Offline rendering?
HI Tanja,
I understand perfectly that there is a team of people behind this program that are doing what is quite frankly utterly AMAZING work. This program (and the idea behind it) is nothing short of mind blowing and brilliant! So don't take my criticism of one small aspect of it as a complete write-off of the whole program. I have spent quite a bit of time looking into this program to get as good an understanding as I possibly can on how it is currently working including watching over 3hrs of the YouTube tutorials and thoroughly understand the meaning behind Beta testing.
So let me elaborate a little on my initial comment of it being ridiculous that there is no “offline” mode.
Firstly, my reaction was to willohmsford’s comment of “According to one of the officials here there will be no offline version, for now anyway.” And I know it says “for now anyway” and that is a beta test. But notice that I asked multiple times was this going to be the case? And offered the explanations that even if it was possible to get an internet connection on a site it could be A) a VERY slow process given the slow mobile upload and download speeds when using mobile data. This is a screen shot of the mobile data test I just did and the site I am on right now have their own tower on site for their internet access, so the speed here is actually pretty good compared to an average land line connection in Australia.
And B) an insanely expensive exercise given that when the product is officially released it will most likely cost a small fortune to use in a commercial sense, like all other Autodesk products, plus then we would be adding the expense of insanely priced mobile internet here in Australia, this could be a huge hindrance to smaller businesses in particular when considered over a number of years vs the expense of buying a decent computer to do the number crunching. And keep in mind I am not thinking in terms of using this once a week or once every couple of days. I am thinking in terms of using this on a daily basis and multiple times a day at that. So if it is going to cost the end user $XXX per month or $XXXX year then $x each time you want to process a job, these costs can add up fast to be far greater than a decent laptop or PC. Maybe I am thinking of this in a totally different light to the development team though. Maybe this was never intended to be used on such a regular basis. But given the examples in the tutorials of the Smithsonian and archeologists maybe I am not? Then add to that the cost of the other programs like AutoCAD, Inventor, Recap Pro, etc. you can possibly appreciate the cost implications of trying to use this.
Now also take into account the fact that most commercial users of this product, the users that would be likely to be using this in remote places away from good/cheap internet connections, would be most likely drafters, designers and others that already use massive data sets as part of their job, e.g. FEA, point clouds or massive 3D BIM and other models, the fact is they will already have a pretty beefy computer to run the numbers for their existing work. Also consider that nearly every office has at least one “spare” computer, the fact that you might need to set one computer to working on a job like this for a few hours or a day probably would most likely be of absolutely no consequence at all. Now I will be perfectly open here and say I may be massively underestimating the amount of computing power to do the number crunching on things like this, but I would assume it would have to be comparable to FEA and there are plenty of offices out there that do that in house.
All that said I can see the HUGE advantage of the cloud processing. I can understand the choice to make the main function or default function to be set to work in the cloud. But to not include the option for the user to be able to work offline in a program that they will most likely be paying a large sum of money for, or to use, seems totally ridiculous. And this is a criticism that is not only leveled at this program but it is the way that a LOT of programs seem to be going these days, where they can’t be used without some form of internet connection.
so all that said, in the interest of trying to be a little more constructive in the development of the program, here is a couple of ideas for you and the development team to kick around.
- Could you implement the OPTION to use the program offline? This would give the end user the option to run a job off line if needed or if they have a computer that can crunch the numbers. This would allow people to at least test their systems to see if they can do it. If not then they have the option to buy a better machine or only use the program online. and just keep this in mind before saying "do it when you get to a better internet connection", i do fly in fly out work on a mine site currently and spend 14 days straight on site and then 14 days off site. so if i were to do a job here on the first day where i wanted to use this process and i had to wait until i got to a decent internet connection i would have to wait 14 days to get home process the job. then wait another 14 days to get back to site to use the data. so maybe that option isn't so practical.
- Given that servers are now pretty common place in offices, would it be possible to implement an option to process the data on a local server to be able to free up a workstation to allow a user to continue working while this is being processed?
- Would it be possible to do the job in smaller chunks? For example, when you use 3D Laser Scanners to take point clouds on a job site, you need to take the scans from multiple locations and then stitch them together in a program like recap pro. Would it be possible to have this program do something similar? So the user might be able to load the job (photos) in smaller chunks and then stitch the smaller chunks to make the total job. Similar things can be done with panorama stitching software to make the process faster. This might be an answer to doing the task locally without needing the cloud.
Please try and understand that I am making these comments based on a view of using this software in a daily commercial process in remote areas like I am currently working in. and my particular circumstances are not that unusual in Australia. But I understand that in the grand scheme of Autodesk consumers I would most likely be a very small minority and possibly not even worth considering when it comes to the overall implementation of these things, so understand if the desire to work offline is not taken into consideration.
No you didn't 😛 
