Need to upgrade to use FF library? WTF?

For a long time I’ve come across people (in other forums, particularly DAZ3D) complaining about getting a message saying they can’t use the filter library if they don’t have a current version of Filter Forge.

Generally these were very angry posters who claimed to have purchased Filter Forge but eventually it stopped working because they didn’t upgrade to a newer version. These were angry folks who claimed to have been ripped off because the older versions are not supposed to block access to the Filter libraries.

I generally dismissed these as someone who was misinterpreting some other message, since nobody ever had a picture of the message and in all my years of owning Filter Forge (every version since version 2) I’ve never had that problem.

Until today.

Today I went to open my copy of version 8 (I have previously purchased a lifetime upgrade, but haven’t gotten around to updating to version 9), and I was immediately greeted by this message “To Open library filters, you must have a newer version of Filter Forge. Update now?”

No.

This should not be an issue, and I should always be able to access any filter up to the version I currently have installed.

To be clear, this message popped up when I opened FF and when I went to download a filter... a filter that is for version 4... I’m using 8.

Technically this message shouldn’t even exist, because as far as understand, if you bought (for example) version 5, that version grants you access to all filters up to version 5 and that license for version 5 does not expire.

You should not be blocked from the libraries for all filters.

I have NO access to any filters unless I upgrade (I tested downloading many filters of many versions from 1-8 ).

I have no intentions of upgrading at the moment as I don’t have the time to bother with this.

This must be a bug.

If anyone has any information about why this might occur, I’d be grateful for any answer, because up till now I thought people who complained about this were a bit overly emotional or quick to jump to conclusions.

I’m active at other forums, so I’d be happy to pass on a fix or answer as to why this may happen when people complain about this.

I agree with everything Rachel posted... I will add that when downloading a filter for lets say version 8 you can only download filters that are created with version 8 and below......You cannot use any filter that was created with the higher version of Filter Forge....

Well to finally put this issue to bed I have made a quick video of this.....I did this this morning and I did not have much time so there is no audio just a video......I am using FF7 in the video.....I installed an earlier version to bring up the dialog in question...I then go through the process of clicking "YES" in the video and then download the filter again to show what happens......I installed 7.005 and updated to 7.007.....The filter that I tried to download was created with version 7 but it was higher version then 7.005...So this is why you get the update dialog at all even thou it was still a version 7 filter...
and as Rachel said you can have the latest version of that FF version that fixes bugs and whatnot...

Quote
McGyver wrote: I’m active at other forums, so I’d be happy to pass on a fix or answer as to why this may happen when people complain about this.

Here is a link to the video that you can share with others that have this issue....
FILTER FORGE UPDATE NON ISSUE

I think that would be much better if the message would be less confusing and would be more clear that the update is FREE and that you only need to click on Yes, to the Update now question.

https://www.filterforge.com/forum/read...id=4567323

Quote
GMM wrote: The message is about updating, not upgrading. The only effort required from you is to click Yes is this dialog box.

The problem is that it is confusing the message and you may think that you must buy a newer version, when really as you say right, the only effort is to click on YES, and it will install the new version for FREE, but as this is not told that is free, you may think that it will try to make you pay for a new version, and this is not the case.

I agree with SpaceRay. Although the notification message itself is correct (it says you need to "update" and not upgrade to a newer full version, many people use the terms "update" and "upgrade" synonymously.

How about a different notificaton, something that sounds more positive like "We have made some background improvements to your version of FilterForge. To access the filter library please update your version for free. Update now?"