Martin,
Excellent points made, and I fully agree. It is getting hard to stick
with RS for a hobby. Like you stated, that wow factor we had with v4
has long since faded, and I would like to see it again. I find myself
unmotivated to upgrade to v7 from v6, but would like to find myself
highly motivated in the future for a v8 release. I used v6 last year
for a work project, and I just find it lagging behind the other software
available.
How many of us old timers are there still around that have the same
unvoiced thoughts?
Best regards,
Brandon
On 11/5/2010 6:43 AM, [email protected] wrote:
Hey all and hey Realsoft in special.
I want to keep this decently short; had written an even longer text before.
The story was that lately I´ve been trying to convert a scientific shader
formula into a usable shader for RS3D.
Because I´m an amateur, I need help and so I looked around for information,
basically finding nothing.
All in all information and general resources regarding RS3D are simply
insufficient, and the issues with missing documentation and web resources are
well known for years.
Today there are most probably not even ten websites left that offer a notable
amount of content regarding RS3D.
The Wiki seems to be dead for years, the forum doesn´t even let you register an
account (because of understandable issues, I know), the Render Daemon site is
completely down, realsoft.info as well, and now I see that I can´t even
download the v6 and v7 SDK, because, even though they are listed, their links
just don´t work.
It seem as if there was nobody tending to the website at all, the only useful
information comes from a handful of personal websites that are scattered
throughout the web.
As far as I know, there isn´t even a single website anymore that somehow
gathers RS3D-stuff like the Render Daemon did, not a SINGLE!
This is getting unbearable.
As I said, these problems are known for years, but they don´t get better,
instead they seem to get worse.
There seems to have been a short "golden age" of webpresence for RS3D, with the
wiki and the forum and all.
But now all that was built in that age has gone to ruin, or so it seems.
There has to be something that can be done about that.
As I think about it, the wiki is still there, I could contribute to it, I´ve
never done that.
And I would love to do that if I saw some sense in it.
But just adding stuff to a personal homepage or expanding an unused wiki
wouldn´t do the trick.
Realsoft itself HAS to have the WILL to renew the efforts to promote and
develop RS3D, this would have to be some kind of a priority for Realsoft/Vesa
and Juha.
And I don´t see that will, that priority.
Now I can totally understand if ones own life comes in the way of other things,
family to tend to, etc..
And as I understand it, that´s exactly why Realsoft kinda lags behind.
But I have decided to voice my opinion in a strong manner.
Because I don´t think that speaking softly does any good.
Realsoft has been a small but consistent part of my life; I´ve joined this list
somewhere in the ninetees.
And so I don´t want to "betray" Realsoft by acting as if everything was ok for
me somehow.
Cause it´s not.
Again - this is getting unbearable.
When will these issues be resolved? Will they ever be?
If I´m looking at the situation I´d much rather guess that RS3D will have died
long before that could have happened.
The somehow revolutionary RS3D v4 was released over ten years ago now, and I
very much feel that it´s time to have another revolution like that.
So please, Realsoft, get it going!
And if you don´t think that you can handle that (because of understandable
time- and priority-issues), then take the consequences.
I mean, there would be several options.
One would be to get an investor and hire a (bigger) staff.
Another would be to sell the software or the entire company and to let someone
else develop and publish the program.
And yet another one would be to release RS3Ds code under an open source license.
All of the above would still leave the possibility to participate in the development of
RS3D, to influence it´s "shape", and to simply make money with it.
With an investor, existing personnel would simply be kept.
And even with the investor getting some of the earnings, this would surely be
overcompensated by increased sales.
With the second possibility personnel could possibly stay in leading positions.
Released as open source, there would be several possibilities.
As I understand it, you could release it under a license that permits selling
for profit, so that Realsoft could be kept as it is and sell RS3D bundled with
professional customerservice.
Whatever license would be chosen, participation would be pretty easy.
Now I think to remember a discussion here, several years ago, where people said
that RS3D could take the road that Cinema 4D had gone and get bigger.
If I recall correctly, Vesa statet that he didn´t want to go that way, because
he wanted to keep the company small and handleable, that he wanted to retain
control over Realsoft and didn´t have the time to personally supervise a bigger
company.
Or at least that was the essence of what he wrote.
And I can understand that attitude.
But as I see it, something has to be done, if Realsoft 3D is not to disappear.
If the only possible outcoming of carrying on like this is to see ones own
great work becoming unnoticed, then irrelevant, then forgotten und at last
burried, there has to be some action.
Or so at least I think.
Greetz
Martin
PS: In the mean time, please bring the v6 and v7 SDKs back on. ;-)
