United3dArtists Archive

I read somewhere that tS development has continued beyond the last available version, and that it is simply just no longer being called trueSpace. Is it possible that tS could return in the future as a re-named, re-branded product aimed at a different market?

Hey now that'd be interesting.
Do you have a link moogaloonie?

moogaloonie wrote:I read somewhere that tS development has continued beyond the last available version, and that it is simply just no longer being called trueSpace. Is it possible that tS could return in the future as a re-named, re-branded product aimed at a different market?

Hi moogaloonie,

"I read somewhere" is pretty thin. If you can remember where you read this AND if it was a credible source then it would be very interesting as froo wrote. Otherwise, it's probably just a rumor with no basis in reality.

Best regards, First Light

probably won't because the source has not been released... what is happening is that developers and plug-in writer are continuing to change and add things as much as they can without access to the core engine...

what would be great is if the community could BUY the source from MS and make it into a new opensource program, like they did with Blender...

i wonder how many tS users would be keen go for something like this?

You mean how many ts users would want to actually modify the source code?
Quite honestly, from the looks of it:

0


Buying the source code and making changes to it sounds really nice on paper but when it comes to
putting in the effort, it appears no one would be motivated to do it. Making plugins is actually easier
than modifying the source code. And there is virtually no one making Workspace plugins. I do not know of any
currently in progress. So, if there is no plugin development activity, what makes us think there will
be a coordinated effort to update the truespace source code if it were to be purchased?

I could be wrong but I seriously doubt it. I am not being negative, just making an observation.

EDIT:
I drifted off topic. I would still be interested in seeing a link.

theuns wrote:... like they did with Blender...

Hi theuns,

I could be wrong, but as I understand it, the original creator of Blender raised the capital to buy the program back from the public company that had purchased it when they purchased his orignal company. The trueSpace equivalent would be for Roman Ormandy to raise the capital to buy back the trueSpace code from Microsoft.

The notion that the Blender transition to open-source was a community-led inititiative is false (as far as I can tell). Again, it appears to have been led and controlled by the original creator of the program---someone with intimate knowledge of the source code. Sadly it appears that froo is right about there being insufficient interest in the trueSpace community (or at least by individuals with the necessary expertise) to even consider an attempt to acquire the trueSpace code.

I hope that I'm wrong. I wish that our developers would band together and, possibly under the leadership of v3rd3, gain control of the source code for future development. But that's a "fantasy" right now.

Best regards, First Light

The rumor that Moogaloonie read, if based on anything, is probably about the plugin development by Froo and such. It is possible that MS still has plans for TS or whatever technology within it that MS wanted so the rumor could have come from there.

MS is very unlikely to sell the code for TS to anyone. If they would it is very unlikely that any TS'er group could raise as much as it would surely cost. Asking them to release the code is worthless. You have to offer them a good deal.

TS doesn't have any competitive edge to make it worth continued development except possibly for MS if market conditions are ever favorable again since they have Roman and the resources to finish and modernize the program if they choose.

Even if the code could be acquired, as First Light noted, the people purchasing Blender's code were the one's that developed it. Without that TS would be even more obsolete by the time the new owners even learned the code. Where is the experience in developing this kind of program? Sure Froo and everyone making plugins know what the are doing but where is a whole team of people with all the knowledge and skills necessary to succeed in such a project? Where is the motivation for them to do it with little or no pay? Why would TS be the place for such a team to start?

I like TS too but I don't see why there is this devotion to it and wish to continue development when there are plenty of other programs out there and current TS users can probably continue to use what we have for a long time.

First thing, where are you finding a quote button?

OK, about where I read that. It was in another forum, and I'll give you a clue. It's a forum for another 3D program that began life on the Amiga. I will try to find the post, but finding the forum itself was an effort. I didn't immediately recognise the poster by name and so I'm treating it as hearsay. Did seem credible though, and gave the impression that while it was essentially a version of trueSpace beyond 7.61, it may not have had the full toolset and could perhaps be part of another program entirely. Will keep looking.

As for blender, yes, Ton Roosendaal did lead the effort to buy it back. Despite being an original author though, I think it still stands as a community effort. He was acting as a user and fan, albeit of something he himself had started. They raised the money in a fairly short time, IIRC.

I thought XNA would have been a good home for trueSpace. The DX9 nature of the workspace would allow for good approximations of shaded models in game use, and it'd be nice to have the import/export formats of gameSpace back. It could have been the standard tool for the XNA community and might speed development in the way that good standardised tools often can. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if someone such as Autodesk hadn't persuaded Microsoft to kill trueSpace.

OSS trueSpace would likely stall, as the DX9 codebase would necessitate Windows development until the code could be moved to OpenGL, a huge undertaking I would assume.

I could be wrong, but as I understand it, the original creator of Blender raised the capital to buy the program back from the public company that had purchased it when they purchased his orignal company. The trueSpace equivalent would be for Roman Ormandy to raise the capital to buy back the trueSpace code from Microsoft.

This is true. However you should remember that Blender had two major advantages over workspace: 1) It was never owned by MS and, 2) It was already well-liked and worked proprerly.

The sad thing is that you would proabably see a lot of interest, among current and older users alike, to resurrect 6.6 and modernise it. Maybe not Blender interest, but imo a lot more than most open-source apps, especially if you include the nostalgia vote from "this was my first 3d app" ex-users, of which there are many.

I really don't buy the rumour of workspace coming out under a different name. Of course, I could be wrong, some people really don't learn from their mistakes.............

I would still prefer to have Workspace with the rest of the tools moved over than an updated Model side. Everyone who thinks Caligari was crazy for starting over with Rosetta architecture should take a look at NewTek. They are about to do almost the same thing with LightWave.

http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread.php?t=95480"

Sometimes you really do have to go back to move ahead.

moogaloonie wrote:I read somewhere that tS development has continued beyond the last available version, and that it is simply just no longer being called trueSpace. Is it possible that tS could return in the future as a re-named, re-branded product aimed at a different market?

Interesting thread

I am only guessing but I suspect what attracted MS to Caligari and led to the aquisition had nothing to do with trueSpace / truePlay / trueServe at all, nor their markets, but rather MS was saving significant and expensive dev time on aquiring a promising new and fundamentally object oriented Code Core (Rosetta)... so what they intend to do with it is anyone's guess, it is wide open on possibilities, even beyond 3D Software.

Then again... your original post reminds me vividly of what happened to the MS aquisition of Creature House Expression. First it seemed all Expression-related development was dead the instant MS made the software free... then a long long (very long) period of deafening silence passed... then Expression emerges again under MS in a new form as a video toolset... so no one knows except those under NDA who won't be saying a word of course.

If it moves like a Chess Knight once.. it could just move like a Chess Knight twice!

Great video 3dvisuals dude! Makes me think of a guy I worked with who wanted to print T-shirts with, "Professional lemming. Follow me." on them.

That MS assimilates new technology by buying other companies or their software is well known even outside the circles that simply hate MS/business/etc. and blame them for locusts and droughts. That assimilation seems to be an effective strategy. But what do they gain by doing what was done with Creature House? What was gained by making it free? Obviously they made Creature House free for a reason ... I'm just missing what the strategy was.

Here is my interpretation of what happened.

They saw google earth kicking, virtual earth's ass in 3d content. Microsoft realized, google had a good idea by making a free sketchup program for people to populate their earth enviroment. Microsoft can not spend years developing a competive package so they buy caligari and release it free to compete. They realize the learning curve on Truespace it to much for what most people want to do with a Virtual earth model, and cut their losses. They will probably disect the code from truespace and bring out a slimmed down competitor for sketchup that is easy to use and has a lot less features. But now, they cut out 3-5 years worth of development on a core engine with the purchase of a small company.

Excellent analysis Karthogen.

Yeah I think is pretty much it!

It was obvious that TrueSpace is more than a plugin for Virtual Earth. The marketing team of Microsoft probably thought that 3d is something simple and affordable for all. Is what happens when you leave intellectuals do anything.

While they are working on little weeeeee houses with weeee roofs you can go for a virtual walk in Google maps in realtime
and look at everything as if you were there ....... now thats competition !

MS started their race into Internet grounds too late, and doesn't have enough creativity to reach Google, but he has money, A LOT OF MONEY, Google too but less, so let's se who wins (I'm Twisting to Google) not that Google are an angel or a good company, but don't show any evil action that impressed me, MS did a lot!

2020: UnitedOpenSource buy Microsoft and Google!

Interesting prediction.

Quick note to Benji

The sad thing is that you would proabably see a lot of interest, among current and older users alike, to resurrect 6.6 and modernise it.

To recap old ground, the code behind tS6.6 was "broken" and couldn't move the app forward anymore : Hence workspace development in the first place...much as I like ts6.6 it had no future development route...

Back to the thread

At least he said it was a sad thing. I think it's a bad association people have with the newer versions. If they hadn't written such a better platform for a future that will no longer come, they might not have been gobbled up and spat out a carcass.

I'm bummed for that reason and others:

#1. Reading about Caligari in info magazine led me to get my first modern computer on which I later used Caligari software. I felt like Roman understood the virtual space and virtual tools when no one else did really did. I wanted to see his idea fully realised, but wasn't able to change platforms quite as quickly as he did.
#2. Convinced an employer to buy a trueSpace license so I could do artwork for a project. That was version 4 or 5 and I could see it had moved insanely beyond the last version I had used, despite losing the simplicity (and I believe lattice tools) I had loved before.
#3. Spent like $400 or $500 (trying to forget) on version 7.5 when I was too busy learning video editing to even load it up more than a handful of times. Justify it as casting a vote of confidence in their new direction.
#4. Resign myself to not throwing an unholy fit over trueSpace 7.6 being free. I tell myself it is nearly the program I had waited for for all of those years. I assure myself and even another user that the modelside tools will get ported. That we'll get post process effects like DOF, tone mapping, etc. and maybe even painless "content" importing (to use our own content made in/for programs). Above all I convinced myself that Microsoft had seen the potential of trueSpace that I had seen in Caligari 20 years ago.

Now trueSpace just makes me sad, and I don't see another program out there that wants to be the program I am looking for. Had trueSpace been given another 18 months of development I am pretty confident it could have become that program. I like iClone's use of GPUs and their concept of real-time film making. But it is also another animation program with no modeler which you are expected to buy content for, and I am done with that idea.