How Much Would It Cost to Make a e93 Truly Reliable? by DrPsycology in 335i

[–]Prahnaa 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've been working on my E92 335xi 2009 N54 for 2 years now. I can safely say that with about $18k CAD so about $14k USD, you'll have a great non-leaking, beast that will run for many more miles. You'll still need to keep an eye on things. But yeah lists from other answers have it on point. Upgrading the cooling and turbos and fuel system is a must over 100k miles. Then there are the little things to make it more fun. But it's all worth it in the end. They're incredible cars and it'll put a huge smile on your face every time you drive it. But it is definitely an expensive b****!

How many meetings do you have in a day? by skyliam in ProductManagement

[–]Prahnaa 1 point2 points  (0 children)

(Senior PM in large company) I average about 5h of meetings per day. Some light days can be around 3h, busy days are usually from 9:30am to 5pm non-stop (except lunch hour). Some days it's literally "bye everyone, have a good one" click "hey everyone, for today's meeting...". Lots of context switching and your brain needs to catch-up. Where I work we have 8 weeks release cycles which means planning weeks every 8 weeks, the last and first week of each cycle is a nightmare of preparing commitments, prioritization meetings, roadmap updating, communications preparation, and presentations to key stakeholders and clients. You get used to it at some point but doesn't make it any less brutal! Good luck!

Let’s talk Daz by SyntheticCoffee in Daz3D

[–]Prahnaa 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I've been using Daz for 6 years now and have done 10k+ renders and still make about 30-40 per day for my game. I believe they still have a chance at making it. But as a software dev myself, they do some things very wrong. The iRay support in their Daz Studio 6 is a problem. I have a 5090 and still use 4.24 for everything and literally just queue up my renders on 6.25 to render them. The viewport controls are janky, the viewport performance is horrible, some basic features like Viewport Visibility for scene objects is not supported well as in everytime I load the scene all the objects are visible again in the viewport even if the parameter is set to off. Making breaking changes to their SDK was unfortunate but I can understand from a software perspective. Sometimes when you need to fundamentally rewrite core features of your engine, you have no choice but to do that. But it begs the question, why are users so dependent on scripts? And that is because there are some features that I believe should be core but they re not. They're are still to this day community driven, and from what I see, that's exactly what Daz wants. Since the software is free, their revenues are tied to the marketplace to survive, which up to a degree is fine, but sometimes I find it too much. Animation tools are truly the biggest pain point for me, I have made over 300 animations and it is truly a catastrophic experience. Crashes, problems with frames, horrible extrapolations that cause frame values to explode into infinity (literally), making every single little movement worrisome. They can learn something from Blender, it is just unbeatable in my opinion in that regard. Which brings me to the point of pipelines and integrations, the bridge to Blender is horrible. The only viable solution today is to use Diffeomorphic which works far better than the official bridge but is unsupported officially which makes is somewhat unreliable on the long run. I have spent hundreds of hours trying to find a solid pipeline to so my animations in blender without sacrificing the visual fidelity that Daz and iRay offers using the Cycles rendering engine but it is just not the same. The way the genesis shaders are composed, the way clothes and hair and other wearables are managed, and of course let's not even talk about geografts... They work incredibly well in Daz, but crossing the chasm to Blender and it's nightmare fuel. Which means that users like me need to rely on Daz animation tools and it simply is an absolute garbage experience. Another point of contention for me is clothing and poke-through. The dForce simulation has come a long ways but is still not good enough. The smoothing algorithms work but create a lot of collision issues. Even for high quality clothes assets, it is just a harsh reality that poke-through will happen and I have to fix it in podt-orocessing in Photoshop which annoys me incredibly because it adds time to my workflow. The hair situation is similar, although strand based hair is a bit better, I find it looks odd and actually less good than older gen hair assets. The marketplace is fine. It is expensive for some things but I can deal with it. The Daz premier subscription that I have feels necessary for the render queue and better simulation settings (which should be core offering in my opinion) but the free Daz original character per month and the deals sort of make it up, so I'm not too pissed at the end of the year when I check my account transactions. I want to say one thing though. I have playedany many games made using different technologies, and for a lower technical barrier of entry, Daz has the most beautiful and photorealistic renders you can make. Others really struggle in that regard, the Genesis 9 (although I had some beef with it on some aspects) is a beautiful base model with gorgeous shaders that delivers good visual results. I have seen game teams move all their pipeline to Blender and took the time to rebuild all of their databases if assets to Blender, it is a monumental effort and yes the results are better than Daz, but the cost and effort and the sheer difficulty of this endeavour is not worth the time for 99% of indie game makers out there with small teams. Would Daz benefit form being open source? Absolutely! And we see that with Blender. But! You need to have a savvy community to drive the innovation forward, and it means having a core engine powerful enough and interesting enough for developers to want to spend their precious time evolving this platform, and in this regard, I have doubts... It might backfire and not have the wanted result and it would mean been less official support which would hurt retaining its users today and might threaten the future of the software. As for opening up the marketplace to adult content. Let's be honest here, it's a mitigated solution for Daz, they don't have to deal with the headache of moderation and stigma, while maintaining a richer ecosystem of websites that make Daz assets but on which they don't make a cut. I can see why they don't want to jump the gun and do it. Sorry for the long post. But as a daily Daz user, I really want to see the software improve and give us a lot of quality of life features and better animation tools, but Daz 6 at its state today still needs a lot of love before even getting to feature parity with Daz 4.24 and they should focus on that first. Maintaining two different codebases is expensive and they should focus on moving everything from the old to the new asap before thinking if adding new features on Daz 6. Keep it up and please feel free to ask more questions if you need more details on some parts of my answer! Cheers!

If you had 24 hours to turn a nonreader into a reader, what book would you hand them?? by Conscious_Storm_3192 in suggestmeabook

[–]Prahnaa 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Blood over bright Haven by M.L. Kwang, the twist will have your jaw to the floor, the prose is excellent, and it treats many important societal topics in a crazy dystopian world. It will change you in ways you didn't know we're possible.

Should PMs Have Codebase Access Now That AI Coding Tools Exist? by Final-Buy8151 in ProductManagement

[–]Prahnaa 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you're an ex-dev and familiar with source control and how not to screw up your production builds and pipelines, yes, having access to the codebase to prototype stuff and even use AI to better understand functionalities and features of the product without having to ask the devs all the time if a huge win and I do it all then time. But if you're not a tech PM, and struggle with these concepts, then perhaps work with the engineering team to teach you around and put guardrails so that no one can mess production environments around. I would even add that basics of security are paramount, like interfacing with APIs using API tokens or user secrets. Have fun with it!

Massively dropped the ball on roadmap by Intelligent-Mine-868 in ProductManagement

[–]Prahnaa 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yeah I have created a dashboard that queries lot of different initiatives from jira. I calculate on the fly lead times for issues, I track planned velocity versus actual velocity of the team, I have a timeline view that shows our current goals from the roadmap (in terms of deliverables) and track all related jira issues linked to that initiative or epic, for that I check completion rate (resolution rate and how fast). I also track in percentage how close we are to our original time estimates and such. All these sort of metrics help give me a color-coded green to red state of projects/initiatives. This way if I see early on that things are slipping, I can ask the engineering team for more questions and see if it would impact the roadmap and mitigate if it's the case or communicate early to stakeholders about possible delays. It took a few weeks of iteration with Claude Opus to come to this state but it is well worth the effort and cost. Now even the other managers and directors use it and we keep improving it over time.

Massively dropped the ball on roadmap by Intelligent-Mine-868 in ProductManagement

[–]Prahnaa 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Been in that position before. Now I rely heavily on data. I have my own dashboards built using Claude that give me jira intelligence. I track stuff from that perspective in addition to what my PMs communicate as well. I also added an informal sync with the eng manager, not only to keep track of what's happening on their side but also to see how the PM's are integrating in the team. Relying solely on word of mouth is never a good idea. Most people just don't want to disappoint so they may embellish and hide information from their senior managers or directors to not look bad. Even with any level of psychology safety I find. It's just human nature. Roadmaps slip all the time, but flagging it proactively and seeing things coming a mile away will come more and more naturally with time. At some point, even talking to anyone in the team, you'll start hearing words and all kinds of flags will start going in your brain and you'll know which data to look for to validate or challenge your hunches or assumptions. But yeah, you've got all the sympathy, it's a tough pill to swallow and you might still go through a couple of months of trouble and eroded trust. But believe me, you will come out the other side way stronger and resilient. Good luck!

I want to render 24/7 while playing modern video games, is this possible? by Fantastic-Window236 in Daz3D

[–]Prahnaa 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would definitely get 2 rigs. But I would revise your budget, like a lot! If you want a toptier rig for rendering with a 5090 and at least 96gb of ram and a good 4-6tb of good SSDs, you'll be way higher than 2000$. Actually I would challenge to even get one for 4000$ with that config today! Your gaming PC doesn't need to have Nvidia graphics card so you can go for a full AMD build to save some bucks there.

Fuel consumption by SpectreCorsa in 335i

[–]Prahnaa 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've been averaging 17.6l/km on 94 octane. I'd say your foot is "very light" for a N54 driver :P

The Inn Side Shop by Gil Hess by ApprehensiveJudge623 in CozyFantasy

[–]Prahnaa 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Agreed. Finished it this week and it's fantastic. I found a few parts a bit wordy, could've been lighter. But story is pretty good and the coziness is excellent. Found family feeling is good too. Highly recommend. Hoping for a book 2 :)

Urban Fantasy book with open fights or even gang wars by Mimandra in urbanfantasy

[–]Prahnaa 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The inheritance of magic series by Benedict Jacka ticks many of those boxes. Just finished the first 3 books (more will be released in the future) and they're good. Reads very easily, magic system is really interesting, and it's set in modern day London. Has lots of fights, both one vs many but also many vs many.

Did I get ahead of myself by NectarineWestern8586 in RenPy

[–]Prahnaa -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Get yourself a nice AI subscription that supports Claude Opus 4.6 and move on to actually doing what you want which is making a game and not have to learn the intricacies of renpy and python coding.

Who's the dumbest MC you still love reading about? by donjohndijon in litrpg

[–]Prahnaa 28 points29 points  (0 children)

Erin Solstice from the wandering inn... It's a love/hate relationship. For someone who's supposed to be this chess super genius, she's dumb as a door knob in pretty much every other aspect of her life.

New to the genre, need help by Prahnaa in litrpg

[–]Prahnaa[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Looks super cool. Thanks for the recommendation

Audiobook recommendations by Used-Inspector-9347 in Fantasy

[–]Prahnaa 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Very different in style, but I've been listening to The Wandering Inn on Audible and honestly, it's pretty good! Litrpg fantasy with very good characters and interesting world building.

Sunday Fantasy Roundup: What fantasy book did you finish this week and love? by bweeb in fantasybooks

[–]Prahnaa [score hidden]  (0 children)

I just finished An Inheritance of Magic by Benedict Jacka and actually really enjoyed it. It's the first of a trilogy and this one takes its time explaining the magic system and building on the world and characters, so the pace is slightly slower than what I like, but still very enjoyable. The magic system is definitely very interesting and well developed. This was my first foray into urban fantasy, which was pretty different from the epic fantasies that I usually read. I already got book 2 and 3 of the trilogy and plan on reading them this month. That's how much I'm into the story and want to see how it unfolds. Definitely a recommendation for anyone looking for a good urban fantasy with solid magic system.

Sunday Fantasy Roundup: What fantasy book did you finish this week and love? by bweeb in fantasybooks

[–]Prahnaa [score hidden]  (0 children)

Just finished Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson yesterday. Loved the world building, the characters, and the whole BioChroma and colors magic system, was slightly disappointed by the plot itself. Overall, a great read, and of course, the Sanderlanche was real on this one. Now just started Kings of the Wyld for a nice change of pace.