[najak]

NOTE -- Beta 6.0 has been released! Click here to see the Announcement thread.

This thread is no obsolete.


Realmware is pleased to announce the planned release of Beta 5.1 this coming Friday, October 30th, with much to see and many reasons for you to download it.

Visual3D Beta 5.1 will provide you with the following:

Miscellaneous Benefits:

1. Fixes for all critical issues identified in Beta 5.0, plus many more non-critical issues.
2. Fixes for Physics, with primary focus on the Character controls.
3. A number of model importing fixes, reported from the Beta 5.0 release.

Terrain Tools Reloaded!

1. New options added and old options dramatically improved to give the professional touch to your terrains.
2. Flatten brush now graduated so you can use it for making smooth slopes, and not just level terrain.
3. Smooth inverted now gives you the "Sharpen Edges" capability, for more dramatic looking terrains.
4. Light Painting bug fixed, so that now you can turn the Speed down to 1%, and do very slight painting effects, for more realism and artistic variation.
5. Procedural Painting improved, now allowing you to specify Edge thresholds in addition to slopes and altitudes. The results are phenomenal!
6. Auto-generation of the Base Texture! So that your far away view (e.g.. > 1 mile) matches up to your splatting! This enables fast rendering of accurate very large terrains, with far view distances of 100's of miles if you want.

(Check out the attached screenshots of what I could accomplish in just 90 minutes of terrain editing. )

Bonus Features (if they are ready by Sunday):

1. Procedural Paint brushes that pay attention to slope, edge bias, altitude, and enable you to combine a set of textures each with their own parameters.
2. Landcover Painting -- finally you will be able to paint your own land cover into the scene, instead of having to use an outside paint program to alter the landcover image. You will see the results of your landcover modifications instantly.

Note, Beta 5.1 will be the first release to implement a 15-day trial with timeout unless you have purchased your own product license. Each new Beta release will provide a fresh 15-day trial, so if you haven't purchased Visual3D, you will be able to continue trying out our new beta releases for 15 days each. For those of you who have been "on the fence" deciding whether or not to purchase, we hope you will join the other Early Adopters and make the purchase over the next few weeks.

Realmware is extending the current Early Adopter's offer through November 10th, 2009. After that, the price is likely to go up, and the offers may change.

We assure you that Visual3D is a good investment and a good cause. Your money will be 100% spent to accelerate the development and completion of Visual3D. Please make your purchase today, and enjoy 2 years of free software upgrades with the purchase of your indie license.

(EDIT: I changed the target date from the original date of Sept 27th, to the new target date of October 30th. Sorry for this one month slip!)

Check out this terrain I created in 90 minutes using the Beta 5.1 Terrain Toolset starting with a Default Flat Terrain! This is smoking.
(Note the advanced outdoor lighting in this first image -- we have dynamic skies here with star map, and some sweet looking ground-fog to add an extra level of movie-like realism.)

[Pancakes]

cool!

wanna get me hands on that

[Christian24]

Wow this looks amazing

[fizbin]

Awesome, seems to me that i have put my faith in the right engine! Keep up the great work!

[zato_1one]

Very impressive. The quality is definitely AAA!

Originally Posted by najak

Check out this terrain I created in 90 minutes using the Beta 5.1 Terrain Toolset starting with a Default Flat Terrain! This is smoking.
(Note the advanced outdoor lighting in this first image -- we have dynamic skies here with star map, and some sweet looking ground-fog to add an extra level of movie-like realism.)

If you decide to do it again. Please use video capture and make a tutorial out of it next time.

[Christian24]

Originally Posted by zato_1one

Very impressive. The quality is definitely AAA!



If you decide to do it again. Please use video capture and make a tutorial out of it next time.

Agree with you. We need some kind of big brother for filming every cool thing najak does

[danno]

That ground fog is sick! I'm tempted to carve Najaks face in the side of that mountain.

[najak]

As I build these terrains, I'm practicing up for the narrative tutorial. Luckily, my kids don't hear me practicing these narrative, or they'd be making good fun of me. I'm planning on pumping out a few tutorials myself, and already am making plans to have "chaplain" pump out some additional tutorials.

My goal is to produce a tutorial on "how to construct a full lush terrain in under 30 minutes" but time compressed into a few minutes of tutorial. I'm planning to have supplementary tutorials to highlight a few techniques as well, to show how to best achieve the desired effects, etc.

[najak]

Originally Posted by danno

That ground fog is sick! I'm tempted to carve Najaks face in the side of that mountain.

It's funny that you mentioned that. One of my favorite things to do with the terrain is make faces in it, or write words on it. I've written the words "Buy V3D" a few times, and when I get out of control, sometimes I make a shape that resembles a busty lady (not on purpose of course).

[monotonic]

Originally Posted by najak

sometimes I make a shape that resembles a busty lady (not on purpose of course).

Of course, we never thought any different.

[mrhiggens]

looks nice, happy to see the flatten is now also smudge type tool like in grome, that's very useful

keep up the good work

[lordfirefox]

*drools all over screenshots*

[najak]

Greetings all -- there is going to be a slip on the 5.1 release, but I haven't determined yet the new target date. We have a few too many bugs still, (mostly new for new features/perks, but also some old, exposed by our recent testing).

I will post back later today the new target date for Beta 5.1 after a bit more analysis of "what *must* be fixed" vs "what can wait until Beta 6.0". Tentatively, we're aiming for Monday or Tuesday, but history shows that my estimates are usually optimistic. Being a smaller release, this one will *not* drag on like the 5.0 release did, as our history shows that our *.1 (or *.0b) releases slip far less than our *.0 releases.

Here is a list of what is on our "to do" list for Beta 5.1, so you can be more informed.

Mandatory Items:
1. Licensing Timeout logic is incomplete.
2. A few critical bugs with terrain textures getting corrupted occasionally without proper recovery.
3. Recovery for an interrupted Assembly build. Currently if you cancel the build, it can leave you without a terrain, and no good recovery path.
4. TBD -- after more testing and analysis today, this list might grow.


Optional Items:
1. The LandCover Painting feature is still not implemented, and so we must also decide whether to hold the 5.1 release for this or not. We are going to implement the "procedural painting of landcover" first (paints the whole scene based on parameters you configure).
2. Landcover "fading" from impostor to 3d model logic is not done. This will eliminate the gross "popping" that many have commented on in the past.
3. About a dozen semi-critical miscellaneous bugs that I won't mention by name.

[Chaplaindm]

Wow, this is really looking good. We will all be waiting for the new release.

Chaplain

[Pancakes]

Well that's fine. But I'd like to request a link to a previous version that doesn't have the "can't load the same scene twice or it crashes without error" bug. Or the "can't save project when closing or it erases your scene" bug. Those are my biggest issues right now. As long as the last beta didn't have them then I should be able to use the previous beta.

Because I don't really need the terrain tools right now. Just scripting.