Creative Current/Future 3D Support!(cc:3D Blaster VLB)
high...@mnsi.net
ATTENTION:
To all current owners of Creative Labs 3D Blaster VLB, and all persons
considering purchasing any Creative Labs 3D PCI card:
(Verite, Laguna, or Permedia/Falcon chipsets),
Creative has essetially orphaned their VLB 3D Blaster, less than a YEAR
after it was released. There has been no Direct X update as promised and
no available 2MB upgrade as promised!!!
This should be a scary sign to all considering ANY creative products!!!
They don't answer our questions or return our calls. This is a clear
LITMUS test of their support. If you are a current VLB 3D Blaster owner
or just a concerned customer reconsidering buying their products, after
this display of total lack of product support:
Join the movement to help us FLOOD them with demands that they fully
support the 3D VLB Blaster or we will not buy any of their future 3D
products.
Its just like an alcoholic, drug addict or abuser...until they realize and
are confronted with that there is a problem in their actions (lack of
product support) they will continue it as long as we condone it and allow
it AND it will encourage OTHER companies to do the same!!!!!!
So Fight the Power and shame them into supporting their products!!!
Here's the Email addresss to FLOOD, please redistribute this at your
leisure!!!
Products and Technology contact:
Theresa Pulido - tpu...@creaf.com
Manager, Public Relations, Products & Technology
408/428-2329
James
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Frederick Y Mah
high...@mnsi.net writes:
>ATTENTION:
>To all current owners of Creative Labs 3D Blaster VLB, and all persons
>considering purchasing any Creative Labs 3D PCI card:
> (Verite, Laguna, or Permedia/Falcon chipsets),
>Creative has essetially orphaned their VLB 3D Blaster, less than a YEAR
>after it was released. There has been no Direct X update as promised and
>no available 2MB upgrade as promised!!!
Are you surprised? Pretty much all the first released cards have a problem
with support. In fact, AFAIK, none of them have decent D3D support and
even if they did it would probably be slow. I figured it was obvious that
you are taking chances with these first to market products.
--
Fred Mah --- fm...@ecn.purdue.edu
http://widget.ecn.purdue.edu/~fmah
high...@mnsi.net
In article <57labl$l...@mozo.cc.purdue.edu>,
fm...@widget.ecn.purdue.edu (Frederick Y Mah) wrote:
> Are you surprised? Pretty much all the first released cards have a problem
> with support. In fact, AFAIK, none of them have decent D3D support and
> even if they did it would probably be slow. I figured it was obvious that
> you are taking chances with these first to market products.
>
> --
> Fred Mah --- fm...@ecn.purdue.edu
> http://widget.ecn.purdue.edu/~fmah
Fred,
Yes and No!
Look at the Sound Blaster support-the original one is still well
supported in any and all games!!!
Look at most 2D cards released by companies that didn't fold out
of the business.
ATI and all the others still update their drivers like when Win95
came by even the 32-bit cards got driver support!!
This drop everything including driver support is a new thing that
with established companies wasn't practiced by either sound card
or video card makers before!!!!
We should hold them up to the same standards!!!
Or they will continue this practice in every possible add-on!!!
Driver support should be demanded from any product,
hardware support is another thing, we can't expect new tech
to keep up.
But I think 1 year is the minimum amount of time for full
Hardware and Software support for any promises made in writing
(Like the 2MB upgrade and Direct 3D support)
I'd like to hear anyone argue that we should accept this or less!!??
I'd also like to hear any lawyers chime in on whether its false
advertising to promise "full Win95 Direct 3D" support on a card
and not deliver?!
Filiep Geeraert
high...@MNSi.net wrote:
> In article <57labl$l...@mozo.cc.purdue.edu>,
> fm...@widget.ecn.purdue.edu (Frederick Y Mah) wrote:
>
> Yes and No!
> Look at the Sound Blaster support-the original one is still well
> supported in any and all games!!!
Unfortunately, this is all but true.
What is still supported in most games is the SB 2.0.
I still had an SB 1.5 a couple of years ago, and many games only
supported SB's from 2.0 upwards.
Frederick Y Mah
high...@MNSi.net writes:
>In article <57labl$l...@mozo.cc.purdue.edu>,
>fm...@widget.ecn.purdue.edu (Frederick Y Mah) wrote:
>> Are you surprised? Pretty much all the first released cards have a problem
>> with support. In fact, AFAIK, none of them have decent D3D support and
>> even if they did it would probably be slow. I figured it was obvious that
>> you are taking chances with these first to market products.
>>
>> --
>> Fred Mah --- fm...@ecn.purdue.edu
>> http://widget.ecn.purdue.edu/~fmah
>Fred,
>Yes and No!
>Look at the Sound Blaster support-the original one is still well
>supported in any and all games!!!
That's because of the large installed base of consumers that actually
still use it.
>Look at most 2D cards released by companies that didn't fold out
>of the business.
Well, we're talking about very new 3D applications that are very rapidly
changing in performance, and note that CL did the same thing with the
3DO Blaster. I would expect that they might eventually get around to it,
but definitely it is not a priority now. You might send an email to
Dylan Rhodes since he is in that graphics board division at Creative Labs.
high...@mnsi.net
In article <32A0A6...@ping.be>,
Filiep Geeraert <Filiep....@ping.be> wrote:
>
> high...@MNSi.net wrote:
> > In article <57labl$l...@mozo.cc.purdue.edu>,
> > fm...@widget.ecn.purdue.edu (Frederick Y Mah) wrote:
> >
> > Yes and No!
> > Look at the Sound Blaster support-the original one is still well
> > supported in any and all games!!!
>
> What is still supported in most games is the SB 2.0.
> I still had an SB 1.5 a couple of years ago, and many games only
> supported SB's from 2.0 upwards.
Yes,
But how many years from when the SB 1.5 was it still well supported in
games and programs and such?
Bet it was more than 1 year!!!
The 3D Blaster VLB was released Nov 1995...just a year ago!!
All things being equal they should still be supportng it for
a year or two more!!
Filiep Geeraert
high...@MNSi.net wrote:
>
> In article <32A0A6...@ping.be>,
> Filiep Geeraert <Filiep....@ping.be> wrote:
> >
> > high...@MNSi.net wrote:
> > > In article <57labl$l...@mozo.cc.purdue.edu>,
> > > fm...@widget.ecn.purdue.edu (Frederick Y Mah) wrote:
> > >
> > > Yes and No!
> > > Look at the Sound Blaster support-the original one is still well
> > > supported in any and all games!!!
> >
> > Unfortunately, this is all but true.
> > What is still supported in most games is the SB 2.0.
> > I still had an SB 1.5 a couple of years ago, and many games only
> > supported SB's from 2.0 upwards.
>
> Yes,
>
> But how many years from when the SB 1.5 was it still well supported in
> games and programs and such?
>
> Bet it was more than 1 year!!!
>
> The 3D Blaster VLB was released Nov 1995...just a year ago!!
>
> All things being equal they should still be supportng it for
> a year or two more!!
>
> James
True. I still agree with you.
I myself bought one Diamond card, and never got over it.
I will never buy from that company again.
It was a Speedstar 24.
I bought it, and it cost about 667 $.
One month later, they released the Speedstar 24X, and it cost about 400$
(24X = accelerated, 24 = unaccelerated).
I never got adequate support for it from Diamond.
The Windows drivers were buggy as hell (giving a GPF when using control
panel !).
They updated their drivers only once, and they still had the same bugs.
When I wrote to them about my problems, I never got any answer.
There are other companies that have the same habbits as Diamond,
sometimes more refined.
Sometimes they will answer your messages in the hope that you will get
tired proving that you are correct and when you are able to prove a bug
they stop responding.
Have you ever been told by a tech rep person that they are so surprised
to hear of your problem "and we have never heard from this before".
The current problem is that companies like HP, Diamond, ... prefer to
produce a dozen "cheap" products a year (how many different Deskjet
models have we seen over the past few years ?).
Since all those products require their own drivers, they cannot fix bugs
quick enough and can't update their drivers fast enough.
Only a couple of those products really become market leaders, so they
will only concentrate on those few products when writing drivers or
fixing bugs.
I really prefer a company like Matrox, with a product like the
Millennium, which is expensive, but remains ahead of the competition
alot longer.
Drivers are written for different OS's, bugs are fixed regularly, ...
high...@mnsi.net
In article <32A34D...@ping.be>,
Filiep,
Matrox has always been good, since they started out in the video professional
domain and then came down to the consumer level recently.
ATI has also been consistent about Video driver support.
Both are Canadian companies, but I'm unsure if there is a relationship.
(I'm a Canadian too so thought I'd point that out!)
Actually I think it can be explained as follows:
Most or much of ATI/Matrox's line is used by professionals on the job...
Read->Used by Business-->Business community wouldn't accept bad support...
-->Business community has buying power (#s) and would drop a company
if they didn't support hardware they needed for daily work
-->Computer Companies support their Business products...
-->Home user is and individual who usually isn't able to compare
support etc....has buying power of 1--->Home directed products get
crappy support (entertainment) even though the #s could be higher than
in Business-->Home users don't collectively demand better support and
don't penalize collectively and thus Why should companies do it if
it doesn't hurt their bottom line...SALES!!!
If we home users can become collective about our demands for support and
use our buying power collectively to demand product support then
-->Home products support will approach the levels of Business products
support!!!
Basically its like everything in life...2 sets of rules!
high...@mnsi.net
In article <57so93$2...@mozo.cc.purdue.edu>,
>
> >In article <57labl$l...@mozo.cc.purdue.edu>,
> >fm...@widget.ecn.purdue.edu (Frederick Y Mah) wrote:
>
> >> with support. In fact, AFAIK, none of them have decent D3D support and
> >> even if they did it would probably be slow. I figured it was obvious that
> >> you are taking chances with these first to market products.
> >>
> >> --
> >> Fred Mah --- fm...@ecn.purdue.edu
> >> http://widget.ecn.purdue.edu/~fmah
>
> >Fred,
>
>
> >Look at the Sound Blaster support-the original one is still well
> >supported in any and all games!!!
>
> still use it.
>
> >Look at most 2D cards released by companies that didn't fold out
> >of the business.
>
> Well, we're talking about very new 3D applications that are very rapidly
> changing in performance, and note that CL did the same thing with the
> 3DO Blaster. I would expect that they might eventually get around to it,
> but definitely it is not a priority now. You might send an email to
> Dylan Rhodes since he is in that graphics board division at Creative Labs.
>
> --
> Fred Mah --- fm...@ecn.purdue.edu
> http://widget.ecn.purdue.edu/~fmah
Fred,
I wouldn't know all about the 3DO card, I'd need a 3DO card owner to
chime in on that one.
But as far as I know the drivers for the 3DO card were written completely
enough so that any owner of such a card can run any 3DO game/CD on their
computer with that card...that's all Creative promised it to do!!
They promised full and continued Direct-X/3D support and that the 2MB
memory upgrade would be available soon after release and its never been
available.
I'm not sure of how many Video or Soundcard products didn't get the
support promised from initial release within the first year?
But I digress, I've gotten an indication that Creative "should" release
the drivers for Direct-X full release within January at latest and "might"
release the 2MB upgrade for limited time offer.
But I am waiting for Creative to give me their official response and to
see the products myself! The said they'd reply to me soon (I received
at least that from them-via email), but haven't yet!
You're also missing the point of the discussion:
I will concede that you can find examples of Computer companies dropping
support for a product in less than a year!
The REAL question is Why do we let them get away with it!?!?
If we as responsible online citizens would keep track of and
penalize via product boycott or whatever ANY company that doesn't
support their products for at least a year or two from release.
(Barring the company's Bankruptcy or being bought out!)
Going even farther, if there are standards such as MPC 3
and MPEG-2 or VESA 2.0 --> why don't we create our own
online-user's standard for product support and a company would
have to request and sign a legal document to support it,
stating how they would lose the right to use, etc. if they didn't
comply on the product. Like a min 2 years driver and hardware
support. Then we would just not by products that lived up to
our standards!!! I'll elaborate on this later.
We could reduce this Las Vegas style support! (If they win they support
If they lose...tough luck!)
2ndly, if we allow 1 company to do it without penalty, then many
others will emulate (like politicians) knowing that we don't expect
them to live up to any of their promises!
James
P.S. I'd still like a Lawyer to chime in whether this situation can
be considered in general to be false advertising and is it sueable?
(In General-Company A releases product B which it claims in print to
"fully support" software C-even on the package!...Company A never gets
around to writing the drivers to enable that support...is Company A
liable? What about a class action suit via all of the owners of
product B?)
kweir...@aol.com
Creative is still reporting this card. I just recently obtained the
Memory upgrade for the card and now have 4MB onboard. This allows me to
use Direct3D beta drivers with Hyperblade to get textured features. As
far as new drivers they are in the works and will be released soon.
Kevin