I've been thinking lately about those really hot items that have now disappeared and why. Some of them I thought were sure fire winners. What gives an idea staying power?

VRML was supposed to be the next extension of html. Instead of flat pages we were supposed to be able to walk around like Tron through 3D cities of data. You can still get cortina authoring software for $700+ . Fifteen years later most webpages are still 2D. There are some obscure but interesting webpages. The italians have a virtual michaelangelo museum. Most pages like the Wizards Vale or vrml magazine were abandoned ten years ago. Why no interest? The bandwidth is there to spare now with people like World of Warcraft running virtual worlds with hundreds of members simultaneously.

Afterdark was Berkley systems fancy screensaver.  There were 40 or so different modules including a game called maelstrom. It seemed like every wannabe was making a screensaver authoring tool. Then windows decided to change graphics in 98 to active X. Bryce could still process without it but software like Afterdark suddenly lost their core commands. Most screensavers today are pretty lame by comparison. I'm sure there's a market for another Afterdark but no one seems to want to try anymore.

Themes in Windows were great. No body seems to be making them anymore except movies like spiderman and a lot of SOW type renders. you rarely get the whole package anymore with sounds for everything and wait, network, resize icons. There are lots of bad themes around where every error involves listening to a 15 minute long sound clip instead of a simple beep. There are also lots of themes that are windows 95-98 and just don't work on your system. I used to run through the theme file with find and replace to correct the path statements. Now I no longer bother. You could edit them in plus, then you couldn't, then you could edit the whole setup in properties. Once again the software kept changing again and again.

I'm thinking, "why is an old program like Bryce still here?" The interface is the same and easy to use. What you did in 4 still works in 6 for the most part. The software was never crippled by a change in the operating systems. When the software was almost abandoned it got cheap. There are lots of active sites with people talking about Bryce, not ten year old abandoned sites with broken images. If you wan't to learn how to edit terrains you don't have to pay someone $100 for the magic secret, you just ask.

Interesting historical and perspective thought....  You are right about programs getting a start and with a blink, they are gone...   Also, the changing of the guard ( O.S.)... also effected the perverbial new Idea someone came up with...  Microsoft had and still does have their sights on some future world of instant communication and access... under their flag OS..ofcourse...  and keep aborting any and all new Ideas that seem to want to sprout around their OS like weeds...  I recall most of the programs you wrote about.. 

Yet, Bryce never seem to have been affected by the changing guard....  Perhaps the programer new something all the others did not know...     now, there's a question worth $100.00..

I remember After Dark (the flying toasters, at least...;) I also remember a period where all the corporate IT types had it removed because it 'interfered' with normal programs...;)

I was wondering at one point if someone would start making different annoying 'help icons' like Clippy, in previous versions of Windows...the possibilities were endless...;)

Of course, I'm probably the only one around who still has 'Wolfenstein 3d' on his system, because the later 90s games won't run in Win 2k (or XP); like Duke Nukem, Heretic, et al..;)

of course, there's also the matter of the flying cars...where are my flying cars?

I bet you have "Blake Stone : Aliens of Gold too...not that I remember it of course.  ;¬)

well, basically.. vrml technology was too infantile to really be of much value yet, and generally 2d navigation is still more efficient and intuitive then 3d navigation for most things online. Not to mention, to make any kind of 3d environment that looks as good as a nicely designed 2d site one would need way too many resources. Also it doesnt help that most if not all 3d web solutions require plugins most people dont have. Flash and pdf plugins are extremely well adopted by the masses but thats not the case with the various 3d plugins.
Maybe 3d web graphics will get a boost once browsers support OpenGL or things like that.. but personally i see more use in svg to open op graphics possibilities for the near future then i do for OpenGL.

Screensavers; people use their computer too much to bother for screensavers. Computers lost their gimmicky appeal, i guess it reduces peoples interest in software that only gets used when the computer is not being used. It used to be gimmicky just to see a computer do a screensaver, these days it takes much more then just a little graphic to impress us.

As for the skins.. i dunno.. maybe grahpical standards have gotten too high for many people to bother making skins anymore. maybe they consist of too many components for people to bother making them, or maybe they're just outta fashion? lol

Bryce does so well because its simple, easy to use, and stable. Also bryce got lucky because simple and easy to use programs with a small price tag have been consistently popular throughout the past few years as 3d software became more popular with the amature graphics enthausiast. While time progressed bryce fell behind on its competitors, but it also became cheaper and the amount of people looking for entry-level 3d apps increased, thus keeping it in a healthy place in the market.
I dont think there has been a bigger plan for this since the beginning considering that bryce switched owners twice now..

Musings ? I dunno,...........maybe it all comes down to the K.I.S.S. principle,.....Keep It Simple Stupid. Just a thought.

friend of Bill....?

Yeah,........you?

Hey Pakled, I remember making levels for Heretic and Hexen. I think i still have the Wolfenstein 3D disks too.

I can remember drawing with vellum on a MAC IIC and thinking, "When is windows going to get above 16 colors and integrated sound like this?" We were sooo cool trading out Ren and Stempy sound bytes for program error beeps. I kept wondering when Windows would catch up, then it got soundblaster, then nvidia display cards. Suddenly Windows was the same as MAC but it was still about $1000 cheaper. Then you could buy high end sound or video cards you could plug in later. You could write or buy 3rd party software for PCs. At the same time MAC was still IICi, it was still MAC software or nothing, and it was still $3400 compared to $2200 for a PC with similar capabilities. MAC kept talking and getting advice mostly from their core MAC users. The same old people stuck with their MACs but new customers voted with their pocketbooks. Constant program glitches and virus threats couldn't keep them away from PC. Price was job 1 and quality was job 1.1.

I don't think Bryce was unaffected by the conflict. The original plan was for MetaCreations to stay in business. Bryce and Poser were to be fully integrated with animations. Carrara and the like were once under the same flag, or should I say trefoil.  The reason these ants survive today is because they didn't butt heads with the hurricane that is Microsoft. They held on and waited for the wind to subside. They didn't have unrealistic estimates of their own value and cut prices or staff when sales fell. They didn't hoard their technology. No $1000 classes here and secret handshakes, just lots of forums with people trying to help. The reason they survived is they kept the prices low and the knowledge of how to use the programs high. Plus there was always a gallery such as delphi forums where you could see the work. My first experience with Bryce renders cam from Don Tatro on alt.binaries.multimedia.bryce.

I went by blockbuster the other day and they have another 4 previewed movies for $20 special. I have close to 300 DVDs and I guarantee someone is still making money. I also go to theaters for titles like resident evil harry potter that I want to support. If the same sort of deal was availale for music instead of $24 per album for a 1970s release the music industry might be $1500 richer as well. They think they are worth it, I don't. As it is there are 10 blockbusters in this town while the last Cat's records just cut it's floorspace in half. I guess a lot of other people feel the same. Is the record industry undergoing a MAC style implosion?

Watching G4 the other day and the big complaint was there are almost no new games for the consoles that are just out. If you want to build on the Unreal 2 platform the license starts at $350000 with $50000 for each additional module. Considering how out of reach that is for everyone but the people already in gaming I don't think we'll be seeing any fresh ideas soon. Are we looking for a big MAC style downturn in the gaming industry? I think so.

ah...I remember some paint program IBM made back in the late 80s...EGA (4 colors; magenta, blue, white, and ...dang...it has been awhile..;) That's where I got started with this. Eventually I got past Ventura publisher (another moldy one, but 'Windows based) to Corel Draw 8. Had a '3d' program called '3dream'...could never make head nor tail of it..;) But that was maybe about the time Bryce came out...;)  So I had to go through Terragen and Strata to get here, which is what probably colors my work flow..;)

I had Wolfenstein 3d, Heretic, Descent, Doom, and something called Blood (have to agree, there was a while where you could build your own levels to everything, so I had 'add on' disks of hundreds of levels), Duke Nukem 3d, etc. Backed them up to a Zip disk (showin' my age), and didn't think about them for awhile, but found the zip drive and disk and tried loading them into
Win 2k. They don't run a'tall (being Dos-based), even with Dos box (which sorta works, if you don't mind extremely slow jerkyness..;)

So that adds to mind - do we eventually get to the point where the early programs don't even run anymore?

Just goes to show..Programs are like people, they just age and go away slowly...

I had Doom 1, 2, 3 and the toolkit. There was this huge level that left right from the cortyard of level 1. It was so big you couldn't save the game. You just had to get tired and quit. There was a deathstar level with stormtroopers. There was another called osiris that was basically the mummy meets stargate. There were hundreds of regular doom levels. There was even a way to turn the monsters into Barney the dinosaur or presidential characatures.

I could name dozens of other games, Ken's labyrinth, Monster Bash, Crush Crumble and Chomp, Blake Stone. The original castle wolfenstein was a 2d game on Commodore 64. The list goes on. None of them work now.

yup......  know him for 21 years now..... 

I remember hearing stories of people saying "color monitors for computers? thats one useless waste of money"

Skins are not dead at all. Check out http://www.wincustomize.com/ for some. Alienware continues to make skins for their systems.

I got into VRML but eventually got out of it as all the software that made it easy to do virtual worlds were just too expensive. To me, it came down to cost. HTML is free, easy to learn, and every browser knows how to handle it. VRML could be written with a text editor, but too complex after a bit, and the software that specialized in it wasn't free, and the browsers tended to need some plugin, and each plugin behaved a little differently. So I got out of it and went back to HTML for web page development. Maybe others did the same for the same reasons. Was just too expensive mostly.

I just played Quake 1 yesterday. Haven't played that on a deathmatch server in years, but Vista handled it pretty well. If anyone wants to have a Quake tornament, let me know and I'll join.

I've always liked the After Dark Star Trek edition. Other than that, I don't use a screen saver... since all my screens are LCD... and the main purpose for a screen saver was to prevent the phosphorus (sp?) from a CRT from burning into the screen--thus saving the screen--I never saw the need to protect an LCD screen from phosphorus (sp?) burn in when there isn't any phosphorus. So for me, after about 20 minutes, my screens tend to fade to black, or will display Seti@Home.

I've got something called System 47 (inside joke, the number shows up constantly through all the episodes from TNG on..there's even a site devoted to it..;), which is an LCARS screen saver. Not too shabby..;)

VRML?  I suppose it's still around somewhere. Some 3D apps export to it, and some games actually use it. As far as being implemented on the web as originally intended? I guess that's been overlooked or forgotten. Might be worth looking into again in the future, but I think the browser folks are more interested in getting the CSS thing to be consistent and maybe figure out a way to properly implement dynamic content and sound in a way similar to flash (but without the need for proprietary software.)

As for screen savers? A bit gimicky. And it eats up processes. Believe it or not, sometimes people let their computers do stuff during downtime. Even when rendering with Bryce, a screen saver would interfere with a long term render. (Or at least it did with the older versions.) I don't need some cutesy critters and sound fx. Instead, may as well do something semi-useful such as folding or SETI... And in my case, I just have it go to blank and the monitor drops down to power-saving standby mode when unattended.

I'm not into the desktop themes that much. But it doesn't mean that some people aren't. You might want to look at Windows Blinds. Seems they do a whole lot more than just change the icons these days...

As for the staying power of Bryce? First there's the ol' adage "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Then you have to consider the fact that with old versions, DAZ was kind enough to make the barrier to entry $0. (Try C|net or TuCows or something of the sort, if you don't believe me.) People get in on the free-ness, and then find it ridiculously easy compared to other apps (free and costly), and then consider sticking around on what else DAZ might offer.

Talk of old computer games....I used to play Sim City on a hard core basis, the very 1st version. Also fell hard for Civilization (both 1 and 2) and Empire also. One game that is very simple and old, old, old is Shanghii, but I still play it today....endlessly. There is something soothing about the game that relaxes me after a long day at work. One reason for Bryce’s staying power?....it has developed a loyal flock of users, much like the Mac has it’s own hard core block of users who will stay loyal fans for as long as Apple makes em. I fit into both camps. Bryce because it is so easy to use and still is capable of doing so many things. Users of high end apps tend to look down on Bryce because of it’s simplicity, but they don’t realize that you don’t have to be expensive and complicated to be great....sometimes its the simple and easy and inexpensive ones that are gifted with turning out great images. And Bryce is one of those programs. As for screen savers....never really used em much as I would always turn mine off when I wasn't using it in the beginning days and now with the much improved and advanced models that are out today, I hardly ever turn it off as it will go into sleep mode automatically after 10 minutes. Actually I have found that its better to leave em on all the time anyway as the bout-up process not only uses more energy, but it is hard on the screen too.

quote]Talk of old computer games....I used to play Sim City on a hard core basis

Hey Vangogh, I thought I was a loner there! Had the demo version on an old pc until it died...the pc that is, not the game!

How many times did your fledgling municipality get flattened by quakes or munched by the godzilla??

Ironically enough, I was playing Sim City 4 Rush Hour just last night. (Couldn't sleep, so why not?) Not quite what you're talking about, but not exactly the latest and greatest thing in the gaming community either. (They're doing SimCity Cultures or something goofy like that now.) But then again, there's a few ol' games that I'll not hesitate to play. StarCraft, Total Annihilation, Battlefield 1942, and even that cheesy Scorched Earth tanks thingy.

I was a Civ 1 and 2 fan. Want to get back into the latest versions, but don't have much time now.

About skins/themes... Windowblinds will work with Bryce, and does so rather well. Some of the skins in Windowblinds add additional features to a typical window, for instance every window can have an "always float above other windows" feature. And yes, it does a lot more than just skins. Back in version 3, all my windows had a glass/translucent look. The newest versions I haven't yet discovered all it's features yet. Windowblinds is part of a set of skinning product from Stardock. Each product can significantly alter Windows so that it no longer resembles Windows at all. Windowblinds is Stardock's most visual product, though, and I recommend that be the starting point for anyone wishing to skin.

So the system wars are winding down, or at least Billy borg is getting kind of old and too tired to fight. The computer industry is getting older and more hidebound too. Do you think we're in for some stability?

Think it might be possible that PCs or game consoles will release some Classic Collections and reports of these old games?

Do you think that now Bryce has it's legs under it the program will start to grow? Do you want to see animations, particle systems, Lathe and extrude type modeling tools? Are you willing to pay double or triple on the next release to see these changes? Would you rather see two versions like Bryce Lite or Bryce Pro, or would you rather the program stayed small?

Wow. You guys make me feel old....

I still play the orginal Command and Conqure. Have the disks too.
and Descent. Probably my favorite game of all time.

And they run on XP.

And I still run PhotoShop 7 on my laptop. I don't see the sense in upgradeing. You can do all the same things on it as you can do in the new versions. it just takes more time.

(and at work, we still run IE 2.0)

Want to feel really old? If you remember any of these you are older than dirt.

Winchester drives (and the big suction cups)
peek, poke
DARPANET
gopher
SUNET
Weather Underground

Weather Underground ? Powder to the People !! How about Mark Rudd and The SDS ?

Weather Underground? oh yeah, they were that radical movement that based their name on a Bob Dylan song, and wrote that 'lite jazz' stuff in the 70s...;)
Had a Winchester drive at one point (5.25"), saw one once that was about a 30" hard drive in a minicomputer (A Basic 4, which used Basic [a compiled language] as it's Operating system) Slower than Sling Blade...;)
Peek and Poke were computer instructions to do something, I just forgot what...something to do with looking at and entering data?
gopher was a 'pre-browser' browser...supposedly still out there?
SUNET - probably a Sun-based product.

How about Zork 1-3 (the text adventure ones)
Wordstar
EGA (or even CGA...why my glasses are so thick nowadays..;)

4k memory chips
full-height floppies

I'll stop now..;) before I get into learning COBOL on punch cards...;)

I still have my punch cards, and if you were really into those things, punch tapes. Gopher and usenet and all them things I remember too. Before the Net became common place, I was BBS'ing on private networks and CompuServe, 300 baud modems, etc. Peek and poke dealt with memory. Used to use CP/M machines, using the Z80 chip, before Intel came out with the 8088. The first game I played online was a MUD, games with commands like Look Door; Go North; Take Key; Wield Sword; Quaf Potion. Started off with RLL hard drives, now everyone is talking about SATA. I miss those days.

Anyone remember the old Star Trek text games?

Can still learn COBOL.. can even get COBOL.NET. It ain't dead.

I remember a game on our orig work pc where we had to help the little character find jewells in a labarinth, my hubby also loooooved the original prince of persia game.

Pakled - Loved the old Zork games, and in fact I bought the entire Infocom catalogue when they released it on CD.

I remeber all that stuff. Had tons of fun with Trek on an Pet2000 (spent tons of time skipping off programming APL on a line printer/terminal to play on the PET2000 sitting beside it)

Old winchester drives were made from big glass plates about a foot across. They held about 10K each. You built a stack by loading these one at a time into the drive with a big suction cup thingie. It looked like something a cat burglar would use to hold cut glass with.

You used to have to program games manually into a commodore 64 from a little magazine called Byte. To see what was in an array you would peek a memory address.  To input or activate something you poked an address.

DARPANET  Defense Advance Research Projects Agency network, was set up to let the military communicate during a nuclear war. They became ARPANET and finally the internet.

Gopher was The first graphical browser designed by the university of illinois. Gopher only allowed limited text and gif images. You could attach other files and download as zip or binaries. Gopher became NCSA Mosaic, and finally Netscape. The same people do firefox.

SUNET http://ftp.sunet.se/ Swedish University Network was one of the original Arpanet repositories. If you wanted wave files from animal house, ren and stempy, album lyrics this was where you went.

Weather Underground was another FTP site in Berkley similar to SUNET. They were also one of the first digital libraries. You could get text copies of the classics (also the anarchist cookbook) which is why they are not around. A lot of the non threatning items fount their way into the Walnut Creek CD and archives (now Simtel http://www.simtel.net/).

Oh my word some of this takes me back, learning PASCAL on VAX machines and HP mainframes, punch tape (rather then cards). Hard Disks you had to park...

I have the original wolfenstein, doom 1 and 2, quake 1, and descent installed on the linux box to run under WINE.. Might have to add Duke Nukem at some point :)., strange how linux can run this old stuff while windows can't, I'm sure it has nothing to do with Bill wanting you to invest in new software regularly :)

My daughter's PC (one of my very old ones) still has unrealEd on it :).

I remember workin on an atari :-P
And my grandpa told stories bout times when computer software wasnt sold, you had to make it yourself.

Oregon Trail on Apple II Still play it today, on my MacBook Pro.

Jet Set Willy on the ZX Spectrum is the greatest game of all time!!  

I had duke nukum too! Classic!

Hey we aren't showing our age here are we? :scared:

remember Wolfenstein 3D and try to look around the screen. what a change from side scrollers!

I remember a Star Trek game from college, played on the Mainframe...;) there was also Dukedom, where you had to conquer territory while preventing your people from starving..;) Also something called 'Lunar Lander', where you had to enter correct thrust and fuel usage or...'you just crashed a 29-megabuck lander!'...;)

Now I had  a teacher in Computer courses who programmed computers using a sort of switchboard block of plastic; you took wires and plugged them from hole to hole, and when entered back into the Mainframe, would actually do things...;)  I saw one of the original 'luggables' back in 77, in computer class. Size of a server, with about a 6" monochrome, text only screen..;)

Now what's even scarier, is that I'm in my 20th year of PC support. I used to fix the original Compaq, the IBM PC, HP Laserjet 1, and so on...;) Long way to Print Operator on the network, but I have to admit new stuff is easier to fix..;)

So Linux runs the old games, eh? sounds interesting. Now if I could just find another PC, and a  copy of Redhat 9 I downloaded...;)

I remember PEEK & POKE from the ol' 130XE way back when. They're basically the equivalents of GET & SET in modern stuff, but did something with values in memory registers of chips that did stuff. Also did the typing in programs thing, but from Antic. Had to find out about that one from some friends and get it by mail, since the stores where I was never carried it.

Also remember Gopher from my first go at college. Was back in 1995, when most html was text and Mosaic (grand daddy of all browsers) was still a new thing. Although the college didn't work to well for me, and I had to go on a more meandering path...

Ok, who here still has their sliderule (K&E log/log duplex deci-trig) and remembers how to use it. (grin)

*Also something called 'Lunar Lander', where you had to enter correct thrust and fuel usage or...'you just crashed a 29-megabuck lander!'...;) 

*OMG! Pakled1 I forgot how many times did I crash that little baby!!!

Did anyone also have that canonball one where you lobbed canon balls across to the other hill, taking bites out of the hill until you got the oppositions' canon in a blaaaaaze of glory????

yup