ideasman42 - Can you answer my layman question? 
How far brand-new viewport is from this viewportXF core stuff?
I don’t know about 2015 - sure the video looks impressive - but until Maya 2014 it was the glitchiest thing and that’s saying a lot… didn’t show particles, no transparency support, crashed half the time with geometry heavy scenes… didn’t support their own scene assembly tools even (the alembic caches simply didn’t show).
That’s a general Autodesk issue, they tend to break more than they fix. I wouldnt say its a viewport issue but something else. Viewport 2.0 has been around since 2011 an it was solid. I have never experienced any of the problems you are talking about either, then again the last version I used was 2104. Anyways its less about Maya and more about a specific feature, I would argue it has the best viewport in the industry right now for 3d content creation.
not on AMD…
I was wrong about the transparency support, it’s their old “high quality” viewport which is broken with transparency. The rest stays valid though : try working with particles or alembic caches, it simply isn’t there.
See, 3dsmax supports like two or three times the polycount and has things like correctly cast OGL shadows which help a big deal in about every use case (modeling, animation…), and this is priceless. It does have some good sides though, I’m not saying it is complete crap, but… I wish they focused less on these D3D shaders and stuff and fix things that have been incomplete for years. Not that it’s any of my business anymore… I market myself as a Blender artist !
Sure it is. Back when I used Maya 2012 with viewport 2.0 I used a Firepro. Worked great, actually swapped out a Quadro because the Firepro was faster.
Sorry for actually going back to topic here 
Did anyone notice that weekly report #12 is missing for vieport FX?
Or am I just too stupid to find it?
http://lists.blender.org/pipermail/soc-2014-dev/2014-August/thread.html
Nurbs also seem to be missing.
Anyone know whats up?
I dont recall the old viewport ever being considered high quality, it had high performance but not really high quality.
The rest stays valid though : try working with particles or alembic caches, it simply isn’t there.
Hmm?
I wish they focused less on these D3D shaders and stuff and fix things that have been incomplete for years. Not that it’s any of my business anymore… I market myself as a Blender artist !
Well its autodesk, they are not really in the business of fixing things… lol its one of the reasons we choose to use applications like Blender, Modo, C4D…ect The Maya viewport 2.0 does accept CGFX, GLSL and HLSL, this means custom shaders. These are very useful if your game engine or project has a certain look to it. Its really just nitpicking at this point if we keep trying to find flaws, the rest of the options outside of Maya are not perfect either… for now.
Regarding your last comment, “I market myself as a blender artist”… I do find fault with that…not because I think you cant do that, but rather that you shouldnt. I think that kind of thinking isnt positive for the growth of Blender or any other application. What I mean by this is that you should market yourself as a CGI Artist that just so happens to know how to use Blender, rather than being a Blender Artist first. I think its important to really nail in this idea that we are CGI Artist first and foremost, we belong to a larger field that includes Blender but isnt limited to it.
This. To limit yourself superficially to one app is robbing yourself of knowledge and tools of tons of great work being done all over the field. Even Blender’s top guys hook up with other top guys from other software houses and talk ideas. This is why conventions like Siggraph are so much fun. You might be suprised at how much people who work on competing software get along when you stick em’ in the same room and they get to talk about what they are really in love with - Computer Graphics.
You really shouldn’t do that! It is extremely disrespectful to interrupt off topic discussions!
I saw it as well today. They are currently preparing their final reports, that’s why it is not necessarily a bad sign. I hope they are going to be pubic, for our curiosity 
I think its important to really nail in this idea that we are CGI Artist first and foremost, we belong to a larger field that includes Blender but isnt limited to it.
QFT: plumbers aren’t “expert Stanley Pipe Wrech users”, they are plumbers. Painters aren’t “expert sennelier (a paint brand I guess) oil paint technicians”, they are painters, musicians aren’t “Yamaha artists”, they are pianists, etc.
Put the result first, not the tool - if you are delivering a final product, clients don’t care if you use Blender, Maya, or MS Paint as long as it looks right.
@SaintHaven oh so they did actually fix things in 2015 ! Good to know.
Indeed, competition is at the corporation level, it does not involve developers themselves. It’s like saying a player from Barça won’t get along with a player from Manchester just because their clubs are rivals. I mean, their craft is soccer, they love it more than anything in the world, of course they will get along.
I completely agree, though let’s be realistic : if I want to integrate an existing pipeline as, say, an animator, I’ll have to use the tools that they use - at least until interoperability between software has become seamless. So if they use Blender, I’ll have to know how to use it too, and if they use Maya, not only will I have to know how use it - which is more or less the case - I also should be able to afford it, which is not - for now.
Sorry for the off-topic…
I rather change it a bit : Painters are not brushes , Sculptors are not hammers , Musicians are not musical chords …
People argue they can`t use the software when they have limited skill set. Like a kid with a pen not knowing to draw next design of a car because he does not develop the skills and blame the tool … the damn pen.
To become a singer you must practice weekly or you forget the musical lines , a painter must practice in similar ways , a sculptor can learn to be a painter too but does not means that all painters can become sculptors.
People are different , tools are different and good for different people.
There it is not 1 hammer for a pin , there are 1000 hammers … for 1 pin. Yet you can use a free rock to use the pin … 
However, the tool is a major factor in how efficiently and easily you get something done.
Try to do arch-vis in BI vs. Indigo and you’ll find that the latter gives you a much easier time because you can focus more on being an artist and not a technician (ie. studying the science of light physics and futzing around with lamp rigs). It is true you can get a high quality work done in MS Paint, it will just take you 20 times longer than with Photoshop (the Win7 version of Paint anyway, it’s perhaps closer to 50-100x with the WinXP version).
All in all, I’m glad that few people these days try to argue against new functionality by hiding behind the ‘it’s the artist not the tool’ line. The new versions of Blender make it so much easier to get high quality renders and modeling is a dream compared to the editmesh days, I’m sure it will also be like almost night and day with the viewport not long after this gets into master.
About impressive viewport:
Well, the mailing list reports that there was a noticeable slowdown in the project in the last few weeks with due to Jwilkens having to deal with his aunt and grandmother passing away in the space of two weeks (meaning he was too emotionally stressed to work much).
Thoughts and prayers with him healing from all this so as to accomplish what has taken three years to do.
That very bad, sorry for this.
Had not found this thread until today,
Sorry for your losses brother…
we all appreciate your efforts, but go on a sabbatical if you need it
mine always involve hiking long distance and hippies for some reason.