My understanding of the Ecosystem is that it's really an instancing system of some sort. You can create multiples of any object. Will it work with lights as well? Also, is there any release of a V5I demo coming up?

Not with lights.

A demo is coming soon. Q2 of 2005. Odd that it won't work with lights. I would think that would be a good function of it, to create light domes, etc. Maybe possible with python? Brian

Um, if you made twenty cars travelling down the road, and you wanted to put headlights on them, the Ecosystem won't allow that will it?

I just tried with saving a simple light as an object and it doesn't seem to work. Also tried with grouping a light with a sphere to simulate 'headlights'. Not working either. It may just have been overlooked. I will bounce the idea to e-on on thebeta tester's forum.

I got an answer from e-on - lights have been deliberately ignored in ecosystems to prevent an explosion in rendering time among other things. So unless they can eventually resolve technical issues (like they did with ecosystems), there will be no light in ecosystems for the near future.

OK, thanks. I thought that would be the case.

Based on the example scripts and api details in the manual, I would say that python should still be an option - as long as care is taken to keep the instance numbers down within reasonable limits (but I've no idea what those would be)

mm i was thinking the same thing, python scripting will most likely once the right users have gotten some time to play with it provide us with alot of usefull "new/improved/enhanced" features.