Hi Olio. I don't think it's really slowing down. But i will take a guess and say what really happens is V1 beta seemed to develop very fast because we did not get to watch the initial building period. The project was in work for a couple of years before anybody even knew about it. That time was probably spent laying a lot of fundamentals for V1 feature set. But maybe there were new fundamental pieces which need to be built for V2 features? I'm just guessing of course...

On the other hand what you mentioned is true that old features also need maintenance and improvements. So if one man handles this plus new features at same time it will seem like slowdown. But probably it's all handled at same speed as before, minus the recent introduction of Michael's new son. But little Zane deserves some attention from Daddy too! Even if the older brother is a little bit jealous... :)

olio, you've clearly never tried to write technical documentation. It's incredibly slow and time consuming, far, far, far more than you'd expect it to be. Three months to write a complete set of docs for something as large and complicated as MoI already is would be very fast.

Personally, while yes, there are lots of features I'd love to see done, I'd much rather see the current level of quality continue, and MoI continue to be viable as a product.

---> Next version is going to cost 300$ That is 1/3 of what Rhino cost
small bug in your statement, dollar ist not euro. Rhino cost 995 Euro.
That's what happens when one man is too fast, hehe

I don't see the slow down you refer to.
You don't seem to know much about software development cycles either.
I think Michael has managed to add a lot of new features for the next release; Scene management, layers etc... were all critical to have in Moi.
There were also a lot of small changes throughout.

A big advantage of this being as you call it a 'pet project' is that Michael is very quick to respond to user's requests and adapt moi accordingly.
Try this with larger software companies. I find the term slightly demeaning though, considering how professional the development and the product are.

I think the point Olio is making is that for a one-man software developer, as the software grows in complexity, development slows down.

Every change requires testing, documentation, and responses to the forum. All takes time away from core development.

Every company that launches a product is trying to meet a window of opportunity where the product fills a need that no competitors can match. But successful products invite competition. The challenge is maintaining your lead and keeping customers from jumping ship.

I'm facing the same issue with my one-man company. I work 16 hour days and have more ideas than time. I can't grow any further without adding people.

Michael is doing a great job and hopefully he'll grow to a point where he can add resources.

Ed

Yes, I have no doubt about the complexity of making a manual, that's why I would understand if this work was outsourced to keep momentum going to improve the software instead of the manual.

Thank ed (EDDYF) for making the point a lot clearer!

Hi olio,

> So my question is will Moi continue to be a one man
> 'pet project' or is there plans to expand...hire people...?

Currently I do not have any plans to hire more people.

But that is not set in stone or anything, that could possibly change in the future depending on different circumstances.


> I think there is not much more room to improve with only
> you Michael working on this,

:) I would have to disagree strongly with this, it will definitely be possible for me to improve things a lot in the future.

There have already been a lot of improvements added from v1 to v2, there is a list of all the v2 beta release notes here:
http://kyticka.webzdarma.cz/3d/moi/doc/V2releasenotes.html

Why would you think that this progress would suddenly come to a stop?


> if you keep on adding feature how are you going to cope
> with all the maintenance and improving these added features,

Well, one of the key things that I do to help with this is to put a whole lot of effort into making a new feature be at a high quality level when it comes out.

An initial investment to make it work really well at the beginning, helps very much to reduce time spent on maintenance later on.


But certainly there are some limitations on what I can do since I'm only a single person working on this project. Like a Mac port like you mention is a good example of something that is not really feasible for me to tackle. But it is incorrect to extrapolate that into saying that no improvements at all will be possible for me to do, just the progress on v2 alone is enough to show that is not true.


Also there are actually some pretty substantial benefits that come from these limitations. Because my time is limited I tend to have to focus more on bigger priorities and not get side tracked as much. I have to try to make a new feature more polished and finished when it initially comes out, rather than kind of doing it halfway and redoing it later. I have to try and squash bugs when it first comes out so that I don't spend all my time fixing bugs. When people are running into a problem and I'm seeing the same questions come up repeatedly in support, I have to try and eliminate the problem so that I don't spend too much time on support.

Those are all things that have a positive effect on the software quality.


The other thing is that going slowly is "not a bug, it's a feature" :) - going slowly and carefully and taking time to do a better design results in a higher quality and more cohesive interface in the long run.

The interface design is a huge part of what I'm trying to do with MoI, and that tends to be an area that actually goes downhill when there are more people working on the software especially when they are focusing more on finishing things quickly.


One way to ruin the simplicity of an interface is to just add a whole bunch of functions into it really quickly.


Once the simplicity is lost it usually tends to be gone forever, it is not easy to reclaim it after it is gone.


Interface simplicity has a lot of benefits - it greatly helps for new users, but another thing I've also found is that experienced people can benefit from it as well due to increased speed when there are qualities like fluidity and economy of workflow that are part of the simplicity as well.

- Michael

>> So my question is will Moi continue to be a one man
>> 'pet project' or is there plans to expand...hire people...?

>Currently I do not have any plans to expire and hire more people.

Expire? Lol. Freudian slip. :-p

Hi olio,

> Now the Moi enjoys having the best nurbs to mesh mesher
> around and has a competitive price. Next version is going to
> cost 300$ That is 1/3 of what Rhino cost, and they have what
> 10 delvelopers?. What happens when Rhino finally redoes its
> mesher, that would take alot from Moi, what about Moi great
> display engine? In Rhino v5 they have really made improvements
> and it's really fantastic with realtime shadows...

The part that you're missing here is that you're thinking that you can compare things just by assembling a bullet list of features and lining them up.

That's simply not true - the interface of a product is not something that is easily summarized in a bullet list like that and for quite a lot of people the interface is really what can make it possible for them to actually use the product at all!

- Michael

Hi Nick,

> >Currently I do not have any plans to expire and hire more people.

> Expire? Lol. Freudian slip. :-p

"expire and hire" had a certain ring to it I guess... :)

Hi olio, the other thing that I should mention is that there will often be a kind of natural slowdown that happens near the end of a beta release cycle like where we are right now.

Even though I try to do a "pay as you go" type development approach, there are still loose ends that need to be tied up at the end, and also I get even more cautious near the end to try to avoid introducing bugs since there is not as much testing time to find them when it is near the end.

So I expect that there will likely be a kind of slowdown near the end of any beta period, that's just a normal part of the process.

I guess it would be possible to avoid this slowdown but the consequence would be a decrease in quality. And a decrease in quality tends to mean that extra bug fixing time will be required in the future, so it is not necessarily even saving time in the long run.

- Michael

Please Oh Please remain a sole proprieter, small business.

I recognize MoI's unique mission and it's solitary pursuit. I cant wait to see what is coming next. I believe suprising results are in store for me over the next 5-8 years with regard to MoI.

If you sell MoI to DAZ productions, I would be happy for your family, Michael...I would stop using MoI.

>What happens when Rhino finally redoes its mesher, that would take alot from Moi

Moi's still have a quite different angle in core drawing and modeling, a simplicity and intuitiveness which has not been seen often in this field.

For me Moi3d does the job every time, with the least resistance in execution.

Please stay on this track!

Marc

Yes... please stay on this track!
THe joy of working in MoI is it's inherent simplicity and intuitive character. It works just like it should and that happens only with very careful planning and focus that can't happen with multiple threads.
cheers,
eric

>What happens when Rhino finally redoes its mesher, that would take alot from Moi

Well, this would be something to see! See Rhino "Redoing it's mesher", in it's current, "overbloated" state, is going to be, quite possibly, an impossible task as, in the words of the original creator of the application, one of it's shortcommings, that was built in from the begining and an admitted (failure if you want to call it that, possibly better to call it vision) was it's lack of planning in the UI and care taken to have it be managable in the future.

Good luck with hoping Rhinos mesher is going to be able to keep up with MoI's!

To all,

Michael G. has made amazing progress with his Moment of Inspiration modeling software. I use it in line with the other modeling programs that I use every day in the manufacturing world. I intend to purchase the next revision v2 for myself after owning v1, and purchasing the v2 release for the company I am employed with outside of my freelance work. My staff and those that I support with CAD have been deeply impressed with what I have been able to show them in presentations and proposals and as far as up to production ready models, that I am obligated:-) to purchase this software for them to use as well.

Sorry to go on, but I see no reason at this point to question Michael G.'s motives or his ability to continue to improve upon his program.

Michael T.

Small bug in both statements... true cost of Rhino (in the states) is approx $780 online. Of course, outside the US is horribly overcharged. Don't know why McNeel continues this silly policy...

Also I see little point in trying to directly compare Rhino and MoI, as now Rhino has stepped far outside the role of being just a modeler. And the features being developed for Rhino 5 will exaggerate this even further, as it seems to me that Rhino's becoming the Maya (or possibly the XSI) of the CAD world. You can't possibly compare Maya to Hexagon or Silo on a linear scale. If anything, I expect that Rhino and MoI will evolve along more complimentary paths in the future...

Burr wrote: "Rhino "Redoing it's mesher", in it's current, "overbloated" state, is going to be, quite possibly, an impossible task"

Sorry Burr, but I doubt this statement holds much water. There have been two alternative meshers developed recently, one from Tsplines (which overrides the default mesher) and another one from McNeel. McNeel could build another new mesh system and have an option to use either the new one or the old one as default until all the kinks are worked out. I expect that's how they will handle it, so nobody has to worry about breaking stuff in the process... Also I would like someone to point me to a truly good example of overbloating, something other than the huge # of available commands. The discussion has come up many times and there are always good reasons why the seperate commands should remain in place. The best reason is that one can quickly access a specific command by the keyboard and not have to click through options they don't need. options can remain sticky for that particular method. When you have to repeat a function many times; this is a blessing, not a curse... I do agree that Rhino needs more command consolidation, but again it goes back to what i just mentioned before. Many users don't want the specific commands removed. And it would be quite easy for a scripter to create a single uber-command which analyzes the type of input objects and then calls up the standard Rhino command to handle that particular case. This is something I've already suggested, and i may do it myself at some point for commands such as Booleans... If the claim of overbloating has to do with the UI, it's well known that Rhino V5 will have a new one. Not sure what that will look like but it's happening. But I hope it looks and works like Grasshopper's UI which is already very nice! :) So I doubt anything is really "impossible"...

Sorry for the OT... :)

While I don't believe there is too much to worry about in the near future, I can't help but agree with Olio just a small bit.


Already owning Rhino v2, MoI's USP (unique selling points) for me were:

1) It's gorgeous mesher; I stopped using Rhino for the mere fact that what I would get out of it was too heavy / ugly to work with in my animation app.

and

2) The gorgeous GUI; Even with the great GUI, for me the Mesher was the justification for me to buy a similar app (and by the same developer of Rhino) than just upgrading to the latest version of Rhino.

I will also say that I was saddened when I was considering upgrading my Rhino package (v3 at the time) and heard that Michael wasn't no longer part of the project. I had actually thought back in the v1 days that McNeel was Michael's company!

Imagine my glee however when I discovered MoI and learned it was Michael again doing the development! :-)


So if Rhino did come out with a comparable mesher and say a better GUI then MoI's USPs will take some damage in my mind...


The one place where I agree with Olio directly is with say the documentation; that is definitely time Michael could be working on new code while the docs are done by someone else with his direction...


Michael is an amazing programmer with a gift of developing bug free code so I'm also happy with how things are going.

I don't think there will be too much to worry about for good amount of time to come.

-Will