“Two bits of good news. 3D and VR plugin developer Tim Dashwood has joined Apple,” fcp.co reports. “Not only is that good news for FCPX users, he has also made his existing plugin products free.”
“We would imagine FxFactory’s servers have been red hot since the news crept out that long-time plugin developer Tim Dashwood has joined Apple,” fcp.co reports. “The employment of Tim follows the same path as the hiring of Wes Plate from Automatic Duck which was announced back in early February of this year. ”
“Tim developed 3D and 360 VR plugins for editors using Quartz Composer,” fcp.co reports. “Now that Tim works at Apple, could we see VR editing functionality included with FCPX? Or could VR capability be included inside the OS?”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: 360VR Toolbox (which used to cost over $1,000), Smooth Skin, Secret Identity, Editors Essentials, and more – now all free – are here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
Possibly Apple is getting serious about pro software, as well? Good …
I used to be dubious about VR but it is developing valuable applications beyond 3D gaming — data visualisation being one of them. So I changed my mind about that; and perhaps Tim Cook has done as well, given hires like this one. We already knew he was high on AR because he said so more than once, but he’d seemed cool about VR until recently. This is a good sign that he may be putting more things on the table, placing more bets rather than fewer, no longer passively letting the competition dictate the paths of new technology. We’ll see.
But we can be sure that Apple isn’t building a VR helmet for hard-core gamers — they haven’t taken games on the Mac seriously for a very long time (casual gaming on mobile is a different animal).
I think it is a step in the right direction. Apple shouldn’t wait for technology breakthroughs to happen, they actually should be pushing them. Not saying VR is yet the next big thing as some believers but it is a technology Apple has to embrace. Let people choose what to do with it and see if in the process something else emerges.