Future of FBX bad for COLLADA?

Alias and 3ds seemed somewhat supportive of COLLADA (at least they gave the Feeling guys $$). But unless end users speak up Autodesk doesn’t have much motivation to not jam FBX as the interchange format of choice. That would be a huge step backwards. They pay lip service to continued COLLADA support. They mention it in the same breath as having OBJ and .3ds support.

It’s time to get off the fence folks. If we want XML, schemas, a DOM etc people need to start actually using COLLADA. The DCC vendors have little to no reason to take the right path here, it doesn’t make them any money. They aren’t going to sell more software because of OSG or Google Earth and they could care less about OpenGL ES.

Sony, Khronos, OpenGL ARB etc doesn’t want to hear it, but Windows Vista is going to happen. The majority of future commercial graphics development (CAD, games, entertainment, business graphics, visualization etc) will continue to be based on Windows platforms. The graphics industry is NOT moving to any UNIX variant, the PS3 isn’t going to dent that and NO ONE wants to be stuck using archaic tools when there are elegant integrated visual development environments available. Can you imagine trying to debug a graphics app with 16 processing threads, a few network pipes and database connectivity in dbx?

Lets get real folks. If you buy software, shout at your vendors that you want FULL, bug free, documented, COLLADA support in your 3D apps. Otherwise, we’re all going to end up learning DirectX and writing another half dozen lame file import/export tools. XAML could end up being the standard for interchange and MS may buy Autodesk! :wink: