APG discount for the beta testers?

[bradtem]

APG discount for the beta testers?

by bradtem » Sat May 02, 2009 1:02 am

I know there's an upgrade discount from APP to APG, but is there a discount on APG for the beta testers, notably those who filed bug reports?

[AlexandreJ]

by AlexandreJ » Sat May 02, 2009 4:05 pm

The policy is the following :

If you purchased Autopano Pro after April 1st, 2008:
* you'll get a free Autopano Pro 2
* you'll get Autopano Giga 2 for 79 euros

If you purchased Autopano Pro before April 1st, 2008:
* you'll get Autopano Pro 2 for 39 euros
* you'll get Autopano Giga 2 for 118 euros

For beta tester, we didn't though it yet. We'll have to think about that internally first. Wait&See.

[Aeriscera]

by Aeriscera » Mon May 04, 2009 11:39 am

Hello Everyone,

I think the pricing of APG is too high and unfair on those who bought APP for €99 AND filed bug reports and sent DVDs containing example bugs. No, scratch that: it is outrageous! I am livid about this.

My calculations are as follow:

Price of APG 2.0: €179 (introductory offer).
Price of APP 1.4.0: €99
Price of upgrading: €118
Total cost of upgrade path: €217

Cost of being with Kolor, helping them debug their software: €39. What kind of "offer" or "reward" is this?!

Come on Kolor - at least give me back my €39 + VAT at 20%!

Furious,

Aeriscera

Last edited by Aeriscera on Mon May 04, 2009 11:48 am, edited 1 time in total.

[hankkarl]

by hankkarl » Mon May 04, 2009 3:16 pm

APG has more features (the VT stuff from KRPano).

As far as the beta testing goes, what about all the ideas that we contributed since 1.0.0 that have made thier way into APG?

APP does not (or at least has not yet) charged an annual maintenance fee for upgrades, and 1.4.2 is a lot different than 1.2.1 (the first version I bought.) We didn't get charged for the 1.3 and 1.4 releases, but each added a lot of functionality.

And we've had the software to use, in my case I've had it since June of 2006. so 300 euros for almost three years of use isn't too bad.

On the other hand, if Kolor could do something about the exchange rate between US$ and Euros ....

[Aeriscera]

by Aeriscera » Mon May 04, 2009 5:48 pm

so 300 euros for almost three years of use isn't too bad

A subjective issue I know, but I don't agree. For €100/year I'd expect something rock solid.

A

[bluestar]

by bluestar » Tue May 05, 2009 12:38 pm

A subjective issue I know, but I don't agree. For €100/year I'd expect something rock solid.

A

At least in my case Autopano Pro 1.4.2 was rock solid. Nearly no crashes in the last year. So it was definetly worth the money.
Ver 2.0 seem to be much less stable (at least for me), but I think it will improve. However I am not sure if it will reach the stability of 1.4.2, so I can not tell, wheter it is worth the money, or not. The price for 2.0 is quite high, especially because I don't know yet, what I get with APG in detail. Many things are planned, but only some functionallity is implemented right now.

I gave the Autopano team credit, and bought APG hoping for the best to come.

Achim

[mediavets]

by mediavets » Tue May 05, 2009 1:03 pm

The price for 2.0 is quite high, especially because I don't know yet, what I get with APG in detail. Many things are planned, but only some functionallity is implemented right now.

I gave the Autopano team credit, and bought APG hoping for the best to come.

Achim

IIRC the price for Autopano Pro V2.0 is just the same as the price for Autopan Pro 1.4.2? Yet it offers improved and enhanced functionality and performance - for example GPU support, faster rendering, and support for the Gigapan and Merlin/Papywizard robotic heads.

Autopano Giga OTOH is twice the price, but currently includes some extra functionality - principally workspace save/load and Autopano Tour - and will have still more extra functionality in future.

[Aeriscera]

by Aeriscera » Tue May 05, 2009 1:37 pm

I gave the Autopano team credit, and bought APG hoping for the best to come.

Yep, me too.

IIRC the price for Autopano Pro V2.0 is just the same as the price for Autopan Pro 1.4.2? Yet it offers improved and enhanced functionality and performance - for example GPU support, faster rendering, and support for the Gigapan and Merlin/Papywizard robotic heads.

Good point. I must admit I was not distinguishing between APP and APG in my mind, so I am not quite so angry about the price. It does cost €39 to upgrade from APP 1.4.2 to APP2.0.0, and Smartblend - part of Kolor's advertised claims - still does not work reliably. And as far as the new features in APG are concerned APTour just crashes, so why should I be paying for that?

Rhetorical question really. Grateful to have somewhere I can let off steam though.

<salute>

Aeris.

[mediavets]

by mediavets » Tue May 05, 2009 2:22 pm

And as far as the new features in APG are concerned APTour just crashes, so why should I be paying for that?

Rhetorical question really. Grateful to have somewhere I can let off steam though.

<salute>

Aeris.

APTour works fine on my 32-bit Windows XP system, and it worked fine on an old Thinkpad T23 laptop (1GHz PIII, 1GB RAM) running Windows 2000 Pro too.

[DrSlony]

by DrSlony » Tue May 05, 2009 2:46 pm

Aeriscera did you read my post about running the .sh files versus the plain executable files? On my Gentoo Linux 64 machine, ./AutopanoTour crashes but ./AutopanoTour.sh runs fine.

At least in my case Autopano Pro 1.4.2 was rock solid.

I feel like you forgot about the long road to 1.4.2 and all the bug reports required to get there :] 1.4.0 was anything but stable, and this is where we are at the 2.x stage. Now that they released the first 2.0.0 build, they receive bug reports from many more people than they did with the internal pre-2.0.0 releases that just a few of us tested and reported on. All sorts of new hardware combinations. What's more, they're using QT-4.5 which is also very new and so full of undiscovered bugs.

What's more, it seems to be they did all they could to make 2.0.0 solid on their machines. 2.0.0 CPU mode certainly is quite stable for me and so many times faster than 1.4.2! GPU mode is not stable for me, but then again yesterday I used GPU mode witout realising it and out of the 4 panos I detected and rendered (at incredible speed) I only had 1 freeze.

The question of whether 2.0.0 should have been called 2.0.0 or 2.0.0-RC1 is open to debate, but I certainly see the point of releasing it publically. Since for buying 2.0.0 you get free upgrades to all 2.x versions (the policy said free minor upgrades until the next major upgrade. I assume 3.0 will be a major upgrade) things don't seem bad.

Smartblend2 and HDR is planned to be in 2.1 or 2.2.

[bluestar]

by bluestar » Tue May 05, 2009 4:29 pm

I feel like you forgot about the long road to 1.4.2 and all the bug reports required to get there :]

Indeed I did.

The question of whether 2.0.0 should have been called 2.0.0 or 2.0.0-RC1 is open to debate, but I certainly see the point of releasing it publically.

Sorry, but I don't: Although I haven't tried 2.0.0 in detail yet, after all the buggy Betas and RCs I can hardly imagine, that 2.0.0 is even half as stable as 1.4.2.
Such a type of software is called bananaware: It maturates at the customer. And this must not be! Who pays to have an unfinished / unstable product? (O.K. I did)

The Autopano Pro team is good, they provide an exellent service, and I bet they try everything to make the future versions of 2.0.0 as stable as 1.4.2.
I hope they succeed.

Achim

Last edited by bluestar on Tue May 05, 2009 4:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[mediavets]

by mediavets » Tue May 05, 2009 4:43 pm

I feel like you forgot about the long road to 1.4.2 and all the bug reports required to get there :]

Indeed I did.

The question of whether 2.0.0 should have been called 2.0.0 or 2.0.0-RC1 is open to debate, but I certainly see the point of releasing it publically.

Sorry, but I don't: Although I haven't tried 2.0.0 in detail yet, after all the buggy Betas and RCs I can hardly imagine, that 2.0.0 is even half as stable as 1.4.2.

Achim

It is certainly very much more than 'half as stable' than 1.4.2 on my Windows XP system, and a world apart from the alphas, betas and RCs.

IMO Kolor has made great progress between RCs and the release version - at least for the Windows platforms, I can't speak for Mac and Linux versions.

I'm told that APP 1.4.2 and APP/APG 2 will happily co-exist so if you upgrade you have a 'fallback' should you run into some yet to be fixed 'showstopper' bug in APP/APG 2.0.

Last edited by mediavets on Tue May 05, 2009 4:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[hankkarl]

by hankkarl » Tue May 05, 2009 8:18 pm

so 300 euros for almost three years of use isn't too bad

A subjective issue I know, but I don't agree. For €100/year I'd expect something rock solid.

A

Sorry, it was a typo. Should have been 39 euros

[rodlaird]

by rodlaird » Wed May 06, 2009 7:01 am

Guys - of course 2.0.0 will (and does have bugs). Beta testing is a privilege not something you should expect payment for. Alexandre and his mates are producing an astounding product and it will take time to stabilise. I am happy to have paid for the APG upgrade in anticipation of all it WILL do eventually. Kolor deserve to make a decent living from super intellectual property. I bought APP Pro 10 days before the 1.4.08 "free upgrade" cutoff date; do I feel bad about this? No! If it's too much dosh for you, I'm sorry, but you'll just have to make do with something less sophisticated...

cheers

[r--x]

by r--x » Wed May 06, 2009 8:43 am

Guys - of course 2.0.0 will (and does have bugs). Beta testing is a privilege not something you should expect payment for. Alexandre and his mates are producing an astounding product and it will take time to stabilise. I am happy to have paid for the APG upgrade in anticipation of all it WILL do eventually. Kolor deserve to make a decent living from super intellectual property. I bought APP Pro 10 days before the 1.4.08 "free upgrade" cutoff date; do I feel bad about this? No! If it's too much dosh for you, I'm sorry, but you'll just have to make do with something less sophisticated...
cheers

I agree completely. I think the price is very low for such a great product.

[Aeriscera]

by Aeriscera » Wed May 06, 2009 10:51 am

Beta testing is a privilege

In my opinion this is nonsense. Where would Kolor be if it didn't make APP available so they can get people to do testing for free?

Aeris

[AlexandreJ]

by AlexandreJ » Wed May 06, 2009 3:05 pm

I have to say that we made some mistakes and I apologize for that :
- First, our release process is really not good. It's not acceptable to some huge bugs can past this step just before a final release version. ( For example raw on mac, partial panorama bug in Autopano Tour ). That's our own fault and I apologize for that. We'll change the process internally so that it won't happen anymore even if it means one more month before release.
- Public beta : I think it's good because everyone can give feedback before everything is finished. The job done during last 3 months is incredible and would not have been possible without even a reduced privilege beta tester. So I really would like to keep that part as it is.
- Rewarding beta tester ? Yes, why not, but on what criterion ? The top 5 better bug poster gets a free license ? What kind of bug count double ? How to measure that ? I just don't know yet. BTW : we are already used to provide free licenses to some power debugger guys. If anyone fells disappointed of not being in that list, contact me.
For me, I was always thinking that a public beta was already a win/win strategy. During beta phase, you can say where there is some bug, but also and more interesting : "he, please add this feature because it will help me". And we read all proposal ( we don't do everything of course, but we keep a huge to do list ). So you'll get some new feature that you want and we get bugs detected. I'll welcome any idea here.

[r--x]

by r--x » Wed May 06, 2009 5:00 pm

Beta testing is a privilege

In my opinion this is nonsense. Where would Kolor be if it didn't make APP available so they can get people to do testing for free?

Aeris

To be precise Rodlaird wrote this, I said only I agree with him

I can add one thing, I was ready to buy APG in RC2 version, even beta1, just because,
omitting more or less annoying bugs, this software becomed one of my primary tools,
second primary tool is photoshop cs3 for 1200 EUR (DS), cs4 have got too much bugs...

Last edited by r--x on Wed May 06, 2009 5:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[Aeriscera]

by Aeriscera » Wed May 06, 2009 6:32 pm

To be precise Rodlaird wrote this, I said only I agree with him

My apologies.

[Aeriscera]

by Aeriscera » Wed May 06, 2009 6:38 pm

I have to say that we made some mistakes and I apologize for that

Thank you for saying this Alexandre. I feel much better now.

Aeris

[rodlaird]

by rodlaird » Wed May 06, 2009 11:12 pm

Beta testing is a privilege

In my opinion this is nonsense. Where would Kolor be if it didn't make APP available so they can get people to do testing for free?

Aeris

Of course you are entitled to your opinion! But you also don't have to take part in Beta testing. It is a privilege in my opinion because you have a chance to interact with wonderful new features and engage with the developers at a time when the design is still malleable. You really can influence how the product turns out and if you are a power user providing input on the refined details that spell the difference between a good and agreat product FOR YOU is definitely a privilege...


chacun a son gout (can't do accents on Aussie keyboard... sorry)

[Aeriscera]

by Aeriscera » Thu May 07, 2009 10:30 am

Hi Rod,

You make some good points, as did Alexandre when he talked about beta-testing being a "win-win" situation. My point of contention is that "privilege" implies being granted something that is not earned. So yes, I did not earn the "right" to be a beta-tester, but was there anyone who wanted to be a beta tester but was told by Kolor that they could not be one? In fact I think it is Kolor that is priviliged to have so many people working so hard for them for free. The book scam was another example: we have to pay for a book that contains our work? I thought that was offensive too.

Aeris

[hankkarl]

by hankkarl » Fri May 08, 2009 3:59 pm

Hi Rod,

You make some good points, as did Alexandre when he talked about beta-testing being a "win-win" situation. My point of contention is that "privilege" implies being granted something that is not earned. So yes, I did not earn the "right" to be a beta-tester, but was there anyone who wanted to be a beta tester but was told by Kolor that they could not be one? In fact I think it is Kolor that is priviliged to have so many people working so hard for them for free. The book scam was another example: we have to pay for a book that contains our work? I thought that was offensive too.

Aeris

1. don't beta test.
2. don't buy the book.

Problem solved.