Online survey for OLD stuff removal

[LOMBARDIAUGUSTO]

Max is senior software and as for all the "long story" software there are a lot of old tools that no one uses anymore but they are still there to maintain back compatibility

the idea is to prepare a list of stuff that the DEV team would like to remove and propose to artists with a 1 to 10 rank per feature to remove

it is good to hear what we want to add to max but it is important as well to know what we don't use anymore because things are evolved or there is a new tool or plugin

this could be a great way to help team to speedup and cleanup things

[Xerges]

 I would remove:

- Video Post
- AEC objects, walls, stairs, windows, doors... (those ugly trees...)
- all the particles systems that are not Particle Flow
- Physique, yes physique, use skin, skin should get a skin 2.0 and be done with physique once and for all
- View Cube
- Steering Wheels
- Strokes

- Flight Studio

- Camera Tracker

- COM/DCOM server control

- Panorama Exporter

- Polygon Counter

- Scene Effect Loader (is it still working?)

- VRML97 (C'mon! this is not serious)

- Forces: Bomb

and that's without mentioning that Atmospheric aparatus should be raplaced by something new,

it's obsolete... like all atmosphere in environment and the horrible Effects.

And even thoug I uninstall the connection with Civil View and Revit, I don't use those and I don't even have Interactive installed, I still have menus with Content, Interactive, Civil View and even a Revit Explorer ???

[Hart3D]

That's a great idea, but perhaps we should treat these legacy items a bit like Mental Ray is now - not included by default, but able to be downloaded and installed only if needed.  I still occasionally use AEC Stairs in that list, but would vote for Radiosity to be removed.

[LOMBARDIAUGUSTO]

Hi Heart3D

the "install later" idea is something that will work for sure, but i see this as an add on to the overall Removal program

there will ever be something that people still use, in this case i think that an UPgrade would be preferred more than a removal

there could be more than one solution

one of the main focus of this idea is to stop backcompatibility work from DEV team so they can focus on new stuff

if they have to make stuff keep work but let us decide when install or not....it means more work for DEV team and no optimized code as well that goes far from the point of this IDEA

but i definitely consider it as a good add on so thank you

[Hart3D]

Hi
Yes I agree with you. It would be preferable to just kill these old tools completely, but knowing Autodesk like to maintain backwards compatibility, the on demand install might be a good compromise. No more development required - just a way to access these old tools if a small group of people still need them.
Autodesk have data analytics tools to see who uses what and how often. Perhaps they should just bite the bullet and delete items that reach a low threshold of usage.
Cheers

[LOMBARDIAUGUSTO]

Well the point is to remove stuff with the approvation from users...otherwise the first result will be the WorldWide complain

actually i'm not asking to remove this or that, i'm asking to develop a safe method to collect approvation from the base that is a step before to remove or similar

one more aspect to consider is that some tools are very old (character studio just to say one) and probably it is easier to maintain them than remove

in cases like this the "install later" would be preferable but this will not help the DEV team that at the end of the game will have to work to maintain backcompatibility

[RGhost77]

Personally I'm using this batch file to move/remove Max's crap, since max 2012. https://pastebin.com/cGyxwL7d

[LOMBARDIAUGUSTO]

that's one more good idea, a bit technical but useful until we have something more user friendly

[musashidan77]

This is a great idea. An overhaul like this is long overdue. Max has just bloated way beyond its limit. The amount of legacy junk really is unsustainable. Plus the fact that it also installs even more junk in the form of all those Autodesk material libraries and the Revit and other Arch-vis stuff. Plus we're stuck with so many plugins that were bolted on and never updated, like viewport canvas, CAT, Probooleans. And all of these last tools with such great potential but just left to rot. I think it's more apparent than ever before that the Arch-Vis industry is all that really matters in Max's future. Must be awful for the dedicated dev team, being squeezed by 'corporate management' types when trying to be creative.

I recently started using Blender(using Max since R4) and I'm amazed at its capacity. It's extremely powerful, modern, responsive, has excellent tools, is easy to customise and install scripts/plugins, and most of all it weighs in at only 100megs and takes about 2-3 seconds to launch.

[LOMBARDIAUGUSTO]

yes the idea is to make MAX better and more efficient

there are too many competitors out there and this is also because of the wide range of applications that MAX suppots

VFX, games, Arch Viz, medical viz and who knows what more.

max is full of old toxic crap but what is crap for one field of application could be an essential tool in another field

so before to remove something is better ti listen the base and identify what can be removed and what just needs to be improved or collapsed in a brand new tool

just to give examples, character studio and cat could be unified in a single powerful new tool

optimize, pro optimizer, multires - they could become one single brand new modifier

and so on...

this is what i personally would like to see but i'm sure that someone else will ask different approach

so let's discuss