
3 year in this business is A LOT of time and anything can happen so it's hard to cash out for 3-yars now and just hope for best. Also paperwork for accountants usually goes yearly so it's much easier/safer for paperwork to be sorted if we pay year by year.

Thank you very much for listening the users, and answering our questions over weekend, that is great dedication you have.

One year is much tougher then 3, for many reasons, but I agree we owe it to the community to look into it and see what can be done. It just isn’t a one day turnaround in this case.

Guys could you please confirm me that i get it right ?
for a company that has less than 20GPU and no RTX card ( only 1080 / 1080Ti ).

with the rent program at 20$ per month you get
- all feature except last Vulkan RTX optim / NVLink ( only useful if you own RTX card )
- full access to all DCC plugin
- full access to all maintenance (2018.1 , 2019 ... )
- network rendering
- you can't mix rent only and expert license

with the enterprise AA model for (399$ octane + 219$ houdini dcc) + 20$ month (Enterprise All-Access)
- i get the exact same things
+ offline licensing
+ last Vulkan RTX optim / NVLink
+ unlimited GPU numbers

If i get it right, renting model is a far better deal for us because all add-ons of the expert license are useless to us,
and in that scenario it's better for us to sell our expert license and switch to a rent only model.

Thanks for your lights !
Cheers

Goldorak wrote: One year is much tougher then 3, for many reasons, but I agree we owe it to the community to look into it and see what can be done. It jusy isn’t a one day turnaround in this case.

Excellent, you are truly taking community opinions into account and that is rare now-days. Thank you very much.

P.S. I have several ideas how this 1-year maintenance system could work (better) for you and still satisfactory for users (PM maybe ??) so i'm sure you can workout something for benefit of both parties.

cheers

If you need more than 1 GPU and are counting on that when using 2019 (which will have RTX-Vulkan speed ups) instead of V4 next year, I’d consider the Enterprise bundle. Read the FAQ - we are initially limiting any subscription versions with RTX-Vulkan back to the old 1-2 GPU limits (exact number and details TBD once we have finished this work).

fantome wrote:Guys could you please confirm me that i get it right ?
for a company that has less than 20GPU and no RTX card ( only 1080 / 1080Ti ).

with the rent program at 20$ per month you get
- all feature except last Vulkan RTX optim / NVLink ( only useful if you own RTX card )
- full access to all DCC plugin
- full access to all maintenance (2018.1 , 2019 ... )
- network rendering
- you can't mix rent only and expert license

with the enterprise AA model for (399$ octane + 219$ houdini dcc) + 20$ month (Enterprise All-Access)
- i get the exact same things
+ offline licensing
+ last Vulkan RTX optim / NVLink
+ unlimited GPU numbers

If i get it right, renting model is a far better deal for us because all add-ons of the expert license are useless to us,
and in that scenario it's better for us to sell our expert license and switch to a rent only model.

Thanks for your lights !
Cheers

Goldorak wrote:If you need more than 1 GPU and are counting on that when using 2019 (which will have RTX-Vulkan speed ups) instead of V4 next year, I’d consider the Enterprise bundle. Read the FAQ - we are initially limiting any subscription versions with RTX-Vulkan back to the old 1-2 GPU limits (exact number and details TBD once we have finished this work).

Hi,

Just to make this clear (sorry that I’m a bit dense):

I have just bought the 1 year subscription plan and have a RTX card. Will I get access to the 2019.1 build with RTX-Vulkan tech or not?

I have only one GPU, so I’m fine with that limitation.

Goldorak wrote:One year is much tougher then 3, for many reasons, but I agree we owe it to the community to look into it and see what can be done. It just isn’t a one day turnaround in this case.

Thanks for listening to our feedback Jules.

I would also prefer 1 year maintenance (rent to own). I own Foundry Modo and Substance Painter and they work this way.

3 years is a long time and a lot can change. We have no idea what you guys will be working on, or if the plugins we are using will be updated in a satisfactory way. Not all plugins are equally developed.

tldr Version:

- I do not mind leaving my existing perpetual license behind as “sunk cost” and switching to a flexible subscription model that only makes people pay for those features they actually need.

- Users already payed for Tensor Cores and NV Link when they purchased the hardware.
Asking users to pay extra to access those features is risking alienating them and make them look for alternative solutions.

- A survey sent to all registered customers could provide additional insight what different user groups expect.

- - -
- - -

First, thank you for staying in touch with your community and interacting on the forum.
I read through the updated FAQ and all posts to get an idea what other users care about.
I am aware that there are different kind of groups of customers who have different needs.

I take the time to provide more detailed feedback because there may not yet be a lot of other users who have purchased 2x 2080Ti and preordered NV Link at this point.



- - -

@ why I would prefer a flexible subscription model over rent to buy / maintenance solutions.

Sunk Costs

I am somewhat surprised that users still want to "buy" or "own" software when in fact older versions of software become unusable because the latest technology hardware is not backwards compatible.

Example: You cannot use OR V2 with Pascal cards. It can not be expected that Otoy upgrades older versions to support new technology.

The economic theory of "Sunk Costs" proposes that for decisions you only should consider how much money alternative options cost you in the future.
Any money you spent in the past should not anymore be considered for such decisions.

compare:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost

Based on that reasoning I would not mind if with 2018.1 Otoy would stop offering perpetual licenses and just focus on a flexible subscription model that is compatible with future plans.

- - -

Monthly subscriptions examples

I do not mind paying a fair amount of money for an Octane subscription.

What seems pointless to me is
- to pay for features I cannot use.
- to force users to still purchase or maintain a perpetual license to access some features

Therefore my suggestion is to provide a flexible subscription model so users pay for what they need

Example:
Basic Subscription 10$ per month- Users can use the latest version of Octane with all (!) features with 2 rendering (!) GPU.
Meaning if 3 GPU are installed two can be selected to render.

For each extra GPU: + 0.5 $ per month
Use up to 20 GPU: + 10$ per month
Use up to 200 GPU: + 100$ per month


Additional Render slaves: + 5$ per month

Access to all other DCC plugins: + 10$ per month.

Access to ORC (cloud features): + 10$ per month

Prices are examples.

The subscription model could be even more simplified if only the used software features are considered.

- - -
- - -

@ Tensor Cores and NV Link

Experimental Single GPU support with Vulkan-RT Core acceleration is planned for studio subscriptions in 2019 - further details will be finalized closer to the release.

Pay extra to use hardware features in software?

I am trying to understand based on what reasoning customers need to pay extra for using Tensor Cores and NV Link.

Customers paid a large amount of money for that technology to the hardware producers.
2600$ for 2x 2080Ti + 120$ for NV Link

Imagine the outrage if a game company would say:

- You can play our game with just the Cuda cores for 50$.

But if you want to use Tensor cores and NV Link you have to pay 50$ extra.

- No. If your game does not include support for Tensor cores and NV Link in the base version I will simply not purchase it and play that other game instead…

Agreed, Otoy did have to invest extra man hours to implement those features.
But it is just that: "a feature" like every other that should be covered by the regular (!) subscription.

Competition to cloud rendering plans?

Otoy seems to have plans for cloud rendering and the Block Chain.
Short term of course Tensor core technology may shift back the threshold to when cloud rendering is used for animation projects. In the long run this may balance out again. 8k, higher resolution VR & AR etc.

- - -

What are other companies doing?
Other users may be able to provide additional insight.

I have no clue what Nvidia is doing with Iray.
Some people say that it would be additional work to update Optix Prime for Tensor.

All I know is that some people are confused why there is no news if and when free Iray versions will include Tensor and NV Link support.
Because of that some Hobbyist users are looking at Octane.
An affordable Octane Studio for 20$ per month might convince some of them to give it a try when it includes Tensor and NV Link support.

Tensor Cores and NV Link Support as subscription update?


My suggestion to cover the cost of implementation:

Tensor Cores and NV Link Support: + 10$ Month

Once the initial cost of implementing is covered or the competition offers free solutions those features could then be included in the basic subscription.

- - -
- - -

To summarize:

From my point of view Otoy could try to make users shift to a "rent" subscription model as soon as possible.

Those users who agree with a subscription model should be able to access all features.

When new users are forced to purchase perpetual enterprise licenses with a maintenance system just to access Tensor Cores and NV Link it will make it even more challenging to switch to a subscription model further down the line.

- - -

It seems recommended not to rush decisions but indeed take the time until 2018.1 to carefully consider how to proceed.

A survey sent to all registered customers could provide additional insight.

- - -
Please delete this post if it goes beyond the intended focus of this thread.