That video sure is taking a long time to come out.
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It has taken much longer than we thought it would for a variety of reasons. One of those is weâre building a number of video recording systems we want to use for the final KS video. Weâre almost done, just polishing up a few things.
Letâs take things nice and slow. Give me some time to build up some savings again once my next project stars, mmkay?
I figured Wednesday. but it was a holiday three days for that = Saturday but that is a weekend so Saturday if they work through it or Monday.
Software projects always take longer than you expect them to. If you realise this, and extend your estimate, then the time it will take to complete will also extend so that your new realistic estimate will still be unrealistic.
The only way to get out of this loop is to sincerely believe that your project was finished last week.
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Sorry, Cray, but youâre off target there. Software projects take longer then expected because the people building the software donât understand what theyâre doing. It is not inherent to software projects that they will take longer than expected. It is inherent in an engineerâs nature (particularly young engineers) to be optimistic about what can be accomplished on time scales longer than about three days. Those estimates can be pretty wildly optimistic on anything longer than two weeks. Even a weekend seems like a near-infinite amount of time when working on a pet project.
The solution is to require the developers to break down their work into units of a day or two, and no longer than three days. That requires a level of inspection that insists that the developers understand what they will be building at a low enough level to spot any tasks of consequence. Itâs almost like doing a dry run, or a simulation, of building the product, forcing everyone to consider who is building what, how long it will take and so on, right down to the day to day level.
This sort of rigor is not taught to young engineers. Given the number of programmers that the industry demands, and the ease at which programming can be self-taught, itâs very easy to assemble a group of people who know how to write code, but donât know much more than that. I went most of my career without learning about scheduling, and my scheduling predictability suffered as a result.
The I-Novae guys are fairly young, working part time, and are working on cutting edge technology. I suspect that they have retained their youthful optimism about what they can knock out in a weekend, and are not using any kind of strict scheduling. Thatâs why Keith keeps saying âThis is taking longer than we expectedâ. They seem to need a development manager (who is not coding) to organize things.
For me, scheduling takes a lot of the fun out of software engineering. I enjoy the idea of breaking new ground and discovering the next technical challenge as I go. But that sort of attitude doesnât have a place in commercial development because it doesnât produce the required predictability.
I will now return to my lurking.
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Some good points. Itâs definitely a mix of both. We encounter numerous items we couldnât possibly foresee, but we need to work on getting better with our scoping and timelines. Hard to do working part time with ârealâ life kicking you in butt once in a while. Iâm a big proponent of not announcing anything until âitâs doneâ though, unless itâs something we can show work in progress of.
I just finished a projekt yesterday âŚ
I estimated a time ⌠then added 100% of it as reserve.
Turned out it took 6 times the time of my original estimate ⌠jup, young and unexperienced. 
@JB47394 The single biggest issue weâve had, aside from the fact that most of the team is working in their spare time, is the fact that weâre blazing new trails with cutting edge tech. We continually run into unanticipated problems caused by the unique challenges posed by planets - particularly those with atmosphere. Fortunately at this point I think weâve worked through most of them but every so often a new one pops up and itâs usually at the worst possible moment - like when we want to release a new video ;). Weâre doing the best we can with what weâve got and once we finally get this KS out the door it wonât be perfect but I think you all will be pleased with the results. Weâre certainly excited to show it to you =).
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JB, my post was entirely exaggeration and tongue in cheekiness, I hoped the last sentence would make that pretty obvious. For the record Iâve studied software project management at degree level, managed the successful delivery of a number of software projects and been part of the project team on software projects that have overrun enormously. The subject is too complex for me to do anything more than make light hearted fun of it here.
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My only problem with those delays is that they are not immediately explained to the public in âdetailâ.
A tweet with(for example) âran into unforeseen problem with atmospheres while testing camera angles, video release might be delayed a few daysâ can help diminish the problem of people refreshing their browsers waiting for something that obviously(to the devs) isnât coming as soon as expected. Specially when the delay is significant.
Also, Im wondering if you guys are planning to delay the video a bit more to try and dodge the information overflow that is E3. Being a drop in a tsunami wouldnât be as effective. Unless you try to âride the waveâ and use the extra attention to video games and try to release the video a day or two before it begins.
Understandable. The delay has been due to tweaking atmospheric scattering and HDR. Weâre using realistic values for our illumination and weâve run into some issues with making sure that the quantities of incident irradiance within atmosphere are in the expected range. Weâve also had some issues with eye adaptation caused by the large range of luminance values that result in some areas being too overexposed and others too underexposed.
Currently E3 is not guiding our release date for the video however that could change.
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Was that so hard? 
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Itâs been thirty days. Itâs now triple checking.
Or waiting for that gym membership body for the kickstarter photo.
You can blame me. The video is basically finished I just havenât had a chance to tweak the HDR yet.
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Twerk did you say?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGBrRD5-3Zs
And quit playing with the HDR of youâll never get done! (people say that out loud? its different times /shocked)
Sounds good 
Now ship it!
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Come on, we want video!
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Three months now. Is this friendly encouragement or am I just being mean?
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Itâs friendly encouragement haha. Nobody else is to blame but myself, the rest of the team has moved diligently onto our actual KS video (which is really coming together) and Iâm currently the one holding up our rings video due to the aforementioned lighting tweaks. Iâve had a lot going on the last few months so my coding time has been impacted quite a bit. I apologize for the delay and greatly appreciate your patience!
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