In case you didn’t noticed, there is a fix since march for the breakpoint issues Matthew demontrasted in his video (thanks for that, Matthew). You can download it from the support site. That exe got recently updated again to fix the slowdown issues for maximized setup windows. There’s no version number change, so don’t get confused. Just download it again and overwrite your old one.

English 

If you are living in Germany and wonder why politics are heading the same directions for years though it doesn’t handle any negative causes or you have the feeling that all the political discussions are one-sided and unequlibrated then you should read the book "Machtwahn - Wie eine mittelmäßige Führungselite uns zugrunde richtet" from Albrecht Müller. It’s a very good book that shows the links between economy/industry, "science", media and politics. The network elements are named (persons, institutes etc). I am certain that in other european countries there are similar networks especially as financial power is usually a global, cross-border power. So if you are not in Germany but german-speaking, I suggest you too, to read that book. More details below but only in german, sorry.

Deutsch

Ich empfehlen jedem deutsch-sprachigen oder jedem in Deutschland lebenden das Buch "Machtwahn - Wie eine mittelmäßige Führungselite uns zugrunde richtet" von Albrecht Müller. Das Buch spricht endlich öffentlich aus, was der eine oder andere vielleicht ‘irgendwie fühlt’ aber die Mechanismen als Ganzes nicht erfäßt, da Hintergrundinformationen fehlen. Und man darf sich da auch nichts vormachen: sich wirklich zu informieren heißt recherchieren = kostet sehr viel Zeit (nur Zeitung lesen oder Tagesschau sehen bringt nicht wirklich was). Und wer hat diese schon? Wer wirklich wenig Zeit hat, der soll einfach mal ab Seite 308 an 20 Seiten lesen und dann entscheiden ob er das Buch ganz lesen möchte.

Das Buch benennt Personen, Firmen und Institute und zeigt die Verbindungen zwischen diesen auf. Wer erarbeit politische Richtungen im Vorfelde? Wer engagiert mit einem bestimmten Ziel PR Agenturen, um die Zustimmung der Bevölkerung zu gewinnen? Wie werden Begriffe umdefiniert, damit sie als neue Schlagwörter Argumentation und Vielfältigkeit ablösen? Inwiefern sind wichtige politsch engagierte Professoren finanziell Abhängig und daher nicht ‘neutral’ ?

Der potentiellen Bedrohung der Demokratie durch Terrorismus wird viel Platz in Politik und Medien zugewiesen, doch der Bedrohung einer Umstruktuierungs-Bewegung von Oben-Nach kaum. Obwohl sie alle Menschen Betriff und die Menge der Nutznießer im Vergleich zur Bevölkerungsanzahl gering ist.

Bitte nimmt euch die Zeit das Buch zu lesen - ohne Aufklärung ist eine Demokratie machtlos.

Das Buch:
"Machtwahn - Wie eine mittelmäßige Führungselite uns zugrunde richtet" von Albrecht Müller
ISBN: 3-426-27386-1
Verlag: Droemer
Erscheinungstermin war: 21.03.2006

(Buch z.B. via online Buchhandel erhältlich)

Im Web:
Website vom Autor: NachDenkSeiten

Interview mit dem Autor auf Telepolis

Über Albrecht Müller auf Wikipedia

I just downloaded the Titan Quest Demo , it’s a Diablo like ‘Talk, Slay and Collect’ RPG game. As usually I talked to somebody and he asked me to free him and the villagers from an evil monster. So i went up the map, killed the thing and came back into the village - but by a different way. There were some people with icons to whose I had not talked yet. They all told me about the evil, evil monster in north (that I just killed). So i went to the man who game me the mission and he was of course very happy that I killed that thing. Suddenly the icons of the other village people changed and when I then talked to them they thanked me also about having killed that monster in the north.

Now what happend here? The other village people said dialog X until quest A is not completed. And the quest was only completed by talking to the inital mission starter. It’s really something that kills the immersion: NPCs asking you for something you already did. Spellforce 1 was also a specialist in that. You fullfiled a quest before they asked you for it, then you talked to them and they gave you the mission. You then talk to them right after again and they rewarded you. Hey, game/level designers, what about scripting some more checks??! So we can rather have dialogs going like this "Oh please, kill that evil monster", "Oh, you mean the one from the north? Oh I just did that! Wasn’t thaaat hard!", "Oh really? Impressive! You don’t know how much you helped us with this. (…)" {reward etc}.

Another example is the game Freespace. The before-last mission is to protect your mothership while the evil alien enemy-mother-ship is attacking yours. I guess the designer wanted me to kill all the incoming missiles but all I wanted was to bring that alien mothership down. It took me a while to figure out how but at the end i managed to shoot it into pieces before my mothership got destroyed  - mission accomplished, because i protected my ship. So next and final  mission: "the alien mothership is escaping, follow it into hyperspace and destroy it." "What??? I just did that!!" You see? Breakes immersion. 

I always thought it was an In-House development (by Nicolas H.), but while I was looking for something different I came across this press release through google: Virtools and RTIME announce development and marketing partnership

RTIME was then aquired by Sony and renamed to SCE-RT. Same tech was added in 1999 to shockwave

P.S update from 2006.06.23
At the end Virtools dropped the approach of using 3rd party tech and Nicolas and Julien, from Virtools, developed all the technology found in the MultiUser Pack.

One thing is clear, Google is not stupid. They are going to use the web community to build the missing buildings of google earth (that saves money ). Model and upload your building to google’s 3D Warehouse using the new free version of Sketchup or download it’s content to your Google Earth. 

You just created a new script and it needs the color from another script? Usually you would remember the RGB values, but there's a way to do it quicker.

• select all the scripts you want to assign a new color
• select also one script with the color you desire
• right-click on the script head of the script with the color and choose 'set color'
• see that the dialog has the color from that script, so now just click ok

 there you go. 

(a personal, speculative and current point of view) 

It’s obvious, the lack of useful production improvements for DEV is frustrating me a lot. I’ve spend a lot of time using that tech, a lot of time finding out why something doesn’t work, a lot of time for bug reporting and improvement suggestions.

But at the end the impact is still much too small. If i look at all the suggestion i made over a year ago in addition to that the reported and unpatched bug issues I wonder how important user like me are for Virtools.

Virtools cut into the VR market like nothing which is great and no surprise because the tech there was outdated (mainly VRML stuff) or not productive enough. Dassaut says ‘3D democratize’ - 3d for all. Everybody = who?

And on the ENOVIA side, to expand in the area of what we call service after sales, because that’s part of the lifecycle management. Some of the customers who have already started to deploy massively says we want to use it for web-based application in the service after sales. And of course, the front end will be interesting because we are going to use Virtools technology for that. That gives you an idea about where the R&D is going.
(source)

With this technology, PLM customers dramatically extend the benefits of using 3D technologies. The breadth of possible applications is huge. These include: simulation of product usage, ergonomic testing, creating the shopping experience, training scenarios, right through to branding, advertising and web marketing applications. Users of this technology can, for example, fully create scenarios to visualize a car driving through a city. These applications can be experienced online: browser-based, up to and including large scale virtual reality environments.
(source) 

Bernard Charles, President and CEO of Dassault Systemes, presented his vision of PLM as the end-to-end digital 3D experience, where the 3D product model traverses across the product lifecycle from the design collaboration process, to virtual and realistic simulation for manufacturing and product testing, to marketing, sales, and support, with 3D for everyone from designer to consumer. He cited the recent acquisition of Virtools, an interactive 3D virtual simulation tool that will allow the user to be intimately involved in the virtual experience with life-like interaction.
(source)  

Now these guys are big players i guess. That’s good, expansion to a new big market. In addition to that they go top-down in company’s organisations (= convince the management). Now, they want the game tech to drive this tech - so what do they want? The casual game developer? The agency that does from time to time some interactive 3d? The custom industry 3d app creators? Or the tripple AAA market (in the long run)? Codewarrior, PSP, XBox360 support needed? New architecture (MP) needed? Collaborative workflow needed (Dev 4.0?)?

The old user base needed?

I am not sure - seems that the priority is elsewhere, seems that big money is elsewhere. So maybe we will see MP not included in the maintenance fees. Might drop some people (next year?). Ha! But one thing is sure, we know what one can do with this tech, no need for a big marketing campaign to convince or explain us - we have vision.

 At last quote

Virtools has a presence in the video game industry, representing about 25 percent of its revenues, and Virtools will continue to serve these customers and develop new technology for them as part of DS. DS is interested in integrating this leading-edge technology with our industrial design technology to allow game-like realistic simulation.
(source)