Daz Studio 5 development update

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  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 41,054
    edited July 2021

    inquire said:

    kyoto kid said:

    ...yeah that is sort of what I gathered after digging around a bit more. So that means Maxwell's next on the chopping block.  Wonder if the general release Daz 5 will be when it happens as most likely it will include a new update of Iray.  Nvida already will be dropping driver support for W7 and 8.1 this fall and already has done so for their Ampere pro version cards (formerly the Quadrro series). 

    Some software has also abandoned Windows 7 for 10 like Marvelous Designer, Adobe Creative suite, and Blender (as of ver 2.93). Hopefully Daz will not be going that route with teh general release of .5.

    From my experience, it also means even if you plead and beg and write in to the web site, they will do nothing to alter their decision.

    ...true, just trying to avoid that 6 year long Microsoft "beta test" called Windows 10.  At least here beta versions are an option, don't affect other system operations or introduce instabilities that can mess up your system, can be run concurrently with older or newer versions of the core programme, and can be removed without harm to the rest of the system.

    Post edited by kyoto kid on
  • 3Don said:

    What is x86 Macs?

    It will be any Mac using an Intel processor - so anything from the last 10 years apart from the new M1 Macbook Air and Mac Minis released last year. X86 comes from the serial numbers used by Intel which began with the 8086 processor, then went to the 286, 386 and 486. They dropped the numbering with the Pentium machines but they are all more or less compatible with the ancient 8086.

  • mcorrmcorr Posts: 1,084
    edited July 2021

    AlmightyQUEST said:

    mcorr said:

    Not sure I need the headache (without any form of compensation) to beta test a -- what is already billed as -- buggy pre-beta for the M1. Pass on that.

    Fortunately, just like every other beta version of the software, you don't have to use it!

    righto that's an astute observation ... I'll let you or whoever pre-beta test it for me, then when it runs halfway decently I'll look at things again ...

    Post edited by Richard Haseltine on
  • RAMWolffRAMWolff Posts: 10,212

    Mark_e593e0a5 said:

    I suppose the major issue with DAZ 5 is that they have to move to a more current version of the framework they use. QT 6.x? That is not even really finished by the vendor. They (the vendor of QT) have just release 6.2 with all the modules (first time) ported from QT 5. With potentailly quite some bugs. 

    I will be a happy beta testa for DS 5 on Mac. At least, DAZ is continuing moving forward. Well, what we get is perhgaps like that proverbial box of chocolates. But DAZ IS starting to coimmunicate on that topic (thanks a lot @DAZ_Rawb) which is rather a new move.

    And, if it works on a Mac, it is much likely also wortking on a Windows machine laugh

    Didn't used to be like that.  DAZ3D couldn't wait to share new figures and new ideas from the top down to the end users.  Things started changing years back and now it's all hush hush for the most part.  Not even the content artists are allowed to mention much (NDA).  So for Rob to start this thread and continue to post is (in my opinion) a step back into a direction allot of old timers miss!   

  • MistaraMistara Posts: 38,675

    one of the perks of pc club, back in the day, was suppoed to give us previews of up and coming.

     

    the only thing i want to know is when will general rigging work in carrara

  • hjakehjake Posts: 894
    edited July 2021

    Artini said:

    hacsart said:

    heh - i remember paper tape from those days - still have a bit saved... the old days were fun! (although not always ata the time..) First system I was alowed to run- IBM 360/40 (Although we had a 1401, I never got to seriously work with it..)

    Artini said:

    bytescapes said:

    Artini said:

    If Daz Studio will run natively on Apple M1 or higher CPUs, than I will be considering getting Apple computer (first time in my life).

    Just to see rendering on Apple M1 GPU is worth to wait for...

     You might not see dramatic rendering improvements on M1 (although I'd bet the interface will be a bit zippier).

    Apple and Nvidia have fallen out, so you won't find any Nvidia GPUs in future Macs, or even OS support for the Nvidia GPUs found in older Macs. So for Iray renders, you'll be forced to fall back on CPU rendering.

    When Iray uses the CPU to render, it seems to create some of the code it needs to do the render 'on the fly'. The code is designed to run on processors using the x86 architecture (i.e. Intel and AMD chips).

    To run x86 code on Apple Silicon such as the M1, the code has to be translated into instructions that the Apple chip can execute. Wherever possible, Apple pre-translates the code when the application is first installed. But because the Iray rendering code is generated dynamically when you start the render, they can't do that. Instead, Apple's Rosetta 2 translation engine has to translate it all then and there. I'm simplifying a bit, but the upshot is that Apple has to do a bunch of work to get the rendering code into a form that their chips can work with. That work takes time and the end result is that everything they have to do slows down the rendering process (and CPU rendering is already much slower than GPU rendering).

    It's possible that the Apple chips (the M1, and its likely successors the M1X and M2) have so much power to spare that they can do all this extra work and still beat the performance of the old Intel chips. But I think it's more likely that rendering on Apple Silicon will work out a little slower than rendering on an Intel or AMD CPU, and certainly slower than rendering on an Nvidia GPU. Another factor is that the Apple M1 systems we've seen so far have limited memory -- 8GB or 16GB -- which will make things still slower when handling larger scenes.

    Note that this all applies to Iray renders. I don't know if 3Delight will be optimized for Apple Silicon, but I think that Octane already has been, and I believe that Filament could be. And Blender has an Apple Silicon version, although I don't know if their renderers have yet been optimized for Apple chips. So anything other than Iray could eventually enjoy some remarkable speed-ups on Apple Silicon (especially if the renderer can make use of Apple's own GPUs rather than the CPU). But Iray probably won't.

    I may be very wrong about this, but this is how things stand now, as I understand them.

    You have not made a tests with Apple M1 hardware, apparently.

    From my own experiments I see 5 to 50 times speed increase in 3D graphics applications on MacBook Pro 13 inches with Apple M1 hardware

    while comparing with older Macs, even with Nvidia graphics card.

    I know, that iray does not support Apple M1 natively yet, but hopefully Apple will find another solution.

    Right now I am amazed by Apple M1 performance and believe me I have started my journey with the computers

    like mainframes that were using paper tape as a program and data input, Timex TS1000 with 8 bit CPU and 2 KB RAM

    and continue with all possible hardware including the latest ones.

    Nice memories. During my university studies, I have used punched paper cards to deliver program and data to the computer centre

    and got results just after a week of time. Any error and another week of waiting to get another error report or results.

    Imagine wait for the render 1 week and then discover, that some part of the scene you want in different place,

    and since you cannot see the preview of results, you need to punch cards with different contents and process them again.

    At least the corrections to the data was quite fast, if you only need to replace a couple of the cards.

    Each card could carry one line of the data or program (in Fortran in my case).

     I used tape like that on teletype when I was in the military. No kidding. In the 1980s we used radio-teletype for certain communications.I used to be able to read the ASCII characters on the tape just by looking at it.

    Post edited by hjake on
  • wsterdanwsterdan Posts: 2,347
    edited July 2021

    hjake said:

     I used tape like that on teletype when I was in the military. No kidding. In the 1980s we used radio-teletype for certain communications.I used to be able to read the ASCII characters on the tape just by looking at it.

    Same; I used punch cards in 1973, but when I was working in the Arctic Circle in the early 1980s we sent our reports south using two 5-bit baudot teletypes with their horrible partial keyboards. I remember sitting there at 2:00 in the morning splicing pieces of tape togther by punching holes through using a dart. One summer I bought an Apple ][+ computer, my boss wrote some machine language code to convert the 8-bit ASCII from my word processor (AppleWriter)to 5-bit baudot and the head radio tech built an adapter to take the signal from the serial printer port to the teletype. It seemed like magic to me back then. 

    -- Walt Sterdan

    Post edited by wsterdan on
  • NylonGirlNylonGirl Posts: 1,815

    Now isn't there a function (or method or whatever they call them now) called "cudaDeviceReset" that would free all the graphics card memory? I would hope if they're rewriting the software then they could make it handle graphics card memory better this time around.

  • jd641jd641 Posts: 458

    RemiliaSutton said:

    What will the minimum and recommend specs for hardware be? Will maxwell gpus be supported? Because some of us (like me) aren't rich and can't afford that RTX nonsense 

     I find it confusing that you'd call RTX "nonsense". RTX/Tensor cores are a HUGE step forward for graphics fidelity and for rendering... Would you call unbaiased render engines and PBR materials "nonsense"?

    You don't have to pay scalper prices to have a current card for MSRP, evga has a waiting list you can sign up for and you will get a card for retail price. That's exactly what I did, I signed up for a 3060 the day it was released, started saving for the card, and I got my card this month for just over $400 (including shipping and tax, which was over $40 crying). My small test scene that I was using to benchmark my hardware went from 9 minutes on a 1070 to 2.5 minutes on the 3060. That reduction in render time is certainly not "nonsense" and has already saved me days of render time on some small animations.

  • fred9803fred9803 Posts: 1,564

    I don't think she was questioning the benefits of having an RTX. More like that you have to go on a waiting list and wait 6 months to get one, or alternatively pay a usury price to a scalper .... that sort of nonsense. 

  • jd641jd641 Posts: 458
    edited July 2021

    fred9803 said:

    I don't think she was questioning the benefits of having an RTX. More like that you have to go on a waiting list and wait 6 months to get one, or alternatively pay a usury price to a scalper .... that sort of nonsense. 

    Directly mentioning RTX seemed like a dig at the technology to me, but I could be wrong. Having the same non existant stock and scalper issue with older 10XX/20xx cards and AMD cards makes the whole situation for anoyne looking for the lastest or last generation GPU a nightmare. At least the situation is slightly improving now and will hopefully get to the point where stock and prices are actually normal.

    Post edited by jd641 on
  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 41,054

    .even Maxwell Titan-X cards are running for between 500$ - 700$ at the "buy it now" price on eBay.

  • MistaraMistara Posts: 38,675

    would be interesting if it coul run NLA animation clips.  Vray render engine.  import a .car vertex object directly without having to go thru the convert to obj step

  • MendomanMendoman Posts: 404

    Richard Haseltine said:

    Mendoman said:

    Richard Haseltine said:

    Mendoman said:

    Now that imaginary threats have been averted, could we go back to the real known facts, like that plugins and scripts are going to be broken. How is Daz going to handle that? Are we supposed to buy the same products again, or are we going to get free updates to make them DS5 compatible? Also is Install Manager able to recognize underlying DS version it's updating those plugins/scripts for, so it won't update those plugins/scripts to DS4 versions? Surely Daz has thought about this before they even started coding DS5, so I'd really like to know the answer to this.

    We don't know, I imagine that developers will have to make their own decisions about whether to do a free update or charge depending on the work involved (and perhaps some will take the opportunity to do a feature update while they are at it and make it a full version upgrade). We have already been told that the saved files will, features permitting, be cross-compatible so in many cases it will be possible to use the plug-in etc. in DS 4 and then transfer the result to DS5.

    DIM already stores application details, including release channel (beta vs general) so I would anticipate no problems in keeping track of which version of an add-on should be installed to which version of the application.

    I know that Daz is notoriously tight-lipped and won't promise anything before something is ready, but this is not some new feature or something Daz can safely hide until it's done, this is something any reasonable PC owner thinks about. Why should I upgrade to DS5 if it offers me nothing new, but broken plugins and scripts I have already paid for once ( and probably a bunch of new bugs )? Is it even safe to buy any new products from the store, if it's not known will they work in the next Daz Studio version?

    Thank you Richard. Not really the answer I was hoping to hear, but at least it's good to hear that I can hopefully stay with DS4 if needed.Of course it's bad news that buying new products is like throwing a dice, maybe it works and maybe it won't, but I assume that's just the risk shoppers have to take. Just one more question, do you think it's possible that we can return all the non-functional products after DS5 is released? I understand that it's way over the 30 day refund policy, but if the product is not working in new Daz Studio, is it still ok to return it?

    That would be a decision for support, though you would still have access (for the froeseeable future or whatever was said) to DS4 (well, or longer in the form of backed-up installers).

    Unfortunately my Daz library is over 600GB so I really don't have enough disk space to run 2 totally separate installations at the same time, so at least for me it's either or situation....I suppose I just have to wait and see how this thing evolves and what kind of stance Daz is going to take.

  • LeanaLeana Posts: 11,715

    Mendoman said:

    Richard Haseltine said:

    Mendoman said:

    Richard Haseltine said:

    Mendoman said:

    Now that imaginary threats have been averted, could we go back to the real known facts, like that plugins and scripts are going to be broken. How is Daz going to handle that? Are we supposed to buy the same products again, or are we going to get free updates to make them DS5 compatible? Also is Install Manager able to recognize underlying DS version it's updating those plugins/scripts for, so it won't update those plugins/scripts to DS4 versions? Surely Daz has thought about this before they even started coding DS5, so I'd really like to know the answer to this.

    We don't know, I imagine that developers will have to make their own decisions about whether to do a free update or charge depending on the work involved (and perhaps some will take the opportunity to do a feature update while they are at it and make it a full version upgrade). We have already been told that the saved files will, features permitting, be cross-compatible so in many cases it will be possible to use the plug-in etc. in DS 4 and then transfer the result to DS5.

    DIM already stores application details, including release channel (beta vs general) so I would anticipate no problems in keeping track of which version of an add-on should be installed to which version of the application.

    I know that Daz is notoriously tight-lipped and won't promise anything before something is ready, but this is not some new feature or something Daz can safely hide until it's done, this is something any reasonable PC owner thinks about. Why should I upgrade to DS5 if it offers me nothing new, but broken plugins and scripts I have already paid for once ( and probably a bunch of new bugs )? Is it even safe to buy any new products from the store, if it's not known will they work in the next Daz Studio version?

    Thank you Richard. Not really the answer I was hoping to hear, but at least it's good to hear that I can hopefully stay with DS4 if needed.Of course it's bad news that buying new products is like throwing a dice, maybe it works and maybe it won't, but I assume that's just the risk shoppers have to take. Just one more question, do you think it's possible that we can return all the non-functional products after DS5 is released? I understand that it's way over the 30 day refund policy, but if the product is not working in new Daz Studio, is it still ok to return it?

    That would be a decision for support, though you would still have access (for the froeseeable future or whatever was said) to DS4 (well, or longer in the form of backed-up installers).

    Unfortunately my Daz library is over 600GB so I really don't have enough disk space to run 2 totally separate installations at the same time, so at least for me it's either or situation....I suppose I just have to wait and see how this thing evolves and what kind of stance Daz is going to take.

    You don't need separate content libraries to use both versions.

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,902

    RAMWolff said:

    Mark_e593e0a5 said:

    I suppose the major issue with DAZ 5 is that they have to move to a more current version of the framework they use. QT 6.x? That is not even really finished by the vendor. They (the vendor of QT) have just release 6.2 with all the modules (first time) ported from QT 5. With potentailly quite some bugs. 

    I will be a happy beta testa for DS 5 on Mac. At least, DAZ is continuing moving forward. Well, what we get is perhgaps like that proverbial box of chocolates. But DAZ IS starting to coimmunicate on that topic (thanks a lot @DAZ_Rawb) which is rather a new move.

    And, if it works on a Mac, it is much likely also wortking on a Windows machine laugh

    Didn't used to be like that.  DAZ3D couldn't wait to share new figures and new ideas from the top down to the end users.  Things started changing years back and now it's all hush hush for the most part.  Not even the content artists are allowed to mention much (NDA).  So for Rob to start this thread and continue to post is (in my opinion) a step back into a direction allot of old timers miss!   

    I have to wonder if they stopped doing it after various occasions when doing it bit them.

  • hjakehjake Posts: 894

    NylonGirl said:

    Now isn't there a function (or method or whatever they call them now) called "cudaDeviceReset" that would free all the graphics card memory? I would hope if they're rewriting the software then they could make it handle graphics card memory better this time around.

    When I looked up the function call there was a note:

    "Note that this function will reset the device immediately. It is the caller's responsibility to ensure that the device is not being accessed by any other host threads from the process when this function is called."

    https://docs.nvidia.com/cuda/cuda-runtime-api/group__CUDART__DEVICE.html#group__CUDART__DEVICE_1gef69dd5c6d0206c2b8d099abac61f217

    This would suggest to me that just resetting the card is not meant as a general function for clearing (freeing) VRAM. It seems to be used when closing an application and even then it is not mandatory.  The garbage collection I think you are asking about could be handle through different methods.

     

     

  • hjakehjake Posts: 894
    edited July 2021

    wsterdan said:

    hjake said:

     I used tape like that on teletype when I was in the military. No kidding. In the 1980s we used radio-teletype for certain communications.I used to be able to read the ASCII characters on the tape just by looking at it.

    Same; I used punch cards in 1973, but when I was working in the Arctic Circle in the early 1980s we sent our reports south using two 5-bit baudot teletypes with their horrible partial keyboards. I remember sitting there at 2:00 in the morning splicing pieces of tape togther by punching holes through using a dart. One summer I bought an Apple ][+ computer, my boss wrote some machine language code to convert the 8-bit ASCII from my word processor (AppleWriter)to 5-bit baudot and the head radio tech built an adapter to take the signal from the serial printer port to the teletype. It seemed like magic to me back then. 

    -- Walt Sterdan

    If you look at the picture in this wikipedia posting that was the first instrument I worked on, although we were primarily had our machines in trucks. Later I was trained as a radio operator then radio teletype. These machines required considerable finger strength to press the keys. It was the machine I used to learn to type. To this day when start typing like a mad-man it looks like I'm trying to pound the poor plastic keyboard through the desk. blush  I even had that chair for a time.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleprinter

    I remember when I was posted to a regional comms center and we had "digital" teletype. My boss kept saying "stop pounding the keys, it's not mechanical and if you break it you will be fixing it. I am not calling services again because of you! 

    Now I have to type on screens 4 times the width of my thumb without smashing the gorilla glass  devil

    My first use of a computer was my eldest brother's Timex-Sinclair with the RAM expansion card, black and white TV, and audio cassette recorder for data storage.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Sinclair_1000  That's where I first learned about BASIC and Assembler.

    Thank you for the trip down memory lane.

     

    Hmmm.... DUF files are just text files maybe we could switch back to teletype so there would be no need for a mac, windows, or linux version ... AND   ...  AND ... eveybody sitting at desks could improve their finger strength so they can all learn to get a grip instead of a gripe.  cheeky

    Post edited by hjake on
  • RAMWolffRAMWolff Posts: 10,212

    Richard Haseltine said:

    RAMWolff said:

    Mark_e593e0a5 said:

    I suppose the major issue with DAZ 5 is that they have to move to a more current version of the framework they use. QT 6.x? That is not even really finished by the vendor. They (the vendor of QT) have just release 6.2 with all the modules (first time) ported from QT 5. With potentailly quite some bugs. 

    I will be a happy beta testa for DS 5 on Mac. At least, DAZ is continuing moving forward. Well, what we get is perhgaps like that proverbial box of chocolates. But DAZ IS starting to coimmunicate on that topic (thanks a lot @DAZ_Rawb) which is rather a new move.

    And, if it works on a Mac, it is much likely also wortking on a Windows machine laugh

    Didn't used to be like that.  DAZ3D couldn't wait to share new figures and new ideas from the top down to the end users.  Things started changing years back and now it's all hush hush for the most part.  Not even the content artists are allowed to mention much (NDA).  So for Rob to start this thread and continue to post is (in my opinion) a step back into a direction allot of old timers miss!   

    I have to wonder if they stopped doing it after various occasions when doing it bit them.

    I guess we will never truly know.  DAZ core owners have changed, so has staff and folks at the top have their own idea how to run a business may have influenced decisions like that!   

  • PaintboxPaintbox Posts: 1,633

    Richard Haseltine said:

    RAMWolff said:

    Didn't used to be like that.  DAZ3D couldn't wait to share new figures and new ideas from the top down to the end users.  Things started changing years back and now it's all hush hush for the most part.  Not even the content artists are allowed to mention much (NDA).  So for Rob to start this thread and continue to post is (in my opinion) a step back into a direction allot of old timers miss!   

    I have to wonder if they stopped doing it after various occasions when doing it bit them.

    Can you give examples?

  • Subtropic PixelSubtropic Pixel Posts: 2,388

    kyoto kid said:

    inquire said:

    kyoto kid said:

    PerttiA said:

    RemiliaSutton said:

    What will the minimum and recommend specs for hardware be? Will maxwell gpus be supported? Because some of us (like me) aren't rich and can't afford that RTX nonsense 

    Maxwell support has already been announced to be ending, when it happens depends on Nvidia (as in Nvidia Iray)

    https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/6200861/#Comment_6200861

    4.14.0.8 (November 10, 2020)

    • NVIDIA Iray
      • Integrated Iray 2020.1.1 (334300.4226); see this thread for more detail
        • REQUIRES: NVIDIA Driver 451.48 (or newer) on Windows; see NVIDIA Driver Downloads
          • NVIDIA recommends installing Studio Drivers
        • Adds support for Ampere GPUs (SM 8.0 / GA100)
        • Support for SM 3.X/Kepler generation GPUs has been removed - due to CUDA 11
        • Support for SM 5.0/"Small" Maxwell generation GPUs are marked as deprecated - matching CUDA 11

     

    ...so what does "small Maxwell generation GPUs" and "depreciated" mean?

     As I mentioned above, I have a Titan-X and if that loses support, I do not look forward to going back to glacial CPU rendering as I cannot afford an RTX card at the ludicrous prices being asked today.. Even a 3060 (MSRP 329$) is going for nearly as much as a new Titian-X did back in 2015.

    Deprecated usually means it will not be developed further, and probably will eventually be dropped by whoever makes it.

    ...yeah that is sort of what I gathered after digging around a bit more. So that means Maxwell's next on the chopping block.  Wonder if the general release Daz 5 will be when it happens as most likely it will include a new update of Iray.  Nvida already will be dropping driver support for W7 and 8.1 this fall and already has done so for their Ampere pro version cards (formerly the Quadrro series). 

    Some software has also abandoned Windows 7 for 10 like Marvelous Designer, Adobe Creative suite, and Blender (as of ver 2.93). Hopefully Daz will not be going that route with teh general release of .5.

    I think DAZ will HAVE to abandon Windows 7.  Most companies have had to do that, just to eliminate the technical debt that it represents.

    Oh, and for a lot of companies, "deprecated" means not just no more development, but no more support and no more spending money on that thing that was deprecated. 

    We all want DAZ to survive and thrive.  The only way it can do that is to be truly competitive.  Since most other vendors already have or will soon eliminate Windows 7, DAZ will need to do the same thing.  People on the forums may be vocal and insist that Windows 7 is critical for them, but that's probably not a significant percentage of DAZ customers.  The same may even be true of Linux.

    Providing Windows 7 support when nobody else does, well that would just be an added company expense.  For a company as small as DAZ, this would likely not be a strategic way to compete.

  • algovincianalgovincian Posts: 2,613

    Subtropic Pixel said:

    People on the forums may be vocal and insist that Windows 7 is critical for them, but that's probably not a significant percentage of DAZ customers.  The same may even be true of Linux.

    That's an interesting thought. I would say the same thing is true about Mac users. I'd also bet that there are more Windows 7 users than Mac users, and yet . . . lol - just sayin.

    - Greg

  • namffuaknamffuak Posts: 4,146

    Subtropic Pixel said:

    kyoto kid said:

    inquire said:

    kyoto kid said:

    PerttiA said:

    RemiliaSutton said:

    What will the minimum and recommend specs for hardware be? Will maxwell gpus be supported? Because some of us (like me) aren't rich and can't afford that RTX nonsense 

    Maxwell support has already been announced to be ending, when it happens depends on Nvidia (as in Nvidia Iray)

    https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/6200861/#Comment_6200861

    4.14.0.8 (November 10, 2020)

    • NVIDIA Iray
      • Integrated Iray 2020.1.1 (334300.4226); see this thread for more detail
        • REQUIRES: NVIDIA Driver 451.48 (or newer) on Windows; see NVIDIA Driver Downloads
          • NVIDIA recommends installing Studio Drivers
        • Adds support for Ampere GPUs (SM 8.0 / GA100)
        • Support for SM 3.X/Kepler generation GPUs has been removed - due to CUDA 11
        • Support for SM 5.0/"Small" Maxwell generation GPUs are marked as deprecated - matching CUDA 11

     

    ...so what does "small Maxwell generation GPUs" and "depreciated" mean?

     As I mentioned above, I have a Titan-X and if that loses support, I do not look forward to going back to glacial CPU rendering as I cannot afford an RTX card at the ludicrous prices being asked today.. Even a 3060 (MSRP 329$) is going for nearly as much as a new Titian-X did back in 2015.

    Deprecated usually means it will not be developed further, and probably will eventually be dropped by whoever makes it.

    ...yeah that is sort of what I gathered after digging around a bit more. So that means Maxwell's next on the chopping block.  Wonder if the general release Daz 5 will be when it happens as most likely it will include a new update of Iray.  Nvida already will be dropping driver support for W7 and 8.1 this fall and already has done so for their Ampere pro version cards (formerly the Quadrro series). 

    Some software has also abandoned Windows 7 for 10 like Marvelous Designer, Adobe Creative suite, and Blender (as of ver 2.93). Hopefully Daz will not be going that route with teh general release of .5.

    I think DAZ will HAVE to abandon Windows 7.  Most companies have had to do that, just to eliminate the technical debt that it represents.

    . . .

    Providing Windows 7 support when nobody else does, well that would just be an added company expense.  For a company as small as DAZ, this would likely not be a strategic way to compete.

    I agree - W7 will, at some point, no longer be able to run Studio. That doesn't mean Daz has to actively abandon W7. They just need to keep on with planned upgrrades and at some point Studio just won't run on W7. Hopefully this will be discovered in beta and advance notice can be posted that the next public release will no longer work on W7 so people can archive the current installers.

  • AllenArtAllenArt Posts: 7,169

    algovincian said:

    Subtropic Pixel said:

    People on the forums may be vocal and insist that Windows 7 is critical for them, but that's probably not a significant percentage of DAZ customers.  The same may even be true of Linux.

    That's an interesting thought. I would say the same thing is true about Mac users. I'd also bet that there are more Windows 7 users than Mac users, and yet . . . lol - just sayin.

    - Greg

    I would drop Windows like a hot brick if Daz made a version of Daz Studio for Linux! It's one of the last things keeping me on Windows and I love Linux. At least it doesn't treat me like I'm incapable of taking care of my own computer ;).

    Laurie 

  • IceCrMnIceCrMn Posts: 2,129
    edited July 2021

    Paintbox said:

    Richard Haseltine said:

    RAMWolff said:

    Didn't used to be like that.  DAZ3D couldn't wait to share new figures and new ideas from the top down to the end users.  Things started changing years back and now it's all hush hush for the most part.  Not even the content artists are allowed to mention much (NDA).  So for Rob to start this thread and continue to post is (in my opinion) a step back into a direction allot of old timers miss!   

    I have to wonder if they stopped doing it after various occasions when doing it bit them.

    Can you give examples?

     

    You obviously haven't been here long.

    4.8

    iray

    4.9

    Connect

    G2

    G3/G7

    G8

    G8.1

    Pretty much any change that gets announced is construed as certain doom.

    And here we are again.

    Post edited by IceCrMn on
  • inquireinquire Posts: 2,195
    edited July 2021

    hjake said:

    wsterdan said:

    hjake said:

     I used tape like that on teletype when I was in the military. No kidding. In the 1980s we used radio-teletype for certain communications.I used to be able to read the ASCII characters on the tape just by looking at it.

    Same; I used punch cards in 1973, but when I was working in the Arctic Circle in the early 1980s we sent our reports south using two 5-bit baudot teletypes with their horrible partial keyboards. I remember sitting there at 2:00 in the morning splicing pieces of tape togther by punching holes through using a dart. One summer I bought an Apple ][+ computer, my boss wrote some machine language code to convert the 8-bit ASCII from my word processor (AppleWriter)to 5-bit baudot and the head radio tech built an adapter to take the signal from the serial printer port to the teletype. It seemed like magic to me back then. 

    -- Walt Sterdan

    If you look at the picture in this wikipedia posting that was the first instrument I worked on, although we were primarily had our machines in trucks. Later I was trained as a radio operator then radio teletype. These machines required considerable finger strength to press the keys. It was the machine I used to learn to type. To this day when start typing like a mad-man it looks like I'm trying to pound the poor plastic keyboard through the desk. blush  I even had that chair for a time.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleprinter

    I remember when I was posted to a regional comms center and we had "digital" teletype. My boss kept saying "stop pounding the keys, it's not mechanical and if you break it you will be fixing it. I am not calling services again because of you! 

    Now I have to type on screens 4 times the width of my thumb without smashing the gorilla glass  devil

    My first use of a computer was my eldest brother's Timex-Sinclair with the RAM expansion card, black and white TV, and audio cassette recorder for data storage.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Sinclair_1000  That's where I first learned about BASIC and Assembler.

    Thank you for the trip down memory lane.

     

    Hmmm.... DUF files are just text files maybe we could switch back to teletype so there would be no need for a mac, windows, or linux version ... AND   ...  AND ... eveybody sitting at desks could improve their finger strength so they can all learn to get a grip instead of a gripe.  cheeky

     

    True for me, too: a Timex with a cassette tape. Then, an Apple ][, which seemed wonderful. It was all text, of course. To write, both teachers and students used FredWrite (for Free Educational Writer). The Macintosh was astonishing! Ah, memories. Oh, and in college, I, too, used punch cards. It was so wonderful when that switched to bubbling in things on the cards with a pencil, instead of punching the cards. I then had to take a stack of cards up to Stanford University, which would run them for me on one of their computers. After a time, I would get a call, and I could go and pick up the results.

    Post edited by inquire on
  • wsterdanwsterdan Posts: 2,347
    edited July 2021

    algovincian said:

    Subtropic Pixel said:

    People on the forums may be vocal and insist that Windows 7 is critical for them, but that's probably not a significant percentage of DAZ customers.  The same may even be true of Linux.

    That's an interesting thought. I would say the same thing is true about Mac users. I'd also bet that there are more Windows 7 users than Mac users, and yet . . . lol - just sayin.

    - Greg

    True, and those Mac users are in the same boat as those Windows 7 users... their machines are getting older and eventually their machines or operating systems will no longer be able to run the newest versions of D|S or use the newest products, and their options will be the even fewer than those runing Windows 7 users.

    Mac or PC, we're all D|S users and we're all either moving forward with it, standing still, or dropping back, regardless of how many in eadh group there is. D|S 5 isn't being built for Mac users, it's beng built for DAZ Studio users of all stripes.

    -- Walt 

    Post edited by wsterdan on
  • Subtropic PixelSubtropic Pixel Posts: 2,388

    algovincian said:

    Subtropic Pixel said:

    People on the forums may be vocal and insist that Windows 7 is critical for them, but that's probably not a significant percentage of DAZ customers.  The same may even be true of Linux.

    That's an interesting thought. I would say the same thing is true about Mac users. I'd also bet that there are more Windows 7 users than Mac users, and yet . . . lol - just sayin.

    That's a good point, but a lot of businesses are forward looking.  Maybe they've seen the percentage of Mac users rise in a significant way, or maybe they've seen it rise enough to now justify making it a development priority.  I don't know; I'm not in those DAZ meetings, hehe.

    Or maybe DAZ sees Apple's new architecture/chip plans as a technical opportunity.  I know I do.  A lot of people who've never owned a Mac are now considering a purchase of one or more of the forthcoming Apple M1 or M2 ARM devices strictly due to the prospect of Apple's new architecture.  Especially since it runs faster and cooler than anything that Intel/AMD/Nvidia have going on with X86/X64 architecture.

    All of the above is discoverable for DAZ.  Those meetings would be interesting for sure, and this is an amazing time to be alive.

  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 41,054

    hjake said:

    wsterdan said:

    hjake said:

     I used tape like that on teletype when I was in the military. No kidding. In the 1980s we used radio-teletype for certain communications.I used to be able to read the ASCII characters on the tape just by looking at it.

    Same; I used punch cards in 1973, but when I was working in the Arctic Circle in the early 1980s we sent our reports south using two 5-bit baudot teletypes with their horrible partial keyboards. I remember sitting there at 2:00 in the morning splicing pieces of tape togther by punching holes through using a dart. One summer I bought an Apple ][+ computer, my boss wrote some machine language code to convert the 8-bit ASCII from my word processor (AppleWriter)to 5-bit baudot and the head radio tech built an adapter to take the signal from the serial printer port to the teletype. It seemed like magic to me back then. 

    -- Walt Sterdan

    If you look at the picture in this wikipedia posting that was the first instrument I worked on, although we were primarily had our machines in trucks. Later I was trained as a radio operator then radio teletype. These machines required considerable finger strength to press the keys. It was the machine I used to learn to type. To this day when start typing like a mad-man it looks like I'm trying to pound the poor plastic keyboard through the desk. blush  I even had that chair for a time.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleprinter

    I remember when I was posted to a regional comms center and we had "digital" teletype. My boss kept saying "stop pounding the keys, it's not mechanical and if you break it you will be fixing it. I am not calling services again because of you! 

    Now I have to type on screens 4 times the width of my thumb without smashing the gorilla glass  devil

    My first use of a computer was my eldest brother's Timex-Sinclair with the RAM expansion card, black and white TV, and audio cassette recorder for data storage.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Sinclair_1000  That's where I first learned about BASIC and Assembler.

    Thank you for the trip down memory lane.

     

    Hmmm.... DUF files are just text files maybe we could switch back to teletype so there would be no need for a mac, windows, or linux version ... AND   ...  AND ... eveybody sitting at desks could improve their finger strength so they can all learn to get a grip instead of a gripe.  cheeky

    ...I used to be a keybaord musician (classical piano and organ) and yes finger as well as wrist strength was very important.  At home I still had an old manual typewriter as well (actually still have it in a closet, never know when it may come in handy again). Both of these also caused me to be pretty rough on digital keyboards at first as well. Don't like touch screens or the Apple "chicklet" keyboards as there is no actual depression or physical feedback.  All my keyboards are the physical switch variety and require a solid touch so "grazing" another key doesn't cause typos.

  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 41,054
    edited July 2021

    AllenArt said:

    algovincian said:

    Subtropic Pixel said:

    People on the forums may be vocal and insist that Windows 7 is critical for them, but that's probably not a significant percentage of DAZ customers.  The same may even be true of Linux.

    That's an interesting thought. I would say the same thing is true about Mac users. I'd also bet that there are more Windows 7 users than Mac users, and yet . . . lol - just sayin.

    - Greg

    I would drop Windows like a hot brick if Daz made a version of Daz Studio for Linux! It's one of the last things keeping me on Windows and I love Linux. At least it doesn't treat me like I'm incapable of taking care of my own computer ;).

    Laurie 

    ...same here. I have no issue with Open Office and actually prefer it over current version MS Office with it's ridiculous ribbon that takes up a good portion of the screen and 365 is now cloud based...no thank you.  Gimp which I use a lot also runs on Linux. if Daz did I'd be at home and then just set up a VM to run Carrara, Bryce, Krita, PSP and other programmes that don't involve GPU rendering and still work on W7.

    Post edited by kyoto kid on
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