I wanted to post less "news only" stuff but this merits it!
By accident I just saw the news RSS feed for the 2.1 release announcement. It comes with some very useful new features and looks like it's a free upgrade for 2.0 users. If I think how much people had to pay for the Virtools 4.0 to 4.1 upgrade …
They added a complete scriptable assets import-pipeline. This is hyper useful and important !!!!! What I did to improve our Virtools pipeline a couple of years ago, was a bit similar. We script our assets imports too, so our "BogBuilder", which is our single-click build-process, takes i.e. one CMO, instructions from a XML file, data resources to do some processing and then spits out a publishable VMO. This, in combination with the modded 3ds max exporter, boosted our iteration cycle excessively. So, scriptable assets imports … wow, cool addition! I mean most people doing projects will look for something like this, strangely Virtools never added it as feature.
Something I was missing in Unity was to load assets at runtime. Previously you had to create your own i.e mesh serializer etc. Now they have 'assets bundles' - so a weak point fixed. Also the scriptable Editor GUIs is cool. Virtools also has an Editor API but it's MFC and not the easiest stuff to use. Btw. I have a couple of free Virtools Editor Plugins for download (don't know if there are any others freely available).
There is a feature in Virtools which is (was?) one of those potentially good but not usable features, that is probably overlooked by many - maybe because Marketing never promoted it. It's the "Skin Join" BuildingBlock (Component). It joins two (skinned) meshes via a patch/bridge-mesh. I used a modified version for my Thesis project (~5 years ago) where the characters where customizable. The problem with this BB is, as with many others, that it's not targetable. This means it has to be attached directly onto the mesh at authoring time. This renders it useless for at run-time customizable characters. Unity3D allows now to combine skinned meshes too. Haven't found any details online yet, so I don't know if it will also prevent any seams as the Skin-Join BB does.
Two other new key-features: streaming terrain and real-time shadows on terrain. They say that Unity3D is now ready to be used for MMOs! Very nice update, congratz!
Picture: explosion view of my thesis character. Besides multiple body parts, you can see the 'patches' I used to join them during runtime without any seams. Skinning and animating this kind of setups is a bit of pain though. Had to script me extra controls to allow me to switch quickly between different combinations inside 3ds max.
I few months ago I bought me a new computer. A nice quad PC. Something I wasn't happy about was that it was bundled with VISTA. But then I thought it would be a good time to re-look at VISTA and learn all its positive and negatives sides, besides that my machine has 4 Gig of RAM which won't be used under XP.
My first contact was over one and half years ago and I had troubles setting up a networking application on it. So my my first contact wasn't positive. And now?
VISTA in a Home Network
Microsoft claims that it always look what the trends will be in future and develop for that. Apparently they didn't foresee that people will have networks at home with mixed OSes. In my case I have machines with XP, VISTA and OS X in the network. So first time I wanted to access the XP machine, I get a pop-up dialog saying that there are incompatible devices in the network. So I got a blank network page and no further information. After some research I found that I have to patch XP.
In addition to that, for being able to access shared folders of OSX, I had to modify the registry. Establishing access to the Internet was painless but beside this, VISTA Home Premium (!) failed to cooperate with my other machines out-of-the-box.
Vista's network map also shows router devices.
System RAM and 32 bit VISTA
Well, officially it says 4 GB RAM is supported. But I think it's misleading. You need to subtract the amount of VRAM your GFX-card owns. Mine has 512 MB, so the task-manager says that 3581 MB of physical system memory is available. With 1 Gig of VRAM you probably only will be able to address 3 Gigs of your system RAM. At least I think so, but this articles says the address-space is needed by the hard-disks, so maybe the VRAM hasn't this kind of impact …
At a given moment I had to import some CAD data and needed the maximum of my RAM to be available. So I checked my system and strangely most of my memory was used. This is due Vista's SuperFetch, which preloads commonly used applications and data. This is also one of the reasons why on start-up it may take a while until the hard disk stops turning. Basically this seems to be a nice feature, but for that situation, where I needed the be sure about memory usage, I turned it off via the registry and since then not back on. I think apps now take a little while longer to load but the system-startup is faster. Probably I'll turn it back on one day in order to observe the differences further.
Another aspect was that aprox 2 Gigs are reserved for applications and another 2 Gigs for the kernel. This can be altered using this command:
bcdedit /set increaseuserva 3072
It indeed increased the memory used by the application - it didn't reach 3 Gigs but was more like 2.8 or so. But now the kernel has less space and it might produce side-effects if drivers (like for a 1 Gig VRam Gfx card) assume 2 Gigs. Maybe I'll turn it later back to default of 2048 using.
bcdedit /set increaseuserva
Visual Studio 2003 and Virtools 4.0
Officially Visual Studio .Net 2003 is not supported on Vista. I turned Vista's 'User Access Control' (short UAE)off and it seems to work fine so far, including debugging. Something that does not work are the Virtools 4.0/3.5 wizards. Virtools 4.0 works fine except that the font/typo is kinda blurry. There is some kind of red ghosting it seems - not sure if you can see it on the left screenshot. This must have to do with the font anti-aliasing. Vista uses by default ClearType. If one switches to standard, as shown on the right picture, then the font in Virtools is very nice but then it becomes blurry in other places of Vista. For example window captions.
I don't know how it's in Virtools 4.1 - maybe it's OK there. Otherwise our option is only to switch between both modes for long sessions.
Quick Launch ain't real Stacklets?
In my quick launch toolbar I only have a few common shortcuts (browser, eMail, winamp, trillian, total commander). I use additional, collapsed shortcut bars for i.e. frequently used development tools like PSPad, Visual Studio and Virtools. There are some inconvenient aspects to this: the button is pretty small as the toolbar name doesn't act as button and under Vista icons become visible when the area with network and active app-icons gets collapsed.
Currently I am trying something different: RocketDock in combination with the Stacks Docklet plugin, both are free. For the stacklet icons I use some free-ones that can be found on the web like here, here or here. I have it at top of my desktop, I hope it won't disturb me too much. I think I still would prefer to have it inside the taskbar itself!
VISTA Security
The vista firewall doesn't really prevent outgoing traffic from applications. It seems much more configurable than the one that comes with XP but it may give a false sense of security. Luckily since recently my preferred personal firewall is also available for Vista. I think this, in combination with the free AVG for personal use, will provide a better protection.
VISTA Theme Style
The task back is 'back in black'. Unless you use the aero theme where you can tint it and, in combination of transparency, mix it with the desktop background image, there is no real control about it's colour. I am no fan of having it in black and disappointed of the lack of choice. Although VISTA has theming it seems locked (for OEM partners?) and you are still required to use 3rd party solutions.
Thestart menu now contain the program directory instead of displaying them in a pop-up. The named reason for this is that people tend to have that menu as large as the whole screen with plenty of installed programs. Now you start with the root dir as list and you click into subfolders. I don't like it because it requires additional clicking. MS probably count on the new indexed searching and the field where you simply type in the first letters to filter the choose. I disabled indexing because having the harddisk rotating all the time disturbed me. In addition to that I organize my start menu in major categories like: 2D, 3D, video, Web, Tools, Games etc. I don't like if installers doesn't give me the option to choose the exact location but in that case it doesn't prevent me from moving the shortcuts afterwards which of course gives me stuff to cleanup manually after an uninstall. And that's where I think MS should have done something more sensible like providing some more standard categories (including API) and tracking, when somebody manually moves shortcuts, for the uninstallers.
On the right side there are some common shortcuts, but some are as sub-menus and some simply as buttons. As you can see in the screenshot, I changed most of them to submenus so I don't have to click on them and for that I don't get an additional window. A good thing would have been if even in sub-menu mode, those items are click-able. another annoying thing is speed and consistency. They often pop-up slowly and sometimes not at all. also on the top-righ side there is an icon that fades into another according the menu item under the mouse. For me it has no real benefit and it even doesn't look better. Sometimes one gets the impression that the slow pop-up are related to the icon-fade but I think it's not the case.
Something else that looks strange is the main menu bar. It has some glossy gradient and somehow it looks misplaced in some standard applications. Below in the article there's a screenshot of the resource manager and it gives an impression about what I mean. In some other applications it looks even worse. Also the progress bars are animated - an 'energy impulse' is going from left to right from time to time. In one case I had a window with a couple of these at 100% and the pulsation felt pretty distracting.
Games section
There's a new window where games are listed that registered themselves there via a new API. It shall help to protect kids so they can only play games fitting their age etc. What I miss is a deinstall item in the context-menu. I often play game-demos because they are time-limited and thus a bit less a time-sink
So uninstalling demos is something I do frequently. There are also a few new games like chess and InkBall. I really like InkBall - played it once for a while - a nice casual game where you draw obstacles using a pen to modify trajectories of balls in order to make them roll in holes.
Positive aspects of Vista (partly)
Explorer
There are some things I like in Vista. Although I don't use the explorer much, I really like the way one can choose a new dir on any hierarchical level of the current directory patch. You can also add commonly used folders in the top-left corner as favorites. In some situations I saw a 'directory' pointing to recently used directories which could be VERY handy but unfortunately in many applications this is not available inside the "open file" dialogs. That would have been a really good improvement! 3ds max has such a directory-history but unfortunately also only in one of their open-file dialogs and not everywhere.
Resource Manager
Something really good is the new resource manager. That's something I always was looking for, for that the system becomes more transparent. One day I was listing to some music while chilling but the harddisk didn't stop working and working … With the resource manager, which launch button is badly hidden in the task manager, I was able to see what process was using intensively the disk and on what files! I found that Vista did some random backup of my system.
This surprises me a bit because I thought this wasn't a Home Premium feature. I turned it off and the computer became quiet. This feature is called 'shadow copy' and although using Vista Home Premium, you can't use it to restore parts of the system by intention, it is used by other services and the Window updater. People recommend to not turn it off.
Voice Recognition and TTS
The Voice recognition engine is much better which is really interesting. But when I tried to dictate an eMail in thunderbird with it, it showed that it still has some way to go. The text area of thunderbird is not recognized and thus a global, less user-friendly mode needs to be used.
Also the TTS voice sounds better, but although I have a german Vista version, it's the english voice and only the english one without possibility to download additional languages.
Windows Sidebar
I like the clock and calendar of the sidebar because of it's bigger size, but beside this I haven't really used it - maybe notes. Weather and gadgets like this doesn't interest me and for RSS I have better tools. Do you use it?
Additional Tools
Vista comes with some useful tools like snipping (selecting an area for a screenshot), Zoom, Notes etc. Unfortunately all of them have their usability drawbacks. It clearly shows that MS has more techies (coders) and less designers - OR - it's their strategy to only provide basic, not- designed tools (like MS Paint). I don't know.
Resume
Overall the user experience could be much better. Microsoft certainly put a lot of work into this but failed on some important aspects in the domain of usability. Vista has a pretty bad reputation, some people like it but too many aren't happy with it. I think Microsoft is aware of this - even if they deny - as they already announced Windows 7 (MS guys went like this: "No we don't talk about the next windows which is called Windows 7… and btw. it has multi-touch support built-in and maybe it comes sooner as expected, but you know we don't talk about it").
I would have loved if they would have improved Vista over a couple of iterations via service packs. But I guess from the the business side and marketing side they wanted to get rid of the bad reputation of Vista and thus the 7 instead of something in the line of XP or Vista. But I am guessing here.
I think a key feature of Windows should be easy customization. The middle between OS X (few choices) and Linux (plenty choices). A good approach would have been to introduce some Target-Audience profiles. Some people just want to use their computer, some want it to tweak a bit and others want as much of transparency and control as possible while keeping the GUI-approach. It's a bit like complex DDC tools: they have different layouts - i.e. in 3D for doing light setups, rigging, modeling etc.
I know that people like Joel think that choices = headaches but I already didn't agree back then when he complained about the shutdown choice in Vista. Too many choices are bad but not enough choices is bad too. It really depends on the personal preference. There's a good reason why GUI customization in complex applications like 3ds max, Silo, Maya or Modo is very important. Besides saving every clicks and distances, personal tastes do play a role for productivity!
What if Vista would have come with theme-creation tools and a community webplatform for sharing and (like Stardock does)? Instead they locked that feature.
I also miss built-it multi-desktop - the first time I experienced it was like 10 years ago on an Irix machine. Alreadythere I wondered why it's not available in windows. Well nowadays there are but it's 3rd party and most of them only deal with windows and not icons on the desktop itself. I tend to have too much icons on the desktop, so multiple desktops probably would help
I already mentioned stacking link-shortcut lists for the taskbar. It's like an enhanced quick-toolbar. The new Mac OS X has it and it's nothing revolutionary but it totally makes sense.
Well, this blog post became pretty long. I think there's more to tell but that's it for now. Cheers
Last week, Virtools released their new Virtools 4.1 webplayer. It got re-branded (once more) and is now called "3dvia player". Previously it was called "3d life player" and before that "Virtools Web Player". Personally, I am not sure if calling it 'merely' "3via player" is a good thing as they have a whole product line branded with "3dvia" in addition to a whole community/service. But afaik 3dvia composer, shape etc content won't be displayed inside the Virtools webplayer. I think it still requires something like the 3dxml player … maybe that's something that will change in the future?
There's also a new publishing-fees chart on the virtools website. It divides the Virtools webplayer into 3 packages
freemium (public and no end-user registrations)
freemium+ (private access or end-user registrations)
premium (end-user pays fees for content access)
Well, for me that's basically commercial vs. non-commercial as today it's mostly about registered users, communities and profiles. It's not an attractive model from a modern perspective.
"3DVIA MP is an outstanding development engine that has given our team a collaborative work environment including low-level access for our programmers", said Nicolas Gaume, CEO of Mimesis Republic game studio. "The designers have been able to get results in record time while maintaining triple-A visual quality."
I think he is quite famous in france as he was president of known French game company called Kallisto etc. Anyways back to topic. On the FMX site it says:
Mimesis Republic designs, develops and operates a new generation of social networks: virtual 3D immersive worlds, by leveraging multiple types of gaming experiences to create new and increasingly synchronous social dynamics.
On the site of Mimesis Republic designs it says:
black mamba : A universe and community in real-time 3D targeted at urbane cultures (Hip Hop). Released in summer 2008 in partnership with: Universal Music, Sony Ericsson, Orange, Skyrock.
Looks like a GTA meets Singstar in Second Life
But, as Helgason recently announced, there are also several Virtual Worlds and a MMO in works using Unity3D:
– 1 x full blown MMO being made with Unity – 5 x virtual worlds being made with Unity – 3 x well funded game portals being made with Unity
It's no surprise, with Networking (based on Raknet) included plus a GUI engine etc. The only think that makes me wonder a bit, is that Unity3D has no real external run-time binary format for loading scenes/objects/components data into Unity at runtime. People write their own serializers but I hope they will add their own format too. Currently the webplayer streams all levels into the memory, but I think there are plenty of use-cases where only a selective loading behavior is desired.
Btw. since the Second Life hype, there are so many companies working on virtual worlds … it soon will be crowded. I think there's a bigger one beeing produced in Berlin, too.
In 2000 I started to learn Virtools and my dream was to work with that technology fulltime. In 2001 I started to work on VR stuff for a PC-based 'CAVE'-like technology based on VRML. At daytime I did 3d content and scripting for it and at night time I was enjoying the power of Virtools.
In 2003 I met for the first time Roland Wagner - the guy that wrote the magazine article about Virtools where I first ever read about it and which made me download their demo. In 2004 my dream came true and I joined Roland's team and worked full time on projects using Virtools.
I had the desire to push Virtools as much as possible - often developing at the edge of it's usability. For example we probably did the first commercial project in Virtools 3.0 where, for several outdoor scenes, every single object was using a shader.
This enthusiasm of course revealed a lot, lot design shortcoming and bugs. And of course one never stops learning Virtools … even now after so many years!, but there were and are still real issues. Already some years ago I talked to many advanced developers that felt the same frustration like me: we were able to see the full potential of this technology if issues would be addressed. Some things improved over time, but not as fast and intensive as we wished. Often we wondered why it didn't progress faster … at some point it was clear that Virtools was lacking manpower especially since they started the complete rewrite that was named: mp. mp, the tech that addresses all issues!
In meanwhile Virtools prices started to climb and climb, while other technologies appeared on the horizon. After the web3D area, where still only a few used 3D and mainly for simple interactivity, more people wanted to do 3d games and content. Some open source engines like OGRE3D and Irrlicht got larger communities. Quest3D also became an established alternative to Virtools (except for those that used Virtools already).
Suddenly Virtools was no longer the best option …. Other solutions had suddenly features that where not available in Virtools - or not to that degree. Even when Virtools was still the more productive environment, pricing difference made other solutions attractive.
A good example is Unity3D. It has physics and publishing for free. But script-code development is actually much slower in my opinion (compile time, no breakpoints and no stepping etc). It also has less features on one hand, but on the other hand features that Virtools doesn't have: modern shadow system, terrain engine, more advanced script languages (JS/C#). This becomes so attractive that people like Matthew switched and I … I am at least learning it at a slow pace. Bogengang, the company i am still working for, nearly bought UnityPro for a first project, if I would not have been too busy with other projects. But I am certain, it's a matter of time and we will use Unity for *some* projects in the future too.
Already 2 years ago, I told my boss that we need to introduce an alternative as 'Plan B'. As you can see, it's not fast and easy to do for us who are now used to develop quite effective with Virtools - especially with customized export & build pipeline. But even this time-saving might not always be enough to make 3d things available for attractive prices - at least in the sectors where we are mainly active.
3D is going mainstream. And this does not happen because Dassault Systemes is doing "3D For All" or "3dvia ". Technology is evolving extremely fast and even more and more young people are enthusiastic about games and digital creativity. In addition to that, key-companies like Microsoft, Nvidia and Sony know that they need many new talents for their markets. Therefore they are giving away tools and technology for free.
There is a fast growing Indie Game Scene producing a lot of new 3D content. The Casual Games market actually grew so much that it's no longer an Indie thing only. Not everything is free but accessibility to 3D content generation is facilitated by lowering costs: the Wii Kit is said to be costing less than 2000$ US and PS3 development could start with less than 1200$ US according to Sony!
Now I wonder where in all this is Virtools? Where does Virtools position itself in this market nowadays? mp is about to be released - instead of being a replacement of Virtools DEV its a new product, probably aiming a AAA multi-million budgets. So what is now the official role and position of Virtools DEV I wonder?
I already don't develop any plugins in my spare time for Virtools anymore because it 'feels' like an dead-end, lost time. If it's true or not, it doesn't matter… if you know what I mean …. the enthusiasm I had for it is no more - that's a key difference. And probably I am not alone …. the Virtools IRC channel was never very crowed - 14 ppl. at peak times .. but now? EMPTY! Go and do a visit in Unity3D's IRC channel … see the difference?
The recently published Gamasutra article 'Nine Paths to Indie Greatness' mentions a lot of tools and technologies (bottom of page 3). Among them Unity but not Virtools. In the current issue of Digital Production, which is THE 3D magazine for digital content creation in germany, has articles about Unity3D and Quest3D - about Virtools I haven't seen any for ages.
Guys, change strategy … open Virtools to the masses, now that you have mp. It's no longer 1999 or 2000. Become Skype of the 3D sector! There are now so much more people knowing about interactive real-time 3D content creation!
I just saw the press release - there is now a website for Virtools MP. It contains the video we already know with slightly better resolution and some more details - but not yet that extensive to satisfy the curiosity of existing Virtools Dev users.
Interesting aspects are: data is stored as XML which is probably much better for atomic handling, OO Behaviour-Graphs maybe similar in approach to the BG instancing that comes with Dev 4.1 , customizable build process, media processing, render slots (whatever this means), customizable culling, streaming of levels/stages (stage = scene?), advanced shadow system, gameplay templates.
A custom build and media processor is actually something we created in our company for DEV, too. It really boosts productivity! We use schematic scripting to implement the media processing and store media in special folders and with special tags in names. It allows the GFX teams to add new content of existing types without the need of a developer for assets integration.
Wider Platform & File Support: Virtools 4.1 and 3D Life Player are now compatible with Microsoft Vista and 3D XML V4. In addition, the Virtools SDK is moving to Visual Studio.net 2005.
Improved Usability Enhancements to Reduce Production Time: One much awaited feature for Virtools is the ability to instantiate a behavior graph that is introduced through a new "Call Behavior" building block. Using this new feature, developers will be able to considerably improve production workflow and delivery time. Virtools 4.1 also provides rich ergonomic and schematic improvements as well as new commented video tutorials, significantly shortening the Virtools 4.1 learning curve.
Simplified Virtual Reality Production Capabilities: Both the Virtools VR Library and the VR Publisher model have evolved to respond to VR community feedback. The simpler publishing model is now available in two versions: "classic", targeted to mainstream VR displays (simple stereo HMDs or Walls) or "unlimited", supporting higher-end systems, including multi GPUs or clusters. This new VR Pack 2.5 also provides better clustering support, improving synchronization performance and quality when using Nvidia Quadro Fx G-Sync hardware, and better supporting multi-pipe and multi-core systems. It also includes new ready-to-use application templates (VRNR), provides support for recent VR devices like Natural Point Optitrack and Xsens MTi/MTx, and adds numerous development and deployment time-savers. New demos have been included, enabling new users and integrators to even better demonstrate the power of their VR equipment.
Enhanced Artificial Intelligence Capabilities: Partnering with Kynogon, Virtools 4.1 provides integration of a new AI library 2.0, which simplifies path-finding generation and design of Non-Playable CharactersÂ’ behaviors.
Looks like they addressed some interesting aspects. Personally I only heard negative things about the older AI pack. Hopefully this new iteration is useful. The VR Pack license scheme was also weird. I wonder if the new approach has an effect on costs. I also wonder what they mean with better clustering support. I am currently helping with probably the biggest Virtools cluster in the world and in our case more functionality for controlling and debugging the cluster is needed.
The BG instance thingy is very interesting - I hope it works well with tracing/debugging. I also hope we get our "center to BG on closing" 'rich ergonomic' feature. Anyways, much too early to do any serious commenting on it - it's just I don't write a lot on my blog recently so putting the press text without any 'blahblah' comments sounded like a bad deal.
p.s. more details are now available on the virtools site .
It also seems that the team resumed working on DEV to bring the next, probably minor, update in Q1 2008.
Also scheduled for Q1 is Virtools's new flagship product: MP (Multiplatform). They have been working on this for years now. One year ago they were in alpha and probably during winter in beta. MP will be no replacement for DEV but an additional product although it's certainly a NextGen DEV. The target market is on one hand Console games producers (XBox360, PS3) but on the other hand they also will have support for PC, probably with a webplayer and new (DassaultSystemes?) web-services. Maybe MP even comes with schematic programming for shaders and maybe even considers thausend of other improvements the DEV online community suggested over the past years.
Rumours say that MP will cost 3 or 4 times as much as DEV.
I finally started to learn Unity3D after having observed it from distance over a couple of years now. Something I've done and I am still doing for many real-time technologies like i.e. Ogre3D, Shiva3D, DxStudio, Visual3D, Blade3D, Quest3D etc. etc.
I am using an older PowerBookG4 - as I am still not motivated to buy a new Mac - which seems to be ok for my purposes. Unfortunately shortly after I got the Eval version my working days became very long and very quickly 2 weeks went by where I nearly did not had the time to look at it. I then bought the restricted Indie version to be able to continue but I won't be able to look at Windows deployment and plug-in development - which are two very important topics to me - but maybe later, when I learned the basics, I'll reask for a Pro Eval Key.
You may ask: what is the difference between the Indie and the Pro version … well … I think there is currently unfortunately no overview chart for this. Some Pro features are: Real-Time Shadows, Render-To-Texture, Windows .Exe deployment, custom plug-in using C++, OpenGL low-level access via Scripting and support for the Unity Asset Server.
I'll blog about my experiences with Unity - especially from a Virtools Users perspective - while I learn and think about it. Please keep in mind that I am a complete Unity3D newbie, therefore I might state things that are not true or I try to make things in a complicated/unusual way etc. Of course I am happy for any hint etc. I can get, so don't hesitate to comment or write me an eMail.
Unity Basics
Unity is a Mac only authoring system for real-time 3D content. It has a webplayer for Mac OS-X and PC Windows. You can also export to standalone applications on both platforms thought windows deployment needs the Pro version. A PC version of the authoring system is planed but probably nothing that will be released soon.
Unity's architecture is using the GameObject (GO) and Component approach. GameObject are containers without much functionality. You add Components to your GOs to define its functionality. If you want to learn more about Component-Architectures I suggest you t
