Hi Keith,

overall I don't think XD is losing business to Apophysis. There will be some who are satisfied with just Apo, short or medium term, who might otherwise have tried other programs. The increasing popularity also brings people in who will likely want to use XD or UF later. The competition is at the cool toy level, and to that extent includes other kinds of cool toys.

At heart, UF, XD and Apo use three different approaches. UF is built on per pixel iteration and formula compiling, with the flame algorithm bolted on. Apo is built on the flame algorithm, which is essentially a 2D coloring method. XD is built on 3D iteration projected to 2D. While the users see some crossover, the fundamental model differences are likely to prevent any two from converging too much. XD could implement flame rendering (because sometimes it works better than simple transparent rendering) but there are many higher priorities, all more concerned with 3D.

In the longer term I think it depends more on Frederick's vision for UF and my vision for XD in terms of what we want to achieve, and how that translates into demand and opportunity.

Garth