Bentley Systems has released perpetual free versions of VUE, PlantFactory, and PlantCatalog. This decision follows the discontinuation of further development and sales of these software products. These tools are now available without future suppor or updates beyond discretional changes to fix critical security issues.
The software can be used in commercial projects free of charge, the main commercial restriction being specifically on the resale of assets derived from PlantCatalog. For detailed information on license terms and downloads, please visit Bentley’s website.
How fast and ruthlessly things change, thinking just a few years ago Vue was being used inpirates of the Caribbean and competing with Terragen and the likes.
Your use of “ruthlessly” takes on a new meaning when you sit beside a bookshelf that’s become a graveyard for €899, plus €199 upgrade, plus €99 upgrade, plus extra purchases… and yet, I can’t even sell it on eBay for €1.99.
Well, it was somehow foreseeable. It was a slow but steady dying. And it’s just consequent that they now finally pull the plug.
All started with that heir original page got hacked back a few years ago. Which took them out of business for more than a year if i remember correct. VUE then just got fewer and fewer updates and made trouble at the user end. And wasn’t really able to compete anymore. Then there was the imo wrong decision that you are not allowed to sell models made with plant factory. Then the products got sold to Bentley Systems. And now we have AI, which dries out the market even more.
they went broke due to scammer prices and no development
I hope they release it as open source to get developed by community.
They should open source the code to give it a new life.
Instead of leaving it rot.
It’s not this easy. There is a statement somewhere that they in fact thought about to make it open source. But such software always contains third party libs. And that was also here the reason not to open source it …
You can’t do it, at least not for such a large-scale production. God knows how many external programmers have been hired to work on different components of the software, and each of them has a contract with clauses prohibiting the disclosure of their scientific work and intellectual property as public content. As Tiles wrote above, no one knows which third-party libraries are included or whose code is being used.
Instead of exposing themselves to hordes of lawyers and risking the future and the existence of the company, it is always safer and the best insurance policy to NOT publish such content as open source. It costs a company less to offer it for free than to spend an unpredictable amount of money over many years dealing with court cases.
PlantFactory for free, amazing software
Plant Factory is a good deal. Vue has a habit of crashing while “preparing global light manager” during renders. the software got progressively worse as its final years rolled on.