mikep@hpmwtd.HP.COM (Mike Powell) (11/09/90)
I called Impulse regarding Imagine and update policies from Turbo Silver. I'm a bit pissed off. They informed me that the upgrade period is almost over (the middle or end of November). They also informed me that the upgrade cost was $150. I paid LESS for Turbo Silver! THEN I'm told that Imagine 1.0 is not ready, and that actually I'd be getting a .9xx version! I simply can't imagine (no pun intended) PAYING $150 to be a gamma- tester! (in fairness, 1.0 will eventually come as a free upgrade). "May I return the software if I'm not satified?" "No." "Would you consider extending the 'upgrade' period past the release date of 1.0 so that I might have a chance to evaluate it first?" "No. Don't you have faith in us?" I can't believe the guy said that! What kind of business are they running? I thought they were selling a software package, not a religion! I understand that .9xx doesn't have cast shadows, does not have a sphere primitive, has WORSE requesters than Turbo Silver (It took Silver users years to get impulse to make the improvements that went into Turbo Silver... will we have to do this again!?!) Could a owner of Imagine .9xx please take a few moments to present their views about the program? (strong and weak points), especially in direct comparison to Turbo Silver. Many thanks in advance. -Mike Powell-
Classic_-_Concepts@cup.portal.com (11/11/90)
Regarding the query on the high cost of upgrading to Imagine from TurboSilver
I don't have Imagine, but I saw the demo at the Turbo Silver Users' Group
meeting at AmiExpo and believe me, you almost wouldn't recognize the
product as having been developed from Silver, the interface is so different.
To illustrate the point, when asked what users should do with Silver once
they get Imagine, the President of the company mimed a frisbee-diskette
ripping out across the audience. Ergo, toss it.
Imagine is almost a complete rewrite. The interface is far more smooth and
intuitive. Feats which were difficult or impossible with Silver are second-
nature to Imagine.
I can't recommend it yet, since I don't have it. But the demo was sufficient
to have me lusting after it. :)
Julie Petersen (LadyHawke)pawn@wpi.WPI.EDU (Kevin Goroway) (11/11/90)
In article <730016@hpmwngf.HP.COM> mikep@hpmwtd.HP.COM (Mike Powell) writes: > I understand that .9xx doesn't have cast shadows, does not have > a sphere primitive, has WORSE requesters than Turbo Silver (It took > Silver users years to get impulse to make the improvements that > went into Turbo Silver... will we have to do this again!?!) > > Could a owner of Imagine .9xx please take a few moments to present > their views about the program? (strong and weak points), especially > in direct comparison to Turbo Silver. Many thanks in advance. I personally like Imagine a lot (now that I can make shadows appear...) Its interface is fantastic (although, I still like sculpt A LOT), it is much improved over Silver (IMHO). Shadows are in there. Sphere primatives are not, neither is "ground", but for the time being it is still usable. > -Mike Powell- -- +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= | Worcester Polytechnic Institute | "It happens sometimes, people just | | Pawn@wpi.wpi.edu | explode, natural causes."-Repo Man | +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=
pvallis@hpcupt1.cup.hp.com (Paul Vallis) (11/13/90)
Mike writes... > I called Impulse regarding Imagine and update policies from Turbo > Silver. > I'm a bit pissed off. You must have been talking with the president of the company. Everytime I talk with him I have the same reaction. > They informed me that the upgrade period is almost over (the middle > or end of November). They also informed me that the upgrade cost > was $150. I paid LESS for Turbo Silver! THEN I'm told that Imagine > 1.0 is not ready, and that actually I'd be getting a .9xx version! I think that the window of opportunity that Impulse , Inc. has given REGISTERED owners of Turbo Silver to upgrade to Imagine is downright rude. Especially since they are asking T/S users to upgrade to Imagine SITE UNSEEN. > I simply can't imagine (no pun intended) PAYING $150 to be a gamma- > tester! (in fairness, 1.0 will eventually come as a free upgrade). This adds further salt to the wound! > "May I return the software if I'm not satified?" "No." Now, according to the letter I received (enclosed with Imagine), I CAN return Imagine if I'm not satisfied for a complete refund! > "Would you consider extending the 'upgrade' period past the release > date of 1.0 so that I might have a chance to evaluate it first?" > "No. Don't you have faith in us?" Yep! You MUST have been talking with the president! > I understand that .9xx doesn't have cast shadows, does not have > a sphere primitive, has WORSE requesters than Turbo Silver (It took > Silver users years to get impulse to make the improvements that > went into Turbo Silver... will we have to do this again!?!) I am a Turbo Silver owner. And, I can't stand it! I personally feel that it is a completely unusable product (even though I've seen many wonderful works created with it by some obviously VERY patient people with lots of time). I seriously considered paying twice the price to upgrade to a competitive product because I really felt that Impulse had sold me a piece of <well, you know>. I sent Impulse a sizzling nastygram about Turbo Silver and received a personal call from the president. After an hour long conversation with him, he convinced me that I should at least give Imagine a try. Soooooooo, reluctantly I wrote out the check for $150.00 (stomach churning) and sent it to Impulse. A few weeks later I got Imagine in the mail. Two disks, a letter and a half completed manual. The letter said that the disk with the yellow dot was the floating point version and the disk without the yellow dot was the integer version (which is what I need for my stock Amiga 2000/HD). I plopped my "integer" version in my machine and Wa-la! GURU! I called Impulse who explained that they made a mistake and sent me two floating point versions. They told me to send them the disk without the dot and they would replace it with the integer version. I did and they did. No reimbursement of postage, not even a letter of apology. But, I now have a working version (version .9) of Imagine. > Could a owner of Imagine .9xx please take a few moments to present > their views about the program? (strong and weak points), especially > in direct comparison to Turbo Silver. Many thanks in advance. Imagine is far from perfect. There are many things that still aren't all that intuitive... BUT ... When compared to Turbo Silver, Imagine is a godsend! It is much easier to use and much less frustrating than Turbo Silver. It's quite a bit easier to select individual points and it will eventually have a lot more features than Turbo Silver. You get quad view (three views plus perspective) which makes it MUCH easier to visualize what the heck you're doing. There are new ways of picking points (drag box and lasso). The requestors are indeed more complicated and the whole task of setting up an animation is a bit confusing at first, but overall, and I REALLY hate to admit this... I LIKE Imagine! My biggest complaint, so far is that you must set your stack size to 10,000 or Imagine will guru on you when you try to render your object. I have no complaint that Imagine needs 10000 bytes. Only that you must REMEMBER to set it ahead of time. I'm not a real hacker/programmer type but I can't "Imagine" (pun intended) that it would be too difficult for a program to look at its stack size as it starts up and present the user with an error message or warning. And, if it can do that, why can't it set reschedule itself with a larger stack size? If Imagine Version 1.0 comes out SOON (as promised), and if it is complete when it arrives, I'll be a happy camper. Would I recommend it? Wow, that's a tough one. As an upgrade to Turbo Silver, yes! As a standalone purchase, probably not. If I were to do it all again today, I'd lean toward the video toaster (hardware upgrades and all). Don't be upset about the $150 you'll spend to upgrade to Imagine; be REALLY pissed off about the money you ALREADY spent on Turbo Silver. We'll, that's my dollar ninety five's worth. Paul Vallis ----------
unland@cbmvax.commodore.com (Rick Unland - Special Projects) (11/14/90)
In article <730016@hpmwngf.HP.COM> mikep@hpmwtd.HP.COM (Mike Powell) writes:
$
$
$
$ I called Impulse regarding Imagine and update policies from Turbo
$ Silver.
$
$ I'm a bit pissed off.
$
$ They informed me that the upgrade period is almost over (the middle
$ or end of November). They also informed me that the upgrade cost
$ was $150. I paid LESS for Turbo Silver! THEN I'm told that Imagine
$ 1.0 is not ready, and that actually I'd be getting a .9xx version!
$
I really do not see your problem with this type of upgrade policy. They are
using the best possible method to be fair to people that have purchased their
previous product. As to what you paid for Turbo Silver what does that have to
do with it? Imagine is a totally different program that just happens to have
similarities to an existing product. I can assure you (Being one of Turbo
Silvers harshest critics) That Imagine is absolutly not the same product.
I agree that it is a pain to have to wait for the final version but at least
they are letting you get familiar with the different editors and the capabilitie
that exist now. They have said that they will ship free of charge the final
version to anyone who buys the upgrade. What could be more fair.
$ I simply can't imagine (no pun intended) PAYING $150 to be a gamma-
$ tester! (in fairness, 1.0 will eventually come as a free upgrade).
$
You are not paying for being a Gamma tester, You are paying for a pre-release
upgrade path that has certain advantages to waiting for the release product.
It is your choice if thoses advantages are enough to convince you to purchase
now.
$ "May I return the software if I'm not satified?" "No."
$ "Would you consider extending the 'upgrade' period past the release
$ date of 1.0 so that I might have a chance to evaluate it first?"
I do not know of to many third parties that give money back policies if you
do not like thier product. Some dealers do this but not developers. Also there
are quite a few dealers that have the program and are more than willing to allow
you to play with it at their stores. This should allow you to evaluate the
program to determine if it is right for you.
$
$ "No. Don't you have faith in us?"
$
$ I can't believe the guy said that! What kind of business are they
$ running? I thought they were selling a software package, not a
$ religion!
$
I can a do belive he said that. I know the people at Impulse and I know their
mindsets also. They believe they are doing the best they can to bring a product
to market that is fairly priced and well done. They are also trying to show
people that have shown loyalty to thier company some favoritism by allowing them
to have the program before others and to give them some advance in using the new
features.
Sounds like my kind of company.
$ I understand that .9xx doesn't have cast shadows, does not have
$ a sphere primitive, has WORSE requesters than Turbo Silver (It took
$ Silver users years to get impulse to make the improvements that
$ went into Turbo Silver... will we have to do this again!?!)
This is where I really take offense! You say you understand it has these
problems but you dont know. But here you are getting all fired up and publicly
decrying faults and problems that you have no first hand knowledge of. You feel
that it is ok to malign this product and the company that manufacturs it without
knowing what you are talking about. I understand though! If rumers are said
often enough they become fact.
$
$ Could a owner of Imagine .9xx please take a few moments to present
$ their views about the program? (strong and weak points), especially
$ in direct comparison to Turbo Silver. Many thanks in advance.
$
$ -Mike Powell-
This is the correct way your post should have gone. Then after reading all the
responses and investigating the product you could have publicly stated from
your own knowledge what you think they did wrong.
As an owner of Turbo Silver and Imagine and Opticks and Sculpt 4D and Design 3D
and Forms in Flight 1 and 2, and many others both commercial and PD. I have to
tha Imagine is so far the best 3D program available for an Amiga. I have not
seen Light Speed so I cannot comment on it ontehr than to say the animations I
shown by NewTek at shows are incredible.
Imagine
The editors are well thought out and implemented wonderfly. The forms editor is
fantastic for creating anmorphic shapes but requires practice. There is a
concept to be grasped before you can use the forms editor in production.
The Detail Editor is great and allows for the full manipulation of objects
and points. Easy to use and understand with quick redraws and fast camera view
wireframes. Between the forms editor and the Detail editor there is not much
than cant be modeled.
All the requesters are just fine and give you all the ability you require inside
of a requester. If you are refering to the attributes and transformation
requesters then you will see they are very improved from the Turbo Silver ones
even though they look similar.
The action editor available from the Stage editor is one of the hottest
animation tools available in 3D, Similar to Symbolics S Dynamics in its ease
of use and the way you can tell exactly whats going on at a glance. The way you
can control objects , lights and anything else over time is extremly functional
and intuitive.
As I have the flu now, I am going to hold on that note but I will be more than
happy to discuss this over email.
BTW I have an object with over 70,000 polygons that imagine is the only program
capable of loading and rendering it. No other 3D program can even load it
with the possible exception being Lightwave which I have not seen nor do I have.
So next time get your facts straight and learn to be a little more understandin
of people that have five to ten man years invested in software that they are
selling at such extremely low prices. This program has features that would give
high end packages a run for their money.
Rick Unland
Send flames to >NIL:
I wont read them anyway.) (11/14/90)
In article <-286609994@hpcupt1.cup.hp.com>, pvallis@hpcupt1.cup.hp.com (Paul Vallis) says: ... >Imagine is far from perfect. There are many things that still aren't all >that intuitive... BUT ... When compared to Turbo Silver, Imagine is a >godsend! It is much easier to use and much less frustrating than Turbo >Silver. ... >If Imagine Version 1.0 comes out SOON (as promised), and if it is complete >when it arrives, I'll be a happy camper. Would I recommend it? Wow, >that's a tough one. As an upgrade to Turbo Silver, yes! As a standalone >purchase, probably not. If I were to do it all again today, I'd lean >toward the video toaster (hardware upgrades and all). You (somewhat) recommend Imagine. My question is "Is it a useable product?" What's the bottom line? Is it just fun to look at or is it usefull? I depend on the software I use (I do animation for a living), so that is an important aspect to me. BTW, have you seen/used the Toaster's Lightwave? Later, Marc Rifkin r38@psuvm
easu015@orion.oac.uci.edu (Jason Goldberg) (11/14/90)
Rick, I agree that most of the complaints about Impulse Imagine in this thread were unfair, and it was good of you to point them out. Also, I know you to be a very knowledgeable Amiga user and your recommendation of the product along with those of many on CI$ lead me to believe that it is a good product, I personally don't do enough rendering to be a fair judge. However, there are more problems with Impulse's customer support of this product line that you either forgot to mention or didn't know about: I used to be the Amiga Product Manager for a new chain of Computer super store, which sold the Amiga along with IBM, Apple, Epson, HP, etc... The chain was owned by the owners of Inacomp and funded by Mitsubishi, it was a very bright spot for CBM, and CBM West Coast District Sales considered it one of, if not the, most important accounts they had. (I am not telling you anything because you still worked at West Coast District Sales, when ComputerCity began selling Amigas). The Amiga product line, ultimately failed at ComputerCity despite some very promising early results. It is my personally opinion that companies and customer support such as that Impulse provided us, is a perfect example of why the Amiga failed in a main stream dealer such as ComputerCity. I originally ordered 12 Turbo Silver's from our distributor. The problems with Amiga Distributors is another story (for me a long ugly one...). Anyway, unlike the policy of almost any Non-Amiga distributor, I was not provided a dealer demo of Turbo Silver. I called the company and they were not interested in providing any demo software that could be used to help sell their product, but they did offer to steal my account from their own distributor. That looked real professional with our cooperate buyers. Anyway, I personally bought a copy, and used that as a dealer demo. The problem is that it crashed on all our A2000HD's, A2500's, and A2500/030. This was before the mem location zero issue, was publicly known. I call Impulse and they say that CBM made an error in building their product and that Impulse had no intention of correcting CBM's mistake. But, if I wanted to upgrade to Silver SV that the problem would go away. Now, the problem is that Impulse will not sell the upgrade to dealers, so I have to try and sell my 12 copies to customers and have them call Impulse and pay more money for a working version. Finally, I get my Turbo Silver SV and it has exactly the same problem. It will not work on any machine that has a 2091, due to the non-zero value in location zero. They did not volunteer this info to me, and suggested that I call CBM and ask them to fix their hardware. Well, once the Cooperate buyer hears this story, he refuses to purchase any Impulse product and we have to send our unsold copies of Turbo Silver back to the distributor. Meanwhile, I still get Impulse news letters all the time, stating what a great customer service company they are! Next, I read in the vendor forum on CIS that Impulse would appreciate it if people would stop calling and complaining about all the bugs in SV, since they have decided not to fix them, but to allow people to upgrade to Imagine for the bargain price of $150. Then, I read that credit cards were charged for Imagine 3 months before the product was shipped. That when people did receive Imagine it was beta release .9 and that only the .fp version worked. If you needed the .int version you needed to pay to send back your disk, to have them send you a new working beta version. Still, no one to my knowledge has received v1.0 and I seriously doubt how bug-free v1.0 will be anyway, based on their past history. So, while I agree that it would have been very nice of Impulse to offer a $150 upgrade to move to a more capable product. I don't feel that anyone should support a company who is charging $190 ($150 for Imagine, and $40 for SV) to original owners of Turbo Silver who have never been given a version which is even close to bug free. -Jason-
es1@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Ethan Solomita) (11/14/90)
In article <15843@cbmvax.commodore.com> unland@cbmvax.commodore.com (Rick Unland - Special Projects) writes: >In article <730016@hpmwngf.HP.COM> mikep@hpmwtd.HP.COM (Mike Powell) writes: >$ >$ >$ >$ I called Impulse regarding Imagine and update policies from Turbo >$ Silver. >$ >$ I'm a bit pissed off. >$ >$ They informed me that the upgrade period is almost over (the middle >$ or end of November). They also informed me that the upgrade cost >$ was $150. I paid LESS for Turbo Silver! THEN I'm told that Imagine >$ 1.0 is not ready, and that actually I'd be getting a .9xx version! >$ > >I really do not see your problem with this type of upgrade policy. They are >using the best possible method to be fair to people that have purchased their >previous product. As to what you paid for Turbo Silver what does that have to >do with it? Imagine is a totally different program that just happens to have >similarities to an existing product. I can assure you (Being one of Turbo >Silvers harshest critics) That Imagine is absolutly not the same product. >I agree that it is a pain to have to wait for the final version but at least >they are letting you get familiar with the different editors and the capabilitie >that exist now. They have said that they will ship free of charge the final >version to anyone who buys the upgrade. What could be more fair. I think we need a little dose of moderation here! To say that what Impulse is doing is unfair is not fair, but then to imply that they are being good to their users isn't fair either. When people bought Turbo Silver, they presumably had a chance to read reviews and/or test-drive it somewhere. Therefore if they now don't like it it is their own fault, not impulse's. However, Impulse is telling people to pay $150 to get a pre-release version of a program which they can't even preview first. What right does Impulse have to ask "Don't you have faith in us"? They aren't my relatives or friends, they are a business trying to do business with others. Basically they are giving TS users a choice: pay now and take a chance you won't like it or wait and pay full price. Since Imagine isn't an upgrade but a different product, they have no obligation, moral or otherwise, to give an upgrade path. Although they are giving one, it isn't a very good one and riddled with conditions. So don't flame Impulse, they aren't under any obligations to do anything. But don't say either that Impulse is being really nice about the deal either. I personally have bought enough software that I think stinks that I will not buy a program costing $150 without previewing it first. As to the money-back offer, considering that (apparently) Mike Halvorsen (sp?) denied its existence I wouldn't count on it. Besides, the offer requires "faith" that the company will do it. Interstate law-suits are very difficult on individuals! 8) -- Ethan If God were suddenly condemned to live the life which he has inflicted upon men, He would kill himself. -- Alexandre Dumas Which is it: is man one of God's blunders, or is God one of man's blunders? -- Nietzsche They're JOKES! Lighten up! 8) Flames will be ignored.
gilmore@macc.wisc.edu (Neil Gilmore) (11/18/90)
In article <15843@cbmvax.commodore.com>, unland@cbmvax.commodore.com (Rick Unland - Special Projects) writes... (all references to a poorly written flame deleted) >BTW I have an object with over 70,000 polygons that imagine is the only program >capable of loading and rendering it. No other 3D program can even load it >with the possible exception being Lightwave which I have not seen nor do I have. Actually, last night we rendered a scene with significantly more primitives, and it turned out fine... but that package isn't available yet. (In fact, the number of primitives is really only limited by available memory). Only took a few hours to raytrace, with fog and other interesting effects.