IPAS Compatibility
That's a very good question. Some companies (Autodesk included) have
maintained both DOS and Windows versions of their product. Autodesk has
already announced an arrangement with Silicon Graphics whereby the 3DS
render-engine will be ported to the SGI hardware. Again, there's the question
of IPAS routines being ported to SGI.
Arguably, the DOS IPAS and the Windows IPAS from any particular company are
separate products. You bought one for 3DS DOS and need to buy another for 3DS
Windows, especially if you have two licenses to 3DS at that point. It's also
arguable and/or possible that 3DS for Windows will be a direct upgrade from the
DOS version, and that you'd just need an IPAS upgrade. Argue away. 🙂
Except I can't imagine how they'll prevent you from running the old version at
the same time as the new version… Rainbow Technologies, the people who make
the dongle for 3DS, claim that the model of dongle used by 3DS is not
compatible with Windows or WinNT, so they'd need to change dongles, too. Maybe
a dongle-swap is planned.
One interesting possibility is that 3DS could switch to a Windows-like DLL
interface for all IPAS, since PharLap has a "DLL under DOS" technology. This
wouldn't be backwards-compatible, but it might lessen the strain on IPAS
developers, who could ship the same plug-in for both DOS and Windows versions.