Yep, this is terrible. Fab isn’t really a production tool, as Bridge used to be.
The use of megascans in film and TV VFX and previs will steeply decline.
Nobody can sit there individually downloading many files per asset, unzipping them and organizing them on disk, then assetising them in their DCC(s).
what they need to develop is a fast browser - hopefully a discrete application - where you can find assets easily, preview them, download them with all dependencies in to a local library that’s browsable on your machine, - maybe even with plugins to export to the main DCCs… Oh wait… that was Bridge.
I’m concerned that the fact that they chose not to make bridge a window in to fab, and just kill it off completely instead (seemingly) means that they don’t want this functionality now or in the foreseeable future. It was pretty much the only thing that made scanned assets usable in production at the speed and utility required in production.
People paid them for it too. They won’t want to pay for assets any more if they can’t use them efficiently in workflows. They aren’t going to take the time and effort to develop their own in-house ‘Bridge’ like applications for their artists, who often don’t have direct access to the internet due to security policies around intellectual properties of Film and TV studios etc.