United3dArtists Archive

Looks like the plug was pulled on the 3D part of Virtual Earth / Bing Maps.

I went looking for the installer and had a hell of a time finding it. (Thanks to Simon @ Coolpowers for tracking it down)

A bit of a letdown though- faux 3D models only at certain zoom levels when using the 'Bird's Eye' view and there's no height rotation or depiction.

Wonder what the remnants of Team Caligari feel about it.

Wonder what the remnants of Team Caligari feel about it.

Crying into their virtual beers, perhaps? Anyway, we never really heard where they got to specifically, did we?

Benji wrote:

Wonder what the remnants of Team Caligari feel about it.

Crying into their virtual beers, perhaps? Anyway, we never really heard where they got to specifically, did we?

no, no one of them keeps contact with anyone here, as far as i know. I tried once to contact Roman (coz he comes from the same country like I do). Searched the web and found he has LinkedIn profile. So i tried to add him, but no response. Iam starting to think that he does not care anymore.

As far as I know, they are working on various projects, for MS.

I think only a few people who do 3D, like us, had any interest at all in the Virtual Earth model stuff and even that was temporary and small. People who look at maps want information about the real world. Accurate building models could be part of a map but few have any practical need for that. Mixing the real world information with the amateur and imaginary contributions was just a bad idea. Making Imaginary Earth, a giant shared space for models, separate from VE might have worked better.

Other than as a novelty I have had use for the 3D terrain view when looking at places to hike.

Wonder if they will get rid of trueSpace then..

iam starting to have a bad feeling that tS will end up in a shelf or closed drawer.

bitkar wrote:iam starting to have a bad feeling that tS will end up in a shelf or closed drawer.

No it wont !
The problem is such.....
Truespace as such and i´m talking about TS7 upward mimics how the human brain works.........
you got 4 stages .. first is the codeing stage..... second is the linking stage and the third is the 3 dimentional stage.....
fourth stage is the communication stage (shared spaces)..
the idea behind that is revolutionary and therefore we will see that in future programs.. thats something the
company Microsoft will use in the future....
truespace though was badly implemented and you can see that every mesh that has 400000 polys upward bogs the system down
so that Truespace gets unusable.......
Ask Froo about the other problems that truespace code has... he can help you out.
in order to get something well working in the future you got to rewrite Ts from scratch....
But the idea behind linking pieces of code the way truespace does is very nice.
i dont understand that the coders arent working on using what Ts 7 is good at and rather want to build
a full fledged program out of it though.
Ts will never be good at supporting big scenes period !
Peter

stan wrote:Wonder if they will get rid of trueSpace then..

Oh come on stan; that'll NEVER happen!

Ugh... code problems.. UGH...

The computer is sick!
there are more computer languages ​​than spoken language. about 7000. Each new use requires a new language. because the global system has become tentacular and must interact with others. for 100 projects, 24 were abandoned, 44 were many difficulties, and 32 come to an end but with bugs. The tentacular aspect becomes mathematically impossible to solve because we constantly build systems that are beyond the scope of our theoretical knowledge. This concerns all the objects of our lives. there may have 100 million lines of code into a car and up to 100 billion in a mobile phone (software and data). the number of bug is estimated at around 1-10 per 1000 lines in the world. which makes about 50000 bugs only for Vista. bug-free software does not exist because there is no method for certification. mathematicians are unanimous on this fact, even using a supercomputer because it can have errors too. there just has a margin of error. and the spread is becoming greater.

ps: today i need to entry a confirmation code to login. I hate that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Another example of bad use of a computer because we have not a better solution. The computer world become an old tire filled with patch.

You would have to wonder what the benefit to microsoft would be to hang on to truespace. It would seem mean spirited to hang onto something that for them is essentially worthless. 3d and the web just don't get along, unless your fragging your friends. That's pretty much the end of it. So what is going to happen with truespace?

Given Caligari's legendary communication skills I'm surprised that we haven't found out the answer already......

Probably not worth the effort, money, and bandwidth to them, to put the source code online somewhere.
Besides, it'd be better to start from scratch anyway. That is what the plan was for 8.0, as I understand.
The 7.x core had some serious shortcomings. Yes, Really!

When I downloaded the latest version of 'Virtual Earth' it asked me if I also wanted to download 3DVia authoring tools.
No mention of tS, no surprise.

If you recall, they were the first 3D company MS partnered with for adding 3D content to Bing maps.

Big Fish Eat The Little Fish.

froo wrote:Probably not worth the effort, money, and bandwidth to them, to put the source code online somewhere.
Besides, it'd be better to start from scratch anyway. That is what the plan was for 8.0, as I understand.
The 7.x core had some serious shortcomings. Yes, Really!

Is there any good open source project out there that builds a 3D program and that have started from scratch?
Blender wasn't started from scratch and now they also seems to be the only game in town?

froo: sorry, i dont know you that much. Where do you get that info about tS8 being built from scratch? As tS7 had new engine after years of evolution of the old. Iam not saying its the best in the world, but...

I must say to Rayman that I had no problem moving around 500 000 polys in Worskpace part of tS76. In modeler part it was also possible, but a little more inconvenient. So the step forward is obvious. The performance was very different, much better in Rosetta and DX9 than old tS6 engine with ooold DX7.
About tS in a shelf - yes, maybe the ideas will be used, but not the tS. Especially I loved tS untill 6.6 and 7.x modeler side. Man how great it could be to have complete tS6.6 UI (+ LE, 4D view instead of old animation panel, maybe the right side panel), new tools as soft selection, physics and everything that is in workspace in one package, not divided into to parts = like having DX9 tS6.6 + new features of tS7 added.. I think this was the right way to go. Sadly I think I will never see it.

btw: iam not that impressed by LE and "3D programing". In spite of fact, that it can be powerful, i like the direct 3D manipulation most along with few plugins. I think every software should be fast and easy to use. Coz complexity and unfriendly UI slows down or blocks the creativity part.

I never used the LE or 3d programming. i don't like this way to create. when I was programming a long time ago, I was not doing anything really artistic. i don't use a realtime with a good quality for game not for real finished artwork. It is why i prefer the model side and hdri . Workspace have new cool tools but unfinished for ever. real time animation is interesting for sketch not for my work. I do not see how I could make my film with the workspace. it would have been a waste of time to learn the workspace. Now a real new version 8 is another story. why not? but i do not believe.

You can kind of see the potential of what 8.0 could have been in marmoset. It's more limited than TS, but very cool.

I just saw the Unreal Samaritan tech demo (link to HD images below), and really this could have been the next Truespace. Unfortunately, the good stuff like shaders in TS7.5 was just window dressing for the web3d fiasco, but it could have been an awesome renderer in it's own right. GPU rendering with CUDA is the in thing right now, imagine what TS DX11 rendering could have brought to the table, especially if the direct manipulation and visual interface stuff of 6.6 had been layered on top.......

http://uk.kotaku.com/5774861/epic-says- ... e/gallery/"

compPanda wrote:

froo wrote:Probably not worth the effort, money, and bandwidth to them, to put the source code online somewhere.
Besides, it'd be better to start from scratch anyway. That is what the plan was for 8.0, as I understand.
The 7.x core had some serious shortcomings. Yes, Really!

Is there any good open source project out there that builds a 3D program and that have started from scratch?
Blender wasn't started from scratch and now they also seems to be the only game in town?

Blender was actually started from scratch... it started life as a proprietary piece of software. The company was purchased by an engineering firm to create renders for its projects.... Members of the blender project management team persuaded the company to open source the software for a one time payment of about $100,000.... Ton Roosendaal was one I believe.

All software goes through evolutionary phases brought about by changes in the marketplace and the technology they are built to run on..... 15 years ago 64-bit computing was in the realm of supercomputers and IBM AS/400s..., now you can get that power in a desktop.

There are a lot of open source projects out there it just depends on what role you want to play in the development of the product.

v3rd3 wrote: Blender was actually started from scratch... it started life as a proprietary piece of software. The company was purchased by an engineering firm to create renders for its projects.... Members of the blender project management team persuaded the company to open source the software for a one time payment of about $100,000.... Ton Roosendaal was one I believe.

I know about Blenders history - I actually tried to use it even before it become open source but I didn't grasp the interface.....
What I meant was that the open source project had a place to start their development - developing a 3D application is one of the more challeging thing you can do. I wouldn't try it, despite working as a developer. I develop internal solutions and integrations - far easier stuff than doing a 3D application.....

With the current Gui redesign, you could argue that Blender is currently being remade from scratch, somewhat. The fact the process has evidently been so painful shows how difficult it is to fundamentally change an app once the ball's rolling, however to their credit the Blender guys seem to have done a good job.

Hi bitkar.
My comment is based on conversations with Tomas, one of the trueSpace developers.

froo wrote:Hi bitkar.
My comment is based on conversations with Tomas, one of the trueSpace developers.

Even when we were testing, you could see, it appeared they may have put themselves in a corner. That whole Bridge thing really was the death blow for them... how many years in development did TS7 cost them. I started in 2005, they told me they were doing it for 2 years before that... than all those years later... How many developers came and went through those years? A very sad story... than again, how many programs have had the run that they did?

They would have been better off supporting TS6.X and TS7.X as separate products. Hindsight is a wonderful thing

oh, you mean tomG. I think i remember him (online) a bit. Thanks for info, now i believe you ;)

bitkar wrote:oh, you mean tomG. I think i remember him (online) a bit. Thanks for info, now i believe you

Thomas is not Tom (Moffat Grimes) !

Hey bitkar.
I meant,
Tomas Bujnak. He was a lead developer.
Tom Grimes was the marketing person for Caligari.

oh, ok :D thanks for clearing it out.

anyway.. what happened to those ppl? is anyone in contact with them? I would like to meet and talk to them once about it all. That could be nice. I wonder why anyone doesnt come here. Its like they just vanished (i know they work for ms, but are they locked there in basement?). Everything seems so strange. How something that was here for many years can be gone this like...

bitkar wrote:oh, ok thanks for clearing it out.

anyway.. what happened to those ppl? is anyone in contact with them? I would like to meet and talk to them once about it all. That could be nice. I wonder why anyone doesnt come here. Its like they just vanished (i know they work for ms, but are they locked there in basement?). Everything seems so strange. How something that was here for many years can be gone this like...

No not strange ... they move on ... we move on.....
We can still use Ts but for the future we need to invest into something that again is around for a while......