The team has been working hard towards this next major release. There are still a lot of bugs to squash, but pretty much everything included in the release is ready.
The major items in the release are:
- UV-mapped voxels
- Meta-materials and Meta-meshes for large, custom procedural objects
- Improved Unreal Engine 4 Integration
- New instancing system, both voxel and mesh-based
- Intelligent Biome Terrain Synthesis
- Continent and landmass generator
I have covered most of these already in earlier posts. There are some other items under wraps that we have not disclosed yet, mainly because we are not sure if they will make the release.
The new version will bring a new business model. We are dropping the monthly fees and royalty payments. The new model is simple: you purchase for a one-time fee and you get one year of free updates. To make it fair, we have implemented these changes already for the current version. And everyone who has a Voxel Farm 2 license will get an upgrade to version 3 at no additional cost.
Gearing up towards the major release, we have just updated the company's website at: www.voxelfarm.com
There is a new WebGL demo that shows Voxel Farm in action over the web (it is in the Showcase section.) We also added Forums, something our users have been demanding almost since last year's launch.
So, for clarification, the cheapest way of acquiring this went from "Pay $19 and get a month's updates" to "Pay $19 and get a year's updates"? So in practice it became cheaper? Or am I just mis-remembering the original price?
ReplyDeleteThe cheapest option was the Creator license, before the changes today it was $19/year. It continues to be $19/year so that did not change at all. The thing is, Creator is only good if you want to produce content or world definitions. You cannot do a game or an application with it alone. You are not getting the Voxel Farm Engine, rather a tool to create content for the Voxel Farm Engine.
DeleteIf you wanted the actual engine, the cheapest option was Indie. It was an initial $295 and then $20 a month to keep getting updates. This has now changed to $295 a year. This may seem $45/year more, but the key difference is now you get 12 months of future updates, compared to paying $20 every month to get the same updates. The cost of your first year using the license is much less. It went from $535 down to $295.
Also note we have dropped the royalty requirement. That's hard to quantify but I guess it is worth something :)
Right, so the overall long term cost went up, but the initial getting in cost went down, is the gist of it?
DeleteYes that is correct.
DeleteI was excited for a minute about "dropping the monthly fees" until I read the license for INDIE and saw that now instead of $240/year in monthly fees after the initial $295, it's $295/year. Oops. Heh heh. Inflation I guess.
ReplyDeleteStill worth every penny!
While you are right about that, the cost of ownership for the first year is a lot less. This first year is crucial, in most cases it is all you need. From our experience this last year, the monthly $20 is a heavy burden while you still try to figure out your project and where Voxel Farm fits in the picture.
Delete1) How about trial versions? It's kind of a common practice, what's so special about this case?
ReplyDelete2) Any ideas on putting Executable examples in showcase? So people get the feeling not only from videos.
Very good points. We have these options already in the lineup for the Version 3 release.
DeleteThere is a 30 day trial for the Indie version. There is also a bundle with five demos: two UE4-based, one Unity and two native OpenGL.
Great!
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ReplyDeleteWhat are the odds of getting a Unity game using this tech running at ~90 FPS for VR (assuming baseline GPU of Nvidia 970)?
ReplyDelete100%
DeleteIf you want dynamic scenes in your VR game where the user can modify the environment, Voxel Farm gives you the most optimized scenes possible.
I can't seem to find the WebGL demo. Can you provide a direct link to it?
ReplyDelete