Dom's Blog

(a personal, speculative and current point of view) 

It’s obvious, the lack of useful production improvements for DEV is frustrating me a lot. I’ve spend a lot of time using that tech, a lot of time finding out why something doesn’t work, a lot of time for bug reporting and improvement suggestions.

But at the end the impact is still much too small. If i look at all the suggestion i made over a year ago in addition to that the reported and unpatched bug issues I wonder how important user like me are for Virtools.

Virtools cut into the VR market like nothing which is great and no surprise because the tech there was outdated (mainly VRML stuff) or not productive enough. Dassaut says ‘3D democratize’ – 3d for all. Everybody = who?

And on the ENOVIA side, to expand in the area of what we call service after sales, because that’s part of the lifecycle management. Some of the customers who have already started to deploy massively says we want to use it for web-based application in the service after sales. And of course, the front end will be interesting because we are going to use Virtools technology for that. That gives you an idea about where the R&D is going.
(source)

With this technology, PLM customers dramatically extend the benefits of using 3D technologies. The breadth of possible applications is huge. These include: simulation of product usage, ergonomic testing, creating the shopping experience, training scenarios, right through to branding, advertising and web marketing applications. Users of this technology can, for example, fully create scenarios to visualize a car driving through a city. These applications can be experienced online: browser-based, up to and including large scale virtual reality environments.
(source) 

Bernard Charles, President and CEO of Dassault Systemes, presented his vision of PLM as the end-to-end digital 3D experience, where the 3D product model traverses across the product lifecycle from the design collaboration process, to virtual and realistic simulation for manufacturing and product testing, to marketing, sales, and support, with 3D for everyone from designer to consumer. He cited the recent acquisition of Virtools, an interactive 3D virtual simulation tool that will allow the user to be intimately involved in the virtual experience with life-like interaction.
(source)  

Now these guys are big players i guess. That’s good, expansion to a new big market. In addition to that they go top-down in company’s organisations (= convince the management). Now, they want the game tech to drive this tech – so what do they want? The casual game developer? The agency that does from time to time some interactive 3d? The custom industry 3d app creators? Or the tripple AAA market (in the long run)? Codewarrior, PSP, XBox360 support needed? New architecture (MP) needed? Collaborative workflow needed (Dev 4.0?)?

The old user base needed?

I am not sure – seems that the priority is elsewhere, seems that big money is elsewhere. So maybe we will see MP not included in the maintenance fees. Might drop some people (next year?). Ha! But one thing is sure, we know what one can do with this tech, no need for a big marketing campaign to convince or explain us – we have vision. 😉

 At last quote

Virtools has a presence in the video game industry, representing about 25 percent of its revenues, and Virtools will continue to serve these customers and develop new technology for them as part of DS. DS is interested in integrating this leading-edge technology with our industrial design technology to allow game-like realistic simulation.
(source)