TGEA description under products. Physics?

#1 Dont take this the wrong way whoever added that, but it really angers me to see stuff like this. I have been around since Milestone 3 of TGEA and see this happen before. Atleast put something beside them saying they are NOT included features.

#2 Here is a few more:

- Build for Mac / Linux / PC / Wii / Xbox / iPhone
- Post processing:

* Depth of Field
Real-time Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO / FSAO)
- Built-in Theora video codec playback
-

#3 Use your imagination some of that stuff like Real-time Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO / FSAO) you can buy for an extra 40 bucks lol some you mite find a third party resource from someone who wished to improve the engine with what it mite lack.. cough cough for free!!

#4 However Dave, these are on the feature list of what you are getting when you purchase the engine - not what you can add later for $40.

#5 Technically it does say:

Quote:All modern features are supported by the Torque renderer:

Not that it comes with SSAO and Depth of Field.

Marketing....

#6

Quote:Marketing....

Bad style IMHO

#7 I had arguments over the fact of TGEA's old old page note:
"drop shaders from Rendermonkey into TGEA!"(something like this)

- They never market what their product does...they market what it can do in the hands of a skilled programmer.

Here is some more they should add:
- TGEA can control a nuclear reactor !
- TGEA has the ability to manipulate a robot that can walk your dog and fart!

#8 I agree.
When I read this I also assume that there should be a sample implementation of physics using Bullet, with all these features with the engine downloads.

It also sugggests that all these things come with the engine. Depth of Field, SSAO / FSAO, Built-in Theora video codec playback.

Could this be with TGEA 1.8? Maybe a newer unseen version? Otherwise they should not be listed as features of the current engine.

Need clarification from GG(?)

#9 Similarly, the "cross-platform" clikky on the TGB site. It's listed as TGB supporting "PC, Mac, Linux, XBox360, Wii, iPhone, or the Web".
Last I checked, there's no support for deploying TGB on Linux, 360, Wii, or the web. And to deploy for the iphone you need to buy a different product.

I guess two and a half out of seven ain't bad?


Am I the only one that gets the feeling the website was designed by a bunch of marketing guys wielding frontpage, then handed off to a more experienced web developer to do the real design. Then they handed it back to a developer to actually put the hooks in.

So you've got marketing-designed Torque 3D and Torque 2D pages, that are, as marketing people are wont to make things, somewhere between [charitably] mild fabrications and [less charitably] outright lies.

Then when the coder put the hooks in, she looked at what was there and realised that the only thing that could conceivably be linked with the "buy" button on the T3D page is TGEA, so that's what she did. Rinse repeat for T2D's fantastic list of supported platforms and features, but only being able to find TGB.


I guess if I was feeling magnanimous, I'd just say that the website was deployed six months ahead of its time, where GG need to actually have the product described for sale before they put up the website containing only those products.

Gary (-;

#10 Re: TGEA physics...

There do exist sample implementations for Bullet, PhysX and ODE as resources (which admittedly are currently broken). They don't ship with the engine because they either not network portable implementations, or because we weren't happy enough with them to call them final and bring them into the core. That said, with any of these three physics options, you can do what's listed without much difficulty.

Re: DoF, SSAO, Motion Blur...

Yes, resources exist for these as well. I think Ubiq's paid options are probably the best out there for DoF and SSAO right now, but these will be standard in Torque 3D.

Re: Cross platform "clikky"

TGB still does have Linux support IIRC. Is it up to 1.7.4? I'm not sure...would need to check on this again. As for 360, Wii and iPhone, those are obviously legit and it seems pretty petty to complain about listing those even though they're not included in the price listed. It's a pretty major feature of TGB to have available paths to major consoles and devices.

Seems bizarre to begrudge GG this kind of thing in any case. While I'd prefer to take the time to explain every last detail of every product, simplicity is key to actually getting the point across. Please point me to another middleware provider that doesn't similar liberties promoting it's product(s).

#11 Brett, that isnt the point. You skipped over the fact that the TGEA page says it supports linux when clearly in your blogs you "have no plans at all for supporting linux". Also, the way that page is advertising, it is saying these features come with TGEA, who cares about T3D, its still months out. The theora support has been on the page for a long time now also, and TGEA's theora code is just commented out. The product page is for TGEA, not T3D.

You guys should just put in something that clearly states what it comes with and what is an available resource or additional purchase. What is displayed is false advertising, doesnt matter if other middleware providers do it either.

#12 @Brett:

My original post was assuming that these were coming for Torque3D, and someone had jumped the gun putting them up in the project description - That would be a great feature for T3D. I'd assumed someone would post "Oops, we got caught with egg on our face..." and delete these features.
But please don't jump on here and say that is supported now when it's not. Half written, buggy, and incompatible resources from older engines/versions do not constitute an "efficiently networked abstracted C++ Physics API".

Quote:Seems bizarre to begrudge GG this kind of thing in any case

I'm not begrudging anything. This was more of a wakeup call, thinking maybe you prematurely posted something. But if you want to leave it up there, it is your business not mine.

#13

Quote:There do exist sample implementations for Bullet, PhysX and ODE as resources (which admittedly are currently broken). They don't ship with the engine because they either not network portable implementations, or because we weren't happy enough with them to call them final and bring them into the core.

So there was deliberate misrepresentation on the product page then?

Quote:Re: DoF, SSAO, Motion Blur...

Yes, resources exist for these as well. I think Ubiq's paid options are probably the best out there for DoF and SSAO right now, but these will be standard in Torque 3D.

DoF - no actual resource. There is a discussion about trying to implement buried in the forums however.
SSAO - no actual resource. There is a discussion about trying to implement buried in the forums however.
Motion Blur - the resource in question if for TGE 1.2 or 1.3 (it's unclear), there are plenty of compatibilty issues mentioned for TGE 1.4 and no mention of anyone getting it working in TGE 1.5.x, much less for TGEa.

Again, seems like deliberate misrepresentation on the product page to me.

Quote:...but these will be standard in Torque 3D.

Ok, I'll accept that but this is a product for TGEa which is a different product. Right?

Quote:Seems bizarre to begrudge GG this kind of thing in any case.

Why? Product misrepresentation should be pointed out and fixed by anyone who seriously wishes to keep and maintain it's user base. Not doing so will only lead to dissatisfied customers. Just something to think about.

I wont even point out the irony of your last sentence.

#14 @Brett Seyler
"Please point me to another middleware provider that doesn't similar liberties promoting it's product(s)."

I hope you're kidding...

@Michael Hall
Thanks for your post, it reflects my thoughts. IIRC there was a Motion Blur resource for TGEA 1.0.3 though.

#15 So we can only assume that any feature that is talked about being in T3D in reality means that there is a half working - if at all version of it on the forums somewhere.

#16 @Matt,

I think thats going a little over the top. While GG might have done that in the past, I think T3D will be their true showstopper engine. Almost up there with CryEngine 2...hint...hint...

#17 @Adam

I hope you're right but nothing I've heard in the past few days convinces me of that.

#18 Remember, there are still more blogs about T3D features to come. From what ive read, I can already tell that theres some kind of lighting/shadowing upgrades in store. I think its been indirectly hinted at a few times, but the new terrain blocks will look even better, and perform as good as atlas did (large view distances etc..) I can find a few videos of these new features, but I am only 98% that the videos are actually for T3D.

#19 I thought Atlas looked good, the problem with Atlas was that it was not very user friendly and you had to buy something 3rd party (L3DT or Grome) to accomplish anything with it.

Physics would be a big improvement to me. I've started looking into other engines (Unity, etc) though too so I would expect T3D to rival them. You say CryEngine 2, we just saw Brett's post about them NOT competing with Unreal engine, CryEngine competes with the Unreal engine so I think that's a bit of an exaggeration no matter how much we'd love that to be the truth.

#20 My brain hurts.

I do have a comment for this:
\
"Please point me to another middleware provider that doesn't similar liberties promoting it's product(s)."
\
Actually, I can only name 1 other studio/company that does do this. Sooo, can I assume that you're assistant feeds you jargon donuts with your latte ? ;)

BTW, I have never seen any legit company take the 'leaps of liberty' that GG takes. Sorry to say that but I honestly never have.