3DS Max XBR (project Excalibur)

Hi, scg people.

I guess many of you are wandering around in CGTalk or Autodesk Area forum but hey, some may miss this. As many of you may now there is this XBR project going on around max which deals with a max core rewrite step by step.Thought I would share this link. Check out video recording, some of max devs are sharing some of their current efforts and possible future vision of max. Interesting stuff to hear.

http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/ken/xbr_webinar_results

What you think of it, people? Most exciting part for me was XBR Simulation. Max may get unified simulation system finally if they pull this off. That would be cool!

i watched it yesterday and im still not sure what to think of this. I like the fact that they at least acknowledge that 3ds max is a pile of obsolete code. Whey i see my workmates going crazy with acutually WORKING features in other software as XSI and Maya and the speed i kinda get jealous. Dot get me wrong. I LOVE 3ds Max. It has a lot of cool features but a lot of obsolete/untidy/uncomplete features. (Containers still are really crashhappy.) Fur and Hair and cloth didnt get ANY update since 2008. A similar story with NURBS(never completed or widened the capabilities) (not that i use it that often). And a lot of obsolete or old modifier that are still there that clutter the place.
Like
Meshsmooth - Turbosmooth - tesselate (ok this one actually is a bit different)
Optimize - Pro optimize
Boolean - Pro boolean
Cutter - Pro cutter
Pysique - Skin
Every modifier that has a WSM version.

I get the point that people have a choice on what they want to use. But you could just combine them to one plugin or something.Like the awesome idea of the unified simulations system. Because they always talk about reducing the memory footprint and making the startup faster and using less ram. But they never talked about this kinda stuff. like 90% of the modifier are single threaded plugins.

And what i liked the most is that they want to tidy up the cluttered and awful ui.(FINALLY )(and i hate the dark version with white icons ,too much noise, cant find anything!)

I liked the mockup ui show but im not sure if it should be something like ms office
Viewport improvement still didnt really blow me of my feet. (on a second thought 6 mil poligons is impressive)

http://tv.newtek.com/player.php?recordID=64
this did though. That is what i called a pimped viewport

Max Hair,Cloth and Nurbs truly could get more love from autodesk. That's for sure.
I have high hopes for XBR, somehow tend to believe that max devs may pull it off. By the way, just recently uploaded sneak peek's into max.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5YhsExX5bs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMwLnI6J ... re=related

That XSI ICE thing inside/out of max with few clicks seems promising. And viewport quality - damn, I can imagine how having a very, very decent video card and workstation may take your work in max to the next level soon. If everything goes alright with this XBR ofcourse. Naming of new viewports system "Nitrous" gives me hint all of that is based on some previous research and early max rewritte attempts that autodesk had tried back in 2000 or something like that. There was article on max underground somewhere.