Development Started
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Good things take time. That's what I usually tell anyone who is breathing down my neck. My apologies for being a pest.
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This will put some sparkle back in your eyes, I just saw the first render from the next update. My, how lovely that billboard Susan looks in the VFB again, how I missed her.
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@dkendig said:
This will put some sparkle back in your eyes, I just saw the first render from the next update. My, how lovely that billboard Susan looks in the VFB again, how I missed her.
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will the new VFSU be RT????
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We are trying to bring all of the features we added in the latest VfR update, over to VfS for this next update. From there we're hoping we'll be able to develop both products at the same time.
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this is great, great news!
One thing about versions: licensed users will have a free upgrade, or will they need to buy it?
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My understanding so far is that we will all need to upgrade. Although a lot of existing bugs will be fixed, this will considered a major upgrade and not just a maintenance release. I'm sure someone from Chaos will chime in soon.
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I'm not really privy to that kind of info. I didn't find out that the VfR release was going to be a paid upgrade until just before it was released. It all depends on what happens in this development cycle I suppose. Certain features required much more time and effort than others, and have a greater impact on the workflow of the product, so they may have some sort of upgrade fee associated with them. I doubt you will get any answer other than that from anyone here, until we have a better idea of where the product will be upon the time of release (in the middle of beta testing or something like that). You could always try asking on our forums, rather than SketchUcation. I believe I'm the only Chaos Group employee that ever posts here, so this question really won't get much visibility from us here.
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Well, looking specifically at VFR - they now have a USB dongle licensing system - and the rhino upgrade was something like $250 during the first month or two of the release, that discount has now ended. I do hope they have a similar upgrade path for current vfs license holders...
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Dunno, I'm not a big fan of the whole time-limited discount for current license holders. Feels like they're stretching it a bit. I'm not too keen on dongles and having go through local resellers either. When's a dongle ever stopped piracy?
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@unknownuser said:
When's a dongle ever stopped piracy?
I don't think a dongle is about that - it's about not having to host licensing themselves. Less administrative work for them for when users need to change hardware, etc. Currently - you have to send a support request if you need to change your licensed machine. At least that's my basic understanding.
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Fair point.
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Nice cudgel by the way tom
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I am glad you like my handiwork. Then again, you better ...
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I need one of them when I moderate this forum once in a while...
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Know your tools, Thomas. Moderating requires a cattle prod. You want to, er, stimulate, not maim.
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andybot is spot on. Our current licensing system in VfS is a pretty big headache in certain situations. Some big companies have some very complicated security setups that prevent them from being able to license via the web, so then we have to juggle offline activation files around, and that gets messy. If you make any hardware changes to your computer, our current licensing will throw a hissy fit and tell you that you don't have a valid license anymore. Transporting a license from one machine to another is a grueling process.... the list goes on. Then on the positive side... you can activate for the first time, as soon as you purchase your license, and there's no extra hardware that you have to connect to a computer. That's about it though.
On the other hand, dongles allow us to still provide floating licenses, so you can have one dongle with 50 seats on it, and serve out those licenses to your whole office, just like the web based licensing allows. They allow you to move from one machine to another without a hitch. They allow you to modify your computer, or reinstall your OS without a problem. You don't have to worry about keeping track of that every so crucial email that has your serial number, like you do with the web based activation. Also, the dongle based licensing runs as a service without a problem from what I've heard.
I'll admit, I wasn't very excited about switching to dongles at first. I was not very fond of the idea of giving up a usb port. When my old development laptop died and I had to get a new one, I saw the value. I was up and running immediately, and I didn't even have to play around with our licensing database! Hooray! When I think of how many emails we get every week, from users that experience a similar situation, and now need us to add an exception to their license so they can re-activate on their machine that they modified in some way to invalidate their old license... I can really see the value. We typically will handle licensing related issues within 24 hours, but instantaneous is much faster!
Anyway, I can see both sides now. It's nice to be able to immediately activate your product, without having to wait a day or two for something in the mail. It's also nice to not have to wait up to 24 hours to use the product that was working fine yesterday, because your IT department modified your computer's hardware. When I really weigh it out though, I think I like the dongle based licensing much more (I never thought those words would come out of my mouth... or keyboard).
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I have a vray dongle already - for the standalone, and it is indeed super convenient. I've not had any issues with installation (um, except for user error
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excellent, I believe the standalone dongle can hold a VfS dongle license too, so you probably won't be waiting in line with the other beta testers
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time to put away some more money then...
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