Without handing out any confidential information I can say that having tested PIM over the course of a few months now, it is shaping up nicely and anyone using it will have immense realtime 3d power in their hands. If you go to
http://pimtools.be you can see some of the new samples (requires Internet Explorer).
I have been using Macromedia Director and the ShockWave3D format for about 4-5 years now, as well as contributed in projects involving game/realtime 3D engines such as Torque, and compared to any of those PIM is lightyears ahead in terms of production speed. There is absolutely no exporting involved, as you do all the interactivity inside of LW and any given text editor. You also have the benefit of using totally standard JavaScripting instead of a proprietary language that many of the 3d engines are using.
There are ofcourse some issues you have to think of when using PIM too, such as bone animated models have to use weightmaps, and materials has to be set up with realtime in mind. That said, alot of the time PIM plays back the models and materials as when hitting F9 or pressing the play button for the timeline.
PIM introduces something that LW itself would benefit from having, SubScenes: multiple timelines in one scene, spanning any count of items, all controllable by a few lines of code. This basically means you can "press play" for seperate models, even though they are all animated in the same timespan inside LW's own timeline. For those familiar with Flash, its similar to movieclips having their own internal timelines. You can assign models, lights, cameras, surfaces and their envelopes to such a SubScene, and then you can tell PIM to playback the various SubScenes.
Regarding when the release is and undisclosed cool features (there are many yet to be spoken of), thats up to Enki and his team to reveal, but the engine is there, fully working, and I think it is incredible that such a small team can have come up with something this good. "Bigger" (as in large development teams) 3D engines such as ShockWave3D, Torque, and even AAA games engines doesnt have this level of integration with any 3D application. I just hope i dont get un-employed when it is released... realtime 3d to the masses
Right now its a matter of getting every aspect of it release ready, which we all will benefit from, regardless of the time it will take.
Segnalibri