Hey all,
Well, it's been a month since LightWave [7] was released, and already they've announced a B-patch for their software. As LightWave [7] was pretty darn stable, this patch didn't have to focus on bugs. Instead, it focused on RAW speed. And let me tell you, the increases in performance are AMAZING. NewTek added FULL support for the Pentium 4's SSE2 instructions, while ALSO adding full support for the AltiVec Apple G4 instructions. What does this mean? Impressive benchmarks. They compare the rendering speeds of [6.5b] (the patch for 6.5 that made tremendous speed increases), to [7] and also to [7b].
Check out the results! Not just that, but here's one of the best parts (this applies to all processors) - they've optimized OpenGL across platforms, for a RAW realtime speed increase of 20%-80%. TRULY remarkable.
Not to get into a app debate, cause I think all the other apps are great too, but I just WISH I could see the faces of the head program managers for Maya and Softimage when they found out. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]
On a personal note, I just think it's great that NewTek didn't just focus on speed increases for the Intel users, but also for the Mac users as well. I'm not a Mac user, but it's nice to see some cross-platform loyalty and consideration.
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