I just have to ask @Jared, where is SGP headed? I have read nearly every post daily. I have not seen a post from @Ken since around April. Are you working alone?
Very few, if any, new info what direction v4.x is headed. I do not use switches so all I can see of any benefit to me is the 64 bit architecture. I believe that my concern as to whether Ken is still apart of SGP and there are features that would enhance SGP beyond what we presently have in v4.
I have been quite happy with v3.3.0.660 and the only thing I see missing in v3.2 is Astap for a focus metric which I would like to have included.
I guess what I am asking is there something forthcoming that will justify a yearly fee to use v4 or is v4 now static?
4 is still under development and Ken is still around just not really in the forum all that much. He’s working on theming and has that nearly complete and has required a pretty significant amount of work. But hopefully will be out in a 4.0 beta in the next couple of weeks once it’s more stable.
As for upcoming features we have learned not to discuss such things until they’re either out the door or extremely close. So unfortunately you’ll just have to wait and see.
With the change of pricing structure, you need to change the way you handle costumer’s expectations.
When people paid once and felt they got upgrades forever, it was ok to not tell them what was coming.
Now you’re asking people to pay every year. You’re asking a much more significant financial commitment over longer term. You can’t expect people to pay not knowing what for.
I understand it’s easier to announce things that are already done to not miss deadlines. But now people pay every year, SGP is your job, you have to know what you’ll do, how long it will take, and meet deadlines. In the industry we do that every day. You are part of the industry. Things just got less comfortable in return for more income.
I like SGP and I’ve been using it for years. The development over the last year makes me seriously doubt it’s worth it. The lack of announcements and roadmap doesn’t help. The switches are ok, but their implementation still has serious issues (switch off the camera at the end of the sequence for example and see how SGP handles it; you need way more options), and as it’s been the whole of development other that bug fixes (these are on you), it feels very light.
So I support calls for a clear roadmap so I can decide if I want to stick with it or move on.
I recently upgraded to SGP4 for Switch support, after some experiments I would say that the feature is half baked, further more the support pretty much does not exist, no reply to the bug reported.
I really like the UI and paradigm of SGP and especially the sequence recovery but it is no longer on par with competing solutions regarding its feature set. Who is missing what features will change from customer to customer.
I understand changing the architecture is a huge undertaking that needs a serious commitment of time and resources - but this is not a user-facing change that compels people to invest. As it takes a long time to stabilize, the value proposition just is not there compared to subscribing to competing solutions or just using an older version.
Basically the only reason to subscribe at the moment is to fund further development. But when there is no communication about the direction of this development in turn, this seems a hard sell.
Just to chip in with this discussion. I really like SGP and only wish I could use it more. Over the last 20 years, increasing amounts of night time clouds of one kind or another are a much bigger problem to me than the cost of SGP. I used to run a software business and I understand where folks are coming from on the subject of development. All I would say is that the cost of SGP subscription is not high IMO and therefore our expectations should be proportionate.
I would like to see a ‘this is what we’re working on’ list, and from a marketing and also customer retention/ satisfaction basis, I feel this would help.
Thanks for good software and continuing to provide, support and develop it,
Paul
Thanks to all that chimed in on my original post and hopefully @Jared or @Ken could comment as it was reported by Jared that Ken is working behind the scenes to implement “new features” to address your replies to my post.
Honestly, I feel that the lack of clarity or sense of direction is leaving me with a stagnant feeling. Again over the months since v4 (beta and release) version has been released, there have been a multitude of requests for features wanted and most of the replies was the dreaded “Have to wait and see” or just silence from Admin.
We’re working on natively supported themes (Dark/Light/Etc). Unfortunately since this wasn’t done initially it has been quite the mountain to climb but should be coming out in a beta pretty shortly. In addition we’re also working on a larger target window and making it more clear what targets are using centering and other target specific actions. As well as a better target summary.
