Why the ruddy Dongle?
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V-Ray was famously pirated... like autocad. it's not you they don't trust. it's the pirates who hack it.
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Actually - it gives the user more flexibility in that you can move your license around without having to submit a support request each time. Works well over a network too, maybe try that option in your case?
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I dont think its all that big of a deal either. Its made licensing much less of a pain in the butt too.
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I can vouch for the simplicity of the dongle as well. From a support standpoint, we have seen a significant reduction in the amount of licensing issues since switching to dongle based licensing. Users are now able to take their licenses with them from computer to computer, set up floating license servers with ease, and not worry about changes to their local machine's hardware, or operating system.
I develop the product on a macbook pro, and have worked around the usb port issue by simply using a low profile usb hub. I have my mouse and my dongle plugged in to the hub, and I just plug/unplug the hub like I would my mouse, never disconnecting the dongle or the mouse from the hub, plus I still have 2 additional usb ports left on the hub in case I need it for anything.
The switch to dongle based licensing, was something that was done in order to get more in line with the other V-Ray products, after our company, ASGVIS, was acquired by Chaos Group. They have been doing dongle based licensing with their products for quite some time. Without switching to dongles, RT rendering would not have been able to be added to V-Ray for SketchUp, nor would some other features that have been added, and will be added in the 3.0 release. I understand the frustration, but it was a necessary change. The old software based licensing, although initially simple to set up... was a horrible system that was riddled with issues.
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I onderstand the problems, but still feel greatly distrusted. And using a hub would add to the cluster behind my mbo with thunderbolt screen again. It again adds to complexity. See Vectorworks, who have tackeled the licensing issue very effectively in the software since 2009. Adobe let you install on two machines, when not used at the same time. Until they started the rip-you-off-monthly scheme of CC. I seriously think dongles sooo 1995. There must be better ways to support the user. It lacks creativity.
And yes, autocad is hacked, but at those horrific prices you almost write an open invitation, for otherwise you need a mortgage. I won't hack, but somewhere some understanding pops up. -
Why not just get one of these?
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well, autocad does provide free student licenses. i think you only need a university e-mail address to get one. (eventually x-forcing it removes the neccessity of manually editing out the 'produced in student product' watermarks, but otherwise it's a full autocad installation)
the interesting thing is - no one uses paid products for school work on any university that i know of. (have you seen a student that could just throw $3k for all the software he actually uses?) still these people become so familiar with these programs that eventually they won't be bothered to learn anything else because they're already quick with the SW they know and just buy the damn license.
for me, VRay for SU uncovered the possibilities of the photoreal visualisations and introduced me to the archviz world. that being said - because a great deal of users still work on noncommercial projects ie. university work, it might just be easier to transfer to 3dsmax & vray 2, where we get RT and proxies (and other stuff like forestpack, railclone, multiscatter etc.) while still building the geometry and components in sketchup.
and this is maybe the weird thing about chaosgroup - while autodesk offers 'free entrance' into their suits (because they anticipate the users will stay with what they will have learned), adobe switched from one-product to subsription licensing (so no effective change there because i suspect they have a monopol for postproduction
photoshop & illustrator & indesign being the holy triad), and chaosgroup goes the opposite direction of enclosing the software even more.maybe this is good - 'learn on the old, pay for the new.' but this strategy is, i think, very risky since autodesk ships the latest mental rays and irays with their product, offering similar performance and image quality.
but i'm not a marketer, nor an economist - these people have done all the calculations. it's just my observation.
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I hate the dongle. Plain and simple hate it. Probably because the 3 software packages I use - SketchUp, Rhino and modo all let me install wherever as along as I'm only using one instance at a time. That's one end of a spectrum, the dongle is the opposite end. I have V-Ray for SketchUp and for Rhino. Which means I have a USB that's worth too much money to lose or damage. I'm an independent contractor but forget that idea of taking it to work on my client's computers. Both of my home installations failed and required the intervention of Chaos. They're extremely nice and they're helpful but I'm not crazy about trying to explain to a client why I've got a USB stick in their computer that needs something called a Wibu key (or whatever it's called) and it can't find the program and nothings working and I can't trouble shoot it myself, I've got to sit and wait for someone to call me back. On their time.
Whenever I've had cause to uninstall and reinstall any other program I have a license for I've been able to do it myself with no intervention from the software company. I could uninstall and reinstall Rhino in the middle of the night if I wanted to. Not so with dongle problems. I haven't upgraded either version because the installation was so finicky and the installation instructions were so convoluted and confusing and I ended up with so much down time that I just don't want to go there. And yes, Chaos worked it out - they actually ran my computer remotely to solve the problem. They were great but be forewarned - if you do have problems it's not a simple uninstall and reinstall.
Hate it.
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I know this is an old thread, but I thought I'd add in my dongle horror stories for past products. It used to be every expensive 3D or effect software had to have a hardware dongle. I had many and one day, during a particularly difficult project, working at both home and the office, the dongle went missing. I called the company and they said I needed to pay for a brand new license. I couldn't believe it! I actually ended up having to purchase a new copy of the software because they didn't trust me as a customer. Later they said they would replace it if I would file them a police report and send it to them. The extremely sad part is that even with all the pain and suffering they put their paying customers through with the dongle, there are/were cracked versions of the software available on the Internet.
Another time, during a stressful and time boxed deadline (aren't they all that way?), the damn dongle just quit working. Took 2 days to get a replacement, again extreme problems all because the company couldn't and wouldn't trust their paying customers. There are too many great products out there to have to submit to being held hostage by a hardware dongle and one should think twice before ever getting into bed with a company that treats their customers with such disdain.
There will always be pirates and ANY software can be cracked. Please, companies, have a bit more respect for your customers and use other, more serviceable means to protect your intellectual property!
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@chippwalters said:
There will always be pirates and ANY software can be cracked. Please, companies, have a bit more respect for your customers and use other, more serviceable means to protect your intellectual property!
Hear, hear.
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Our software licensing was worse than dongles by a long shot. It was great when it worked... sometimes... The dongle should be pretty simple to work with. If you do a typical install (not unchecking anything), it should just work. It's kind of a pain to carry around a usb dongle, so I just plug it into a machine and point my laptop at it. The dongle can be public facing as well, so you don't even have to be on the same network as the machine that has the dongle plugged in (or you can just vpn in if you have a vpn set up). I have heard of some users having a little difficulty, but typically that's due to a faulty install of some sort (not saying this is the customer's fault, installs don't always go according to plan for a variety of reasons), or the license server not running for whatever reason.
We are aware that it's possible to steal the product, and that we shouldn't punish our customers... but the dongle licensing is SIGNIFICANTLY easier to troubleshoot/fix, it's mobile, and it doesn't require someone at our company to manually process a request to simply REINSTALL the product (on the same computer), like our software licensing did. You should have seen the difference in our support inbox once we switched licensing to dongles. It's extremely obvious that the dongle licensing is less prone to error. I think you guys either missed how awful our old licensing was, or haven't tried setting up a floating license server with the current dongle licensing.
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So your defense of using a hardware dongle is that your previous software solution was bad? Perhaps you should look how your competitors solve the problem. There are still too many significant problems with hardware dongles, including how to instantly replace lost or damaged ones, for my company to seriously consider it.
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Defending? No, just pointing out the outcry about difficulty licensing, occurred after we took steps to resolve the issue. Licensing our product is easier, and more reliable than it ever has been. Offline licensing is a cinch now, you don't have to worry about network communication issues in a corporate environment anymore, you can reinstall our product without having to shoot us an email, licensing doesn't suddenly stop working out of the blue due to a software update, etc. Not to mention issues with international customers not being able to reach our license server due to region restrictions, or the shear lag in the communication (not everyone lives in the US). The dongle licensing system is time tested, corporate IT guy approved, and is what we use for every other flavor of V-Ray.
I'm not saying that having a little piece of hardware that you have to worry about (to some degree at least) isn't a pain at all, but I don't believe it's deserving of so much pushback. You could have hundreds of seats on the one dongle, and serve it out across an entire company, or you can have one seat and carry it in your laptop bag. The only legitimate argument I have heard against dongles, is that if you lose or damage it, you will have some downtime while waiting for a new dongle. As a laptop user myself, I can certainly understand the "struggle" of only having 2 usb ports (which hopefully both work), but aside from the initial frowny face I made when plugging that dongle into the usb hub it now resides in, I haven't even had to think about that little dongle ever since.
I understand that other software uses other means to protect their intellectual property as well, and sometimes, in some situations, their solutions work really well. The same can be said for our old software based licensing and our current dongle licensing. It all depends on your setup.
chippwalters: I would be interested in hearing what your significant issues are with dongle licensing, perhaps there are some items on your list that we could address. If you are stuck using an older version of our product, because of your concerns with dongle licensing, you are really missing out, and I would like to fix that asap.
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@chippwalters said:
There will always be pirates and ANY software can be cracked. Please, companies, have a bit more respect for your customers and use other, more serviceable means to protect your intellectual property!
Licensing just keeps honest people honest. We are fully aware of this fact. That's why we switched to dongles, it protects our IP and is easier to work with than our previous licensing method.
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@dkendig said:
chippwalters: I would be interested in hearing what your significant issues are with dongle licensing, perhaps there are some items on your list that we could address. If you are stuck using an older version of our product, because of your concerns with dongle licensing, you are really missing out, and I would like to fix that asap.
There are so many problems, I just don't know where to start. Let's see, first off I work both at home and at the office. My commute is 45 minutes 1 way into work. If for some reason I forget the dongle, I'm up the creek with out a..dongle.
Next, I don't have lot's of available ports on my computer, and I really don't want to add a whole mess of wires of a USB hub just for a stupid dongle-- which is a physical reminder the company I've chosen to do business with doesn't trust me.
Don't get me started on the whole "lose dongle" issue. One time a dongle I was using quit working. I had to send it back to the company and they sent me a new one-- 3 days after it quit working I could get back to work. That wasn't the end of the horror story. The next week I received an email from their lawyer threatening a lawsuit because in their opinion the dongle malfunctioned only because I was trying to 'hack' it. Really??? A month later I received another email telling me they were sorry, but that there was some sort of virus going around which 'corrupted' dongles. Sheesh! That was the very last time I ever paid for a dongle.
I quit using Lightwave because of hardware dongles (different company than the previous one mentioned) and started back using it when their license protection became software only. I own KeyShot, Lightwave, FormZ, Thea, SU Pro, MoI3d and a host of other powerful and more or less expensive 3D programs than yours and NONE have a dongle.
I'm betting you guys are out of the dongle business in a year. I can't imagine paying customers will continue to put up with it...especially since there is so much competition in the rendering space. I'll review your offering again when you get rid of the hardware protection.
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@chippwalters said:
I'm betting you guys are out of the dongle business in a year. I can't imagine paying customers will continue to put up with it...especially since there is so much competition in the rendering space. I'll review your offering again when you get rid of the hardware protection.
Don't count on it. Like Devin said - all the other versions of vray are dongle licensed, and have been for much longer than vfs.
That does sound like a pain that you have to use the dongle at home and at work, with the commute in between.
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@krisidious said:
V-Ray was famously pirated... like autocad. it's not you they don't trust. it's the pirates who hack it.
A Google search for "cracked vray" gives "About 364,000 results." My guess is there's a version out there which is cracked.
dkendig was correct about one thing: "Licensing just keeps honest people honest."
Then he also said,
@dkendig said:
...but the dongle licensing is SIGNIFICANTLY easier to troubleshoot/fix, it's mobile, and it doesn't require someone at our company to manually process a request to simply REINSTALL the product (on the same computer), like our software licensing did. You should have seen the difference in our support inbox once we switched licensing to dongles.
I thought this argument on how much easier it is for Vray's support was a specious one. As a customer, I'm particularly concerned a company is wiling to trade off hardship for their customer (dongle) to make things easier for themselves. I can't imagine it's too difficult for a company support staff to manage licensing. Somehow, someway, other companies seem to be able to conquer this task without too much of a hurdle.
IMO as a software developer who has designed copy protection systems, I'm of the following opinions:
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No copy protection is perfect.
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Someone WILL crack your software, somewhere at sometime.
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True pirates will NEVER pay for software. So you lose not a single sale to those guys.
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The real goal is make it difficult for HONEST people to use unlicensed software. Licensing with nothing more than a serial number without limits on the number of licenses DOES NOT do this. It needs to be more difficult than just passing a serial number around.
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OTOH, the license shouldn't be too restrictive that a penalty is paid each and every time one uses the software. Hardware dongles IMO fail this test.
FWIW, there are many folks who have elegantly solved this problem, Luxion KeyShot is one of them. I can license it on two computers, any more and it won't work and I have to contact tech support. Over the holidays, I retired an old machine and purchased a new one. I also had a deadline on a project and forgot about the 2 computer limit. When KeyShot wouldn't license (in the middle of the night), I sent an email to support and had a new license number the next hour. Can't ask for quicker turnaround than that!
Another strategy I have seen involves embedding the buyers email address in the software license. This way if someone gives it out, they are giving their email address along with it. Not perfect, but it will deter many 'honest' users from consciously 'giving away' the software.
Sure, you can expend tons of development and support resources, including forcing your users to buy a dongle and forever tether them to you physically. But for me, I'd rather see the time you guys spend trying to force an antiquated copy protection scheme to rather be spent on making the render engine faster or more robust. Just my 2 cents.
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Did you look into the option Devin mentioned about using VPN from your office to host a license server you can grab from your home? Seems like that could solve the physical issue.
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@andybot said:
Did you look into the option Devin mentioned about using VPN from your office to host a license server you can grab from your home? Seems like that could solve the physical issue.
Hi Andy, thanks for your concern. I do not own a dongle or a copy of V-Ray. I was looking into purchasing a copy for some work I'm doing as my research showed it to be a good solution, but the very existence of a dongle was a deal killer for me.
And, FWIW, hanging the hardware dongle on a physical machine in another location seems quite the hassle. VPN's can be so clumsy and slow. Seems to me it would be better if V-Ray just hung everyone's hardware dongle on their servers and then there would never be a hardware issue!
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We are always working on improving the experience. I can agree that VPN's aren't fantastic, if you're sending all traffic through them. Otherwise though, it's not a big hassle if you have a half decent IT guy around the office. I'm not suggesting you set up a VPN solely to run a V-Ray license server though, that's absurd. I merely mentioned it because it's extremely common in situations where you have employees that work from home.
If you are in a situation where you occasionally work from home (and need to be able to render), are unable to carry a dongle with you to and from the office, are unable to utilize a vpn to communicate with a central license server, are unable to expose a license server publicly, and unable to have a dongle for home and another for the office, then I would say the only option for your unique situation is a software based license, like the one we recently moved away from.
A google search isn't needed to know that our product is often pirated. We kick pirates off of this site quite frequently. I tip my hat to the competitors that were able to find a software based solution that worked for them. Being able to give a user instant access to the product, and the ability to instantly fix licensing issues is a great superpower to have.
@unknownuser said:
As a customer, I'm particularly concerned a company is wiling to trade off hardship for their customer (dongle) to make things easier for themselves.
... interesting way to interpret what I said... Are you suggesting it's better to have a licensing system that requires users to call or email us to the point where we need to employ a small fleet of support staff? Our support email volume plummeted by at least 30% after switching to dongles... because they're easy, they're reliable, and require very little interaction with us. You can drop us a line if you want, but our goal was to make it so you wouldn't need to. If you're trying to link our dongle licensing, and the availability of pirated versions of our product, I'm afraid you're barking up the wrong tree there, we haven't noticed any spikes in piracy (we're watching
).
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