Unity creates new open source tool for architects • Hacker News Board

Re: Unity creates new open source tool for architects

#71

Post by soylentgraham » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 12:22 AM UTC

ossworkerrights wrote: post #49

reitzensteinm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike others here (based on the downvotes), I don't think your concerns are entirely unfounded. Google is a classic example of a company that scorches the earth with their freeware releases - remember Kiko? But ultimately, whatever is best for the consumer needs to win out. If freeware knocks out commercial competitors then stagnates (like Internet Explorer), that's bad, and analogous to dumping which is not legal.…

Right, same goes for google. Remember folks, free software and free products means you are the product. And in the process other companies and tools are being put of business while the masses cheers for yet another free tool, forgetting these are made by monopolies that use them as marketing.

You're confusing google (an advertising company) for unity (a product store).

They're not trying to acquire users for marketing, they're trying to acquire users into their ecosystem and bring more dependence on their tools, their asset store products, and make the unity ecosystem worth more.

It's a land grab. Ditto for VFX industry that they and Epic are trying to get into.

Re: Unity creates new open source tool for architects

#72

Post by joeevans1000 » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 3:04 AM UTC

paulryanrogers wrote: post #67

mushufasa wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my perspective that is a good sign -- they are constantly trying new ways to grow, and dynamically reallocating their resources to markets where the product features gain traction. IMHO it's unrealistic to expect long-term commitment for maintenance / compatibility from ${ANY} new software, unless there's a 5-year enterprise contract with a SLA. Maintenance is difficult work, and only rewarding if the software pro…

Bought Unity on sale with plans to use it later. Returned to a prototype two years later and both the product and licensed changed. No way to use the original license or version since their old registration flow broke. So it's upgrade... or crack it?

I thought Unity was free, basically, for projects that bring in less than 100K a year.

Re: Unity creates new open source tool for architects

#73

Post by ossworkerrights » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 7:01 AM UTC

soylentgraham wrote: post #71

ossworkerrights wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, same goes for google. Remember folks, free software and free products means you are the product. And in the process other companies and tools are being put of business while the masses cheers for yet another free tool, forgetting these are made by monopolies that use them as marketing.

You're confusing google (an advertising company) for unity (a product store). They're not trying to acquire users for marketing, they're trying to acquire users into their ecosystem and bring more dependence on their tools, their asset store products, and make the unity ecosystem worth more. It's a land grab. Ditto for VFX industry that they and Epic are trying to get into.

Hopefully it's not the same kind of land grab, where a large company will "nick" successful products off of their asset store and release them "free of charge".

Re: Unity creates new open source tool for architects

#74

Post by asavov » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 9:43 AM UTC

simonsarris wrote: post #17

eps wrote: post #2

We made a foray into designing and building a brand new house and let me tell you, my fellow HNers, the state of affairs with the design part is ABYSMAL, even in a reasonably modern architect firm. Basically you first design, for look and feel, then you calculate technical details, then you build. Or rather the architect does all three, but you would normally want to "chip in" during the design phase - change the lay…

I designed/built my own house too[1], giving sketches to an architect and working with him. Some major takeaways for others who have yet to build: * No one will care about your project as much as you and this includes the architect :( * Few(???) architects and zero builders seem to understand light/wind/circulation like people apparently intuitively did 200 years ago. You might be better off with the average curious…

I really enjoy the discussion that emerges here. It is rare to find so many viewpoints and constructive criticism on the way architecture services function today. As an architect I am taking notes. You mention circulation, so I wanted to share a service I’m currently working on to check floor plans for how good the circulation is. Sunlight is coming soon too. I would appreciate your thoughts on it.

https://www.floorplancheck.com

At the moment it simulates the most common scenarios in a home and the paths in the house that correspond to them, for example, getting back home with the groceries bags. Then it tells you if those paths can be improved and suggests how.

Re: Unity creates new open source tool for architects

#75

Post by andybak » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 11:01 AM UTC

gmueckl wrote: post #12

eps wrote: post #2

We made a foray into designing and building a brand new house and let me tell you, my fellow HNers, the state of affairs with the design part is ABYSMAL, even in a reasonably modern architect firm. Basically you first design, for look and feel, then you calculate technical details, then you build. Or rather the architect does all three, but you would normally want to "chip in" during the design phase - change the lay…

There are products like Enscape that can deliver first person (or VR) walkthroughs at the push of a button. Sure, getting a perfectly correct lighting simulation cannot yet be done in realtime, but good approximations are possible.

Enscape looked great on paper but the amount of anti-aliasing makes everything look blurry - like first-gen Unreal VR titles before they fixed their Forward Renderer.

I understand they can't use MSAA because they use a deferred rendering path (which they need to support large numbers of dynamic lights) but whatever AA they use looks bad.

Some people might not notice it but it ruins it for me. I'd almost rather have aliasing in VR than "Vaseline on the lens"

Re: Unity creates new open source tool for architects

#76

Post by specialist » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 2:57 PM UTC

randoramax wrote: post #5

eps wrote: post #2

We made a foray into designing and building a brand new house and let me tell you, my fellow HNers, the state of affairs with the design part is ABYSMAL, even in a reasonably modern architect firm. Basically you first design, for look and feel, then you calculate technical details, then you build. Or rather the architect does all three, but you would normally want to "chip in" during the design phase - change the lay…

That's because software sucks badly. Architects are used to elegant and simple tools that work all the time: pen, paper and few other things. It's not just CAD software that sucks, it's the interfaces like mouse and keyboard that are slowing down design on computer. And yes, there are other systems but as you say they're not cheap so student architects won't learn on those.

Drafting & design are just hard problems. Starting with the mental models and human cognition. All the way thru workflows, use cases, and artifacts produced.

As a kid, I made the transition from drafting boards to CADD. My efforts to mitigate the poor UI, with my own wares, launched my career as a UI designer. Started as an enthusiastic technophile, left a bitter techno skeptic.

Just one small example. One research team funded by the Army Corps of Engineers were tasked with determining why their mechanical engineers using CADD were no more productive or accurate than when using manual drafting boards. The major finding was that whereas manually drafting had developed effective strategies over the millennia, eg work from left to right (for right handed drafters), CADD software had poor, missing, inconsistent strategies, eg matrix of verbs & nouns showed holes in the UI coverage.

To the best of my knowledge, these considerations are still unaddressed.

Here's the first hit for that research. It's been forever since I've thought about this stuff, so don't know for certain if anyone built on top of these findings.

https://researchexperts.utmb.edu/en/publications/strategic-u...

FWIW, I was on Bentley Systems' user steering committee for MicroStation at the time. While one of their junior software devs was doing some really cool new stuff, the rest of their hierarchy fully embodied the belligerent arrogance of the willfully ignorant.

Re: Unity creates new open source tool for architects

#77

Post by xkcd-sucks » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 3:54 PM UTC

eps wrote: post #2

We made a foray into designing and building a brand new house and let me tell you, my fellow HNers, the state of affairs with the design part is ABYSMAL, even in a reasonably modern architect firm. Basically you first design, for look and feel, then you calculate technical details, then you build. Or rather the architect does all three, but you would normally want to "chip in" during the design phase - change the lay…

Architects at the institutional scale (pharma, universities, government) have been doing integrated whole-building modeling for at least a decade. The industry keyword is "BIM" = "building information management". Static renders of building walkthroughs have been around for a while, but firms have been demonstrating weekly interactive walkthroughs over video conference for at least the past 5 years. They also do pretty accurate fluid dynamics modeling for smoke clearance in fires, ventilation etc. which takes into account interior surfaces and sunlight. You probably just need to find a better firm-- Architects that do private residences are (stereotypically) not the best and probably just don't want to go to the effort.

https://www.autodesk.com/products/revit-live/