Hiya.

Well, after playing with the A7 demo (WED; didn't bother with MED or SED), I have to say...I agree about 75% with WhyDID. I was expecting A7 to at *least* move up to having what we already have in A6 via 'common' plugins. I would consider the following to be "common" (re: most useful) to A6;

Sphere 2

IceX

EasyParticles 3 (is it up to 3? I think it is)

To that, though I haven't used them, Dyna-Lights, IntenseX AI (?) and Seed-It should be added.

I am, frankly, stunned that A7 basically has, well, "nothing new" other than Lite-C and ABT. I know there are probably a lot of overall improvements, this is good, but as primarily an artist-type, I want to be able to model my character, texture it with normal maps, animate it with bones and be able to import that into A7 with a few clicks of the mouse. I want to hit Build then Run and see something at *least* the equivalent of Sphere2.

A7 may be a large leap ahead with regards to folks who really delve into the nitty-gritty of the engine (re: Lite-C and full C++ .dll's), but the other 80% of the 3DGS customers are gonna be scratching their heads going "Uh...ok...so where's all the cool stuff for me?"

What I do like about WED is the "Properties" of anything you click being 'right there'. Well, with the exception that there isn't a nice color-swatch to click on when I want to change the color of a light...what's up with that? I also like the default "Vert/Face/Edge" manipulator (the blue thing with white dots of V/F/E's). But still no textured model viewer? No ability to move the texture viewer to the bottom of the screen?

Well, put me in the "wait until 7.5 or 8 to see what happens" camp...:(