Caligari TrueSpace: the end.

**Giovanni** · 21 May 2009, 06:59 AM

http://www.caligari.com/News/news_20...heFounder.html

**kinetica** · 21 May 2009, 09:11 AM

That's very sad. It doesn't make sense that Microsoft purchased Caligari and is now effectively shutting it down. Microsoft don't have any other 3D application in their product stable do they?

Anyway, I guess now is the time to download a fully mature 3D program for free. I'm sure there must be a huge Truespace community since it has been around for years.

Best of luck to all of the Caligari employees. It's all very sad.

**93i** · 21 May 2009, 02:17 PM

well, always sad to see people losing theire jobs, but microsoft also bought softimage and sold it a short while later - softimage is doing great, salewise and featurewise. don't get me wrong, but if truespace would be a product that would have a chance to survive in todays 3d world, they could sell it too, but i wonder what truespace developers did all the years, you don't see any progress in the last 10 years. 3d software world is nothing which allows lazyness.

**Soquili** · 21 May 2009, 05:10 PM

I received an email from Roman Ormandy today containing the same information.

There had been many updated and improved features in Truespace from version 4 to 7.6 but it seems Microsoft was only interested in gaining some features for their other software.

**geminiguy** · 21 May 2009, 08:16 PM

Well, no surprise really... this is what MS is well known for.
another sad victim of the monster

**morphonius_821** · 27 May 2009, 01:33 PM

We're all guilty of following the dollar...
And we never complain when we get something worthwhile for a good price...
Unfortunately Microsoft does the same...it just has a truck load of money and when it moves people are bound to get bowled over. The thing they saw as worthwhile obviously had value for them that rendered it relatively cheap or a must buy.

If more people supported open source projects then eventually this problem would be greatly lessened but who has the strength of character to use something significantly below current industry standard so they can function as just one ant doing something we perceive as fruitless and going against the grain.

But that is exactly what people need to do if they want to evolve into creatures who can see further than their own immediate needs and exercise their own patronage for the greater good whist sacrificing in the medium term for the long term good of all.

Your only weapon is your patronage.

**gidgit** · 29 May 2009, 04:14 PM

Ah, this is really the fault of Roman and fellow developers... they just did not go in the direction of what artists required... way too little, way too late... like why model within TS when one could do the same job quicker within say Silo or Wings, what have ya... akin to blender, but much more limited....

**ss-kalm** · 29 May 2009, 04:29 PM

Originally Posted by morphonius_821

.......If more people supported open source projects then eventually this problem would be greatly lessened..........

If more people supported open source, then the good folks at Caligari wouldn't have had jobs in the first place ........

**morphonius_821** · 30 May 2009, 06:56 AM

Originally Posted by ss-kalm

If more people supported open source, then the good folks at Caligari wouldn't have had jobs in the first place ........

Yeah, I can't see that happening to such a degree generally... but it would be nice to see some firm competition threatening some of the bigger companies...
Linux never really seriously hurt Microsoft but I'm sure the whole concept of open source (when duly supported) raises the bar and does create many interesting additional avenues.

For this reason projects like Inkscape always catch my eye but I don't see that threatening Xara any time soon (for example)....
But my opinion on that is that inkscape is too tightly tethered to the .svg spec (i realize this is the whole point of inkscape) but i also feel bottlenecks in this spec are what is really holding inkscape back (from my perspective). And who knows, if that is spruced up big-time serious competition could eventually result...

But getting back to the point, the kind of competition open source could potentially unleash on Xara for example would not in my view (even in a worst case senero for Xara) be enough to harm Xara but rather it would force them to shake, rattle and roll.
And in the end would probably be a good thing all round.