2.3 release and roadmap
Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2010 2:19 pm
Hi all,
Since a lot of people are asking quite a few questions i've decided to write this post to explain what's the status and when you can expect 2.3.
There have been 3 major things that have had an impact on delaying our 2.3 release:
* i've been sick for a few weeks, and i did'nt manage to do much programming.
* we've had an enormous success with our discount week campaign, and we've had to develop a database which we're deploying during the next days to automate a lot of things like sales and activations, that are consuming nearly 70% of my time.
* recent multiple accounts of piracy have forced us to move some features originally planned for beta3 to beta 2.3, which will make pirated copies of octane render very useless.
As a result we've still got a lot to do, but we won't leave you waiting for weeks,
so we've decided to do it in pieces.
Another major thing is that we will be switching to the new cuda 3.1 toolkit and newer drivers (it contains a lot of new features that make things a lot easier for us as developers).
When we last made the switch from cuda 2.3 to cuda 3.0 we had a lot of problems, so we're expecting the same.
Therefore, we will make an intermediate release in say 2 weeks time which will be a cuda 3.1 release with area lights (for pathtracing and directlighting) and a few new toys.
Then, a few weeks after that, we we will release the final 2.3 with MLT and the new anti-piracy (which is actually a very nice feature which everyone will love) stuff.
One more thing is that the implementation of MLT on a GPU (which has never been done before in this way, that i know of) is a tricky thing, so we will probably not release a pure MLT algorithm, but something slightly different, which will give the same or maybe even better results.
So you'll be able to experiment with area lights, blackbody emitters, custom spectra, etc..., pretty soon, and you'll be able to get comfortable with cuda 3.1 and the new drivers until the final 2.3 comes out and you won't have any compatibility suprises then.
Thanks for your time,
Radiance
Since a lot of people are asking quite a few questions i've decided to write this post to explain what's the status and when you can expect 2.3.
There have been 3 major things that have had an impact on delaying our 2.3 release:
* i've been sick for a few weeks, and i did'nt manage to do much programming.
* we've had an enormous success with our discount week campaign, and we've had to develop a database which we're deploying during the next days to automate a lot of things like sales and activations, that are consuming nearly 70% of my time.
* recent multiple accounts of piracy have forced us to move some features originally planned for beta3 to beta 2.3, which will make pirated copies of octane render very useless.
As a result we've still got a lot to do, but we won't leave you waiting for weeks,
so we've decided to do it in pieces.
Another major thing is that we will be switching to the new cuda 3.1 toolkit and newer drivers (it contains a lot of new features that make things a lot easier for us as developers).
When we last made the switch from cuda 2.3 to cuda 3.0 we had a lot of problems, so we're expecting the same.
Therefore, we will make an intermediate release in say 2 weeks time which will be a cuda 3.1 release with area lights (for pathtracing and directlighting) and a few new toys.
Then, a few weeks after that, we we will release the final 2.3 with MLT and the new anti-piracy (which is actually a very nice feature which everyone will love) stuff.
One more thing is that the implementation of MLT on a GPU (which has never been done before in this way, that i know of) is a tricky thing, so we will probably not release a pure MLT algorithm, but something slightly different, which will give the same or maybe even better results.
So you'll be able to experiment with area lights, blackbody emitters, custom spectra, etc..., pretty soon, and you'll be able to get comfortable with cuda 3.1 and the new drivers until the final 2.3 comes out and you won't have any compatibility suprises then.
Thanks for your time,
Radiance
