VRML veterans like Parisi last month marked the 10th anniversary of the language's first commercial implementation. And after a decade of waiting for a computer graphics Godot, they're used to encountering skepticism when they herald the imminent eminence of Web 3D.
Bodies littering the Web 3D landscape include that of Microsoft's Chromeffects effort (shelved in 1998), Adobe's Atmosphere title (killed in November), and Intel and Macromedia's joint venture to popularize Shockwave 3D on the Web (which dissolved along with other Intel Web 3D alliances).
In 10 years of turmoil and tried patience, both VRML and Parisi have changed. VRML, after achieving ISO standardization, in recent years has been reborn, under the auspices of the Web3D Consortium, as an XML-based ISO standard called X3D. Parisi has kept the Web 3D religion with a San Francisco start-up called Media Machines, whose clients include the U.S. Navy and Joe Firmage's ManyOne portal.
Last month, Media Machines said it had acquired, in an all-stock transaction, Cincinnati-based Virtock Technologies, which adds a Web 3D authoring tool to Media Machines' Flux 3D software development kit, publishing tool and player.
Parisi spoke with CNET News.com about why the Web is finally ripe for 3D content, why the Web browser is yesterday's paradigm, and what the architects of the next Internet interface have to learn from gamers, among other topics.
Q: You've said before that 3D was about to take off on the Web. Intel and Macromedia said it was going to take off. When I look at the market for Web 3D software and content, I'm reminded of what they say about second marriages--it's the triumph of hope over experience. Why is this next period going to be any different from the last few false alarms?
Parisi: The experience we're having at Media Machines is that we're no longer seeing the primary focus on the government client or the corporate client where we've been making our living, but on a daily basis we're getting inquiries from people who want to deploy their content on the Web. We're doing very little in the way of promotion, and people are asking themselves, how can I deploy a product showroom over the Web? How can I, an independent game developer, put together a game title and not have to cut off a limb in terms of payment?
So it's Web stores and gamers--the usual 3D suspects?
Parisi: One of my customers is building a science and education portal where objects are being represented in a photorealistic way.
This would be Joe Firmage. The last thing CNET reported about that was that he'd bought Media Machines.
Parisi: This was back in the summer of 2003, and we had signed a letter of intent for the acquisition. After several delays, due to logical reasons, both parties concluded we should stay as independent entities. But they're one of my top customers. They're licensing the Flux technology for distribution, and they're using it for the 3D content engine for their rich media portals.
So one thing we're seeing in very immediate steps is serious early adoption.
What do you mean early? It's been 10 years.
Parisi: It means it's not someone kicking the tires anymore. They're deploying it, they're buying it, they're doing something with it. We're past the demo stage, but we're not seeing widespread adoption yet.
This is the third swipe at this. The first was VRML, which was too much too soon. We had visions of all these different applications you could build with the technology--many of which are now being deployed--when computers didn't support 3D. The software libraries you needed weren't installed, so along with the 2MB download of (Intervista Software's 3D player) WorldView there was 10 megs of (Microsoft's) DirectX and Direct3D to install--over a 28.8 connection.
Now everyone has 3D on board if they bought their machine anytime in the last four years. And now you have the bandwidth; you have broadband.
There have been several proprietary formats for 3D on the Web, like Macromedia's Shockwave 3D and Adobe's Atmosphere. What happened to those?
Parisi: They were too little too late. In 1999, the Internet bubble was in full swing, and the multimedia giants introduced these extensions to what they already had. Times were good, it was the middle of bubble, budgets were big, and people had time to look at those things. But the technologies were pretty limited. They were weak, not as fully functional as VRML.
So that's the too little. The too late was that Internet bubble burst and those budgets just evaporated. The foundations of those businesses went away.
Now we're in a position where the timing couldn't be better. Every user has a computer that has 3D. Most people download some kind of game, or download music, or download a chat client--things that are outside the sphere of the Web browser. Right now we have these proprietary, 3D gaming universes, 3D chat worlds, like Linden Labs' "Second Life," and they're analogous to the Prodigy and Compuserve of a decade ago.
So you're saying the new 3D technology is the equivalent of Netscape, in 1995?
Parisi: Yes. You will see a disruption of those proprietary businesses because there are now open ways to do the same kinds of experiences. For the user it's free, and for the developer it's almost free.
How are you taking advantage of what you see as this looming opportunity?
Parisi: The dynamic I see is a lot of usage of rich media client applications, music players, video players, chat clients, integrated chat and gaming clients--what they spell is the end of the era of everything being delivered through a browser. That and the difficulty of deploying applications as plug-ins because of extra clicks required in SP2. We're seeing the hegemony of the browser coming to an end as the sole distribution vehicle and the user interface. And we're seeing an appetite for richer experience.
So how does this play into the market for 3D?
Parisi: We believe 3D is going to be a better organizing principle for information. Take the social network. Go on Orkut and you've got all your friends, and the interface is absolute (junk). It's tiles with pictures of your friends. There has to be a better way to organize that. My
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During the weekend, the Jewel of Indra (www.jewelofindra.com) community got together to listen to a real time webradio cast of music, some commercial, some indie, some made for the occasion. It was a good party as these things go, but the real eye opener was that on a 56k dialup, the real time 3D and the real time audiocast was working with nary a drop out or crash. That is the big difference between what can be done now and what could be done ten years ago.
Presence is the key to effective communications. Systems that can do that win. This is where real time 3D is waaaaay better than the 2D chat or IM of the past.
There are other web 3D applications on the horizon that will use it far more seriously for command and control applications, but that is a different topic.
During the weekend, the Jewel of Indra (www.jewelofindra.com) community got together to listen to a real time webradio cast of music, some commercial, some indie, some made for the occasion. It was a good party as these things go, but the real eye opener was that on a 56k dialup, the real time 3D and the real time audiocast was working with nary a drop out or crash. That is the big difference between what can be done now and what could be done ten years ago.
Presence is the key to effective communications. Systems that can do that win. This is where real time 3D is waaaaay better than the 2D chat or IM of the past.
There are other web 3D applications on the horizon that will use it far more seriously for command and control applications, but that is a different topic.
If there ever was a time for VRML, it has already passed. The 3d environments created by this are low quality and repeatative backgrounds. Now a days people expect so much more than just pointing at floating flat images.
The creators are indeed gifted in their respective arts and the ease of navigation was far and away easier than most 3D chats I have to date encountered.
Regards,
Serendipity
If there ever was a time for VRML, it has already passed. The 3d environments created by this are low quality and repeatative backgrounds. Now a days people expect so much more than just pointing at floating flat images.
The creators are indeed gifted in their respective arts and the ease of navigation was far and away easier than most 3D chats I have to date encountered.
Regards,
Serendipity
I have heard long time ago one more point which is more or less a nail in coffin of any 3D model representation, especially XML-based.
During discussions with my friends - professional and mateur 3D modelers/animators - biggest problem with VRML was that is was open. IOW, anyone can take model and do anything with it. Once you release model, it is - like HTML - open to anyone. And that is not what animators/modelers wish to do.
What we have to factor here in, is the price of 3D modeling/animating software. Thou number of free titles is rising, it is still quite minor, compared to commercial products like Kinetix 3D Max, Alias Maya, Side Effects Houdini or Cinema4D and LightWave.
And creation of 3D models and their animation is much more tiresome process than anything, right now involved in Web content represenation.
Flash got an edge here. Most blaimed their proprietary blob file format, but for most independent artists it is only way to earn money.
When you produce an e.g. JPEG picture, you cannot reverse engineer it and reuse its primitives to create new pictures. With text-based 3D models - it is piece of cake.
As much as I want to see more of 3D Web, that much I do not believe artists will join up.
IMHO.
Now if your only motive is profit, the profits in this industry will come slowly just as they did for movies in their infancy, but faster in terms of real time because of the network effect.
You really should spend some time in these online communities. There is stunning artwork there contributed from all over the world. Like open source software, the value of contributing is realized by ganging together media from multiple sources and multiple types to create a group experience with presence as the dominating quality. Simply: it is a lot more fun to listen to tunes with a group of friends than to describe them over text-only chat. The web is MULTI-MEDIA and the VRMLers get that in a big way.
And as for open models, X3D has three formats of which one is a binary. So the W3DC has heard that complaint and responded with support for artists and content owners who wish to close their models to inspection. That will have a side effect of decreasing their distribution, but that is their business model to consider.
However, there are solutions. For example Demicron's web3D tool WireFusion imports and encrypts VRML files before publishing them to the web as Java applets.
The benefits from the open format are therefore still preserved, i.e. you can use standard 3D animations/modeling tools like 3ds max, Maya, LightWave etc to export to VRML, and the 3D artwork is then also protected from reverse engineering.
I have heard long time ago one more point which is more or less a nail in coffin of any 3D model representation, especially XML-based.
During discussions with my friends - professional and mateur 3D modelers/animators - biggest problem with VRML was that is was open. IOW, anyone can take model and do anything with it. Once you release model, it is - like HTML - open to anyone. And that is not what animators/modelers wish to do.
What we have to factor here in, is the price of 3D modeling/animating software. Thou number of free titles is rising, it is still quite minor, compared to commercial products like Kinetix 3D Max, Alias Maya, Side Effects Houdini or Cinema4D and LightWave.
And creation of 3D models and their animation is much more tiresome process than anything, right now involved in Web content represenation.
Flash got an edge here. Most blaimed their proprietary blob file format, but for most independent artists it is only way to earn money.
When you produce an e.g. JPEG picture, you cannot reverse engineer it and reuse its primitives to create new pictures. With text-based 3D models - it is piece of cake.
As much as I want to see more of 3D Web, that much I do not believe artists will join up.
IMHO.
Now if your only motive is profit, the profits in this industry will come slowly just as they did for movies in their infancy, but faster in terms of real time because of the network effect.
You really should spend some time in these online communities. There is stunning artwork there contributed from all over the world. Like open source software, the value of contributing is realized by ganging together media from multiple sources and multiple types to create a group experience with presence as the dominating quality. Simply: it is a lot more fun to listen to tunes with a group of friends than to describe them over text-only chat. The web is MULTI-MEDIA and the VRMLers get that in a big way.
And as for open models, X3D has three formats of which one is a binary. So the W3DC has heard that complaint and responded with support for artists and content owners who wish to close their models to inspection. That will have a side effect of decreasing their distribution, but that is their business model to consider.
However, there are solutions. For example Demicron's web3D tool WireFusion imports and encrypts VRML files before publishing them to the web as Java applets.
The benefits from the open format are therefore still preserved, i.e. you can use standard 3D animations/modeling tools like 3ds max, Maya, LightWave etc to export to VRML, and the 3D artwork is then also protected from reverse engineering.
1. It is practical. Online communities regularly meet, design and communicate in 3D. Flat images have not been 3D for years.
2. It is happening now. The Blaxxun servers with their shared events extensions make it quite easy to build 3D worlds for collaborative work.
3. The key is presence. The use of 3D avatars provides onset cues for behaviors. The natural language of humans is not text, but physical gestures. This is the area that needs rapid improvement because while the avatars are capable of sophisticated gestures, the authoring tools lack high level script macros for creating these.
No one will argue that the Gibsonian worlds envisioned by the creators of VRML are difficult to create and sustain, yet under the radar of the pundits, this goal sustains the efforts and that is, like the vision of open communications that resulted in the WWW despite the more credentialed naysayers (of which I was one), what is enabling the emergence of the online real time communities today instead of ten years from now.
They have mastered simpler technologies, aggregated them, and they are doing now what you say cannot be done or is not practical.
Before you argue, spend time in the online communities. Otherwise, you really don't understand and you are possibly misinformed.
1. It is practical. Online communities regularly meet, design and communicate in 3D. Flat images have not been 3D for years.
2. It is happening now. The Blaxxun servers with their shared events extensions make it quite easy to build 3D worlds for collaborative work.
3. The key is presence. The use of 3D avatars provides onset cues for behaviors. The natural language of humans is not text, but physical gestures. This is the area that needs rapid improvement because while the avatars are capable of sophisticated gestures, the authoring tools lack high level script macros for creating these.
No one will argue that the Gibsonian worlds envisioned by the creators of VRML are difficult to create and sustain, yet under the radar of the pundits, this goal sustains the efforts and that is, like the vision of open communications that resulted in the WWW despite the more credentialed naysayers (of which I was one), what is enabling the emergence of the online real time communities today instead of ten years from now.
They have mastered simpler technologies, aggregated them, and they are doing now what you say cannot be done or is not practical.
Before you argue, spend time in the online communities. Otherwise, you really don't understand and you are possibly misinformed.
3d communities like ActiveWorlds, Cybertown, Oddessey, and iCity have had cycles of growth and retrenchment over the last 5 years. These environments allow people to create avatars, objects, and landscapes which they can (and do) share with others. The "game-like" aspects of these communities are non-existance. In this aspect they are more like graphical MUSHes (Multi User Scenario Handlers) than MUDs (Multi User Dungeons) of the early internet.
But these environments permit regular people to create and interact with the environment. It is, of course, escapist to a certain extent, but it has not yet begun to explore the range of possibilities for interaction and display, let alone creation of social communities.
One of the WORST implementations I've seen is an online classroom where students walk their avatars into a classroom, sit at 3d desks, and listen to an instructor avatar lecture -- complete with slide show projected on the wall of the 3d room.
One of the BEST implementations is the creation of an online theatre company at Jewel of Indra where the inmates are in the process of producing a play complete with custom made avatars, scenery, and props.
One of the key stumbling blocks to adoption has been -- and continutes to be -- the lack of free, cross-platform "readers." There is nothing wrong with proprietary clients so long as they are available cross-platform. Blaxxun's community platform continues to be plagued by this implementation and we can hope that Tony's development team will learn from that persistent error going forward.
3d communities like ActiveWorlds, Cybertown, Oddessey, and iCity have had cycles of growth and retrenchment over the last 5 years. These environments allow people to create avatars, objects, and landscapes which they can (and do) share with others. The "game-like" aspects of these communities are non-existance. In this aspect they are more like graphical MUSHes (Multi User Scenario Handlers) than MUDs (Multi User Dungeons) of the early internet.
But these environments permit regular people to create and interact with the environment. It is, of course, escapist to a certain extent, but it has not yet begun to explore the range of possibilities for interaction and display, let alone creation of social communities.
One of the WORST implementations I've seen is an online classroom where students walk their avatars into a classroom, sit at 3d desks, and listen to an instructor avatar lecture -- complete with slide show projected on the wall of the 3d room.
One of the BEST implementations is the creation of an online theatre company at Jewel of Indra where the inmates are in the process of producing a play complete with custom made avatars, scenery, and props.
One of the key stumbling blocks to adoption has been -- and continutes to be -- the lack of free, cross-platform "readers." There is nothing wrong with proprietary clients so long as they are available cross-platform. Blaxxun's community platform continues to be plagued by this implementation and we can hope that Tony's development team will learn from that persistent error going forward.
When it comes to online 3D, everyone seems to harp on the fact that VRML has been around for 10 years, and has not yet had the anticipated growth that was first predicted. Well, how short our memories are... The Internet it self first began in 1969 when the first packet switching network went online. Still, the Internet didn't really take off until around 1994. Such is the case with several innovative technologies. Sometimes, the technology is so advanced and ahead of time that it must wait for the world to catch up with it. I believe this is the case with online 3D.
Most often it is a matter of marketing. The Internet, was first marketed as a tool for scientists and governments. But, it was not until the masses began joining in that it took off like a rocket. Now, we must ask ourselves what brought the masses to the Internet? Some say it was email... but email was in existence in 1965 when it was used as a way for multiple users of a time-sharing mainframe computers to communicate with each other. So, nope that couldn't have been the only attraction. Hmmm what else could it have been? Well, around 1993 users learned that they could share anything via the net... including "naughty pictures and movie clips". And while the technology was slow and clunky back then... 28.8 modems with 16 megs of ram (if you were lucky) and so on... the "naughty" content was a product that people were willing to wait for.
Once the people i.e. customers were in place, the sellers of wares came in mass. The big conglomerates all ran out in front and began taking over and making and the Internet "rules". CNet itself would not be on the net if the people were not here... but it was content that first attracted the masses.
Say what you will about adult content... but adult "naughty" content in the USA alone is a muli-billion dollar industry. We can all pretend that it is only a few select "perverts" who are buying this content... but, we would be fooling ourselves. The "select few" simply do not have this kind of capital.
Jewel of Indra is the first adults only 3D chat community of its kind on the Internet. It combines both VRML and X3D into TRUE 3D (instead of "low quality, repetitive backgrounds and floating flat images"). Jewel of Indra has been created by professional artists, designers, and technicians (who are well known and respected in their fields from the UK, France, Italy, Australia, Denmark, Germany, Canada, and the USA), and along with breathtaking 3D worlds, it makes use of other technologies such as beautiful avatars, text to speak, Voice over IP, online live radio and safe file sharing of picture and movie formats.
As content providers we at Jewel of Indra believe that this is the best and most effective way to continue the user growth of this brilliant 3D technology.
The best way to disgust people with 3d is to speak techie talks without being able to make a connection with "familiar world", daily life. Forget about blackmagic, 3D is and must remind a tool to communicate, to share.
Jewel of Indra presents 3D in that way, providing contents not only technology, and eventually providing life :)
3D is the future of the web, nobody can tell the contrary, 3D will expand on and on, just let's try to help it grow up. Enjoy !
When it comes to online 3D, everyone seems to harp on the fact that VRML has been around for 10 years, and has not yet had the anticipated growth that was first predicted. Well, how short our memories are... The Internet it self first began in 1969 when the first packet switching network went online. Still, the Internet didn't really take off until around 1994. Such is the case with several innovative technologies. Sometimes, the technology is so advanced and ahead of time that it must wait for the world to catch up with it. I believe this is the case with online 3D.
Most often it is a matter of marketing. The Internet, was first marketed as a tool for scientists and governments. But, it was not until the masses began joining in that it took off like a rocket. Now, we must ask ourselves what brought the masses to the Internet? Some say it was email... but email was in existence in 1965 when it was used as a way for multiple users of a time-sharing mainframe computers to communicate with each other. So, nope that couldn't have been the only attraction. Hmmm what else could it have been? Well, around 1993 users learned that they could share anything via the net... including "naughty pictures and movie clips". And while the technology was slow and clunky back then... 28.8 modems with 16 megs of ram (if you were lucky) and so on... the "naughty" content was a product that people were willing to wait for.
Once the people i.e. customers were in place, the sellers of wares came in mass. The big conglomerates all ran out in front and began taking over and making and the Internet "rules". CNet itself would not be on the net if the people were not here... but it was content that first attracted the masses.
Say what you will about adult content... but adult "naughty" content in the USA alone is a muli-billion dollar industry. We can all pretend that it is only a few select "perverts" who are buying this content... but, we would be fooling ourselves. The "select few" simply do not have this kind of capital.
Jewel of Indra is the first adults only 3D chat community of its kind on the Internet. It combines both VRML and X3D into TRUE 3D (instead of "low quality, repetitive backgrounds and floating flat images"). Jewel of Indra has been created by professional artists, designers, and technicians (who are well known and respected in their fields from the UK, France, Italy, Australia, Denmark, Germany, Canada, and the USA), and along with breathtaking 3D worlds, it makes use of other technologies such as beautiful avatars, text to speak, Voice over IP, online live radio and safe file sharing of picture and movie formats.
As content providers we at Jewel of Indra believe that this is the best and most effective way to continue the user growth of this brilliant 3D technology.
The best way to disgust people with 3d is to speak techie talks without being able to make a connection with "familiar world", daily life. Forget about blackmagic, 3D is and must remind a tool to communicate, to share.
Jewel of Indra presents 3D in that way, providing contents not only technology, and eventually providing life :)
3D is the future of the web, nobody can tell the contrary, 3D will expand on and on, just let's try to help it grow up. Enjoy !
Modern 3D formats for the web and their developer tools should have some key features already automated and built-in as: rich, light-weight and extensible set of primitives; animation, IK/FK; variable compression depending on content and bandwidth allowance; smart streaming (background buffering); tide integration of video & audio into the media file + auto-synchronizing (e.g. lips); security; small footprint, auto-updatable plug-in, etc.
Despite of being proprietary and still immature as a real 3D platform, the only candidate for a viable 3D format for the web continues to be Macromedia (Adobe) Flash.
X3D has to be implemented over a closer to the metal system like DirectX. At the same time, it is subject to the standards process. That slows down some areas of innovation such as 'tight audio' although work on shaders is ongoing. This may seem slow but it is reliable. Contrast that to the folding of Adobe Atmosphere and you see the problem of relying on closed proprietaty systems when creating expensive and long lived content.
Today, if you look at the high end editors, the majority of them export VRML97 or VRML 1.0 and there are many high end systems that use VRML for moving data among systems. With X3Ds profiling capability, this gets even better. The addition of the binary encoding, widely disparaged in some XML circles, is a must have for 3D graphics. Comparing 3D systems to text systems is comparing 'whales to life insurance'. That both have cleartext formats is true, but human readability is not a constant across formats.
No, Flash is not the only solution, and for very many applications, not the best. I sincerely doubt you will be building some of the systems I am seeing proposed for X3D with Flash. It won't work and Adobe is well aware of that.
There are alternatives to X3D, but that is a subject of another article from Festa. So far, those alternatives are not panning out as the standards-basis and the predictable preferred processes of the standards consortia are.
We had a blast at this below, and often my friends and I hang out at my first world creation: a tiki motif volcanic island.
http://cybertown.ddgalleries.com/2005/t5trekcon.htm
Modern 3D formats for the web and their developer tools should have some key features already automated and built-in as: rich, light-weight and extensible set of primitives; animation, IK/FK; variable compression depending on content and bandwidth allowance; smart streaming (background buffering); tide integration of video & audio into the media file + auto-synchronizing (e.g. lips); security; small footprint, auto-updatable plug-in, etc.
Despite of being proprietary and still immature as a real 3D platform, the only candidate for a viable 3D format for the web continues to be Macromedia (Adobe) Flash.
X3D has to be implemented over a closer to the metal system like DirectX. At the same time, it is subject to the standards process. That slows down some areas of innovation such as 'tight audio' although work on shaders is ongoing. This may seem slow but it is reliable. Contrast that to the folding of Adobe Atmosphere and you see the problem of relying on closed proprietaty systems when creating expensive and long lived content.
Today, if you look at the high end editors, the majority of them export VRML97 or VRML 1.0 and there are many high end systems that use VRML for moving data among systems. With X3Ds profiling capability, this gets even better. The addition of the binary encoding, widely disparaged in some XML circles, is a must have for 3D graphics. Comparing 3D systems to text systems is comparing 'whales to life insurance'. That both have cleartext formats is true, but human readability is not a constant across formats.
No, Flash is not the only solution, and for very many applications, not the best. I sincerely doubt you will be building some of the systems I am seeing proposed for X3D with Flash. It won't work and Adobe is well aware of that.
There are alternatives to X3D, but that is a subject of another article from Festa. So far, those alternatives are not panning out as the standards-basis and the predictable preferred processes of the standards consortia are.
We had a blast at this below, and often my friends and I hang out at my first world creation: a tiki motif volcanic island.
http://cybertown.ddgalleries.com/2005/t5trekcon.htm
If it were not for VRML Most of my art work would never have been seen let alone had a chance to evolve without the feedback of those viewing the artwork itself..
Now to some my viewpoint may be skewed due to the fact that I am one of the many artists working with the Jewel Of Indra site (http://www.jewelofindra.com) Building worlds, Items for people to play with. But as an artist I can say that I would never have achieved this honor or level of artistic skill without the ability to show off my work as I have with this medium. And im not alone in this as an artist. Many NEW artists are popping up building things IN vrml and seek to hone their skill base in this medium. Now with the advent of X3d and the innovations of new technologies on the horizon I can only forsee that the common person will finally have the tools to actually achieve what most today cant do today.. And thats to play with their artistic side and show off their works and evolve as artists..
Now with the Jewels of Indra site im also the DJ for the Webcast aka "Rat Radio" and since I've started this project the feedback has been awsome. Folks listening to live music as well as being in a 3d chat enviroment commenting on comedy and music that im playing and providing.. With the advent of Voice IP inside the community folks can actually TALK about what they are hearing and what they are doing in the eviroment itself.. Is 3d dead? No. It never had a chance to begin with. Even the other sites that use Blaxxun's technology have only had a very tiny slice of the internets base usership investigating it.. As Badgirl says.. Its all bout marketing..
Thank you for your time.
It is about world building in every sense of that.
Perhaps it is hard for the naysayers to understand, that for the authors, it is not about technology but content. I criticize no artist's choice of tools. I ask that content be respected. It must not break among versions, it must perform on all players, and it must interact smoothly with the rest of the portal. It is a big job. Those that want that want something hard to do but altogether necessary:
o long lifecycle hyperdistribution without reauthoring and excessive framework downloads.
o worlds that interact seamlessly
Only real standards get us that.
I guess what they don't get is the VRML and now X3D artists want a square deal, and so far, the W3DC companies and ISO are making that happen. So we go with the guys we know and give us that square deal. Open system editable down to UTF. Anyone can afford to do it.
If that puts it in the long tail of technologies, that's fine. It has become the most open, portable and reliable web3D language around. That's what artists want.
If it were not for VRML Most of my art work would never have been seen let alone had a chance to evolve without the feedback of those viewing the artwork itself..
Now to some my viewpoint may be skewed due to the fact that I am one of the many artists working with the Jewel Of Indra site (http://www.jewelofindra.com) Building worlds, Items for people to play with. But as an artist I can say that I would never have achieved this honor or level of artistic skill without the ability to show off my work as I have with this medium. And im not alone in this as an artist. Many NEW artists are popping up building things IN vrml and seek to hone their skill base in this medium. Now with the advent of X3d and the innovations of new technologies on the horizon I can only forsee that the common person will finally have the tools to actually achieve what most today cant do today.. And thats to play with their artistic side and show off their works and evolve as artists..
Now with the Jewels of Indra site im also the DJ for the Webcast aka "Rat Radio" and since I've started this project the feedback has been awsome. Folks listening to live music as well as being in a 3d chat enviroment commenting on comedy and music that im playing and providing.. With the advent of Voice IP inside the community folks can actually TALK about what they are hearing and what they are doing in the eviroment itself.. Is 3d dead? No. It never had a chance to begin with. Even the other sites that use Blaxxun's technology have only had a very tiny slice of the internets base usership investigating it.. As Badgirl says.. Its all bout marketing..
Thank you for your time.
It is about world building in every sense of that.
Perhaps it is hard for the naysayers to understand, that for the authors, it is not about technology but content. I criticize no artist's choice of tools. I ask that content be respected. It must not break among versions, it must perform on all players, and it must interact smoothly with the rest of the portal. It is a big job. Those that want that want something hard to do but altogether necessary:
o long lifecycle hyperdistribution without reauthoring and excessive framework downloads.
o worlds that interact seamlessly
Only real standards get us that.
I guess what they don't get is the VRML and now X3D artists want a square deal, and so far, the W3DC companies and ISO are making that happen. So we go with the guys we know and give us that square deal. Open system editable down to UTF. Anyone can afford to do it.
If that puts it in the long tail of technologies, that's fine. It has become the most open, portable and reliable web3D language around. That's what artists want.
The key to efficient information access is abstraction. Artificial dimensionality adds unwanted noise, and provides end-users no real benefits. Web users are all about simplicity. Look at the top sites on the web, all of them have a simple, clean interface, and well categorized information.
I would argue that the human mind is capable of understanding higher dimensions, but we think, act, and store data linearly.
But I also think a lot of people are missing one fundamental point about 3d. It's not about putting the "3-D V-8 Engine" in a web page. If you look at the applications that the various 3d plugin makers tout, they involve embedding complicated pictures of their products into web pages. While this MAY have some minor value, the lack of standardized implementation across plugins (this one requires Cosmo, that one requires Contact, the other one requires something else) makes it largely uselss for this purpose because many of the plugins are incompatible -- that is, I can't install them ALL on my machine and have them work. And if I'm on a Mac, I can't install any of the mainstream ones.
You're right, Brian, in asserting that this kind of application of 3-D is a non-starter.
But information presentation is not where the value of 3d resides. There.com, Second Life, and others are very firmly rooted in the creation of community. They use 3d technology to enhance social presence. Yes, it's "chat" but so is your basic cocktail party. What makes a 3d environment different from an IRC chatroom is the richness of the environment and its ability to transmit the social cues that represent presence. Add to that the various levels of interaction brought about within the creative community -- shared object creation, political interaction within self-organizing social environments, and even the drama-factor introduced by griefers and SNERTs -- and you have an implementation that goes way behind the simple -- and largely useless -- information transfer represented by "3-D V-8 Engine" embedded in a web page.
Does the technology have a long way to go? Of course. But dismissing it because "Artificial dimensionality adds unwanted noise, and provides end-users no real benefits" overlooks the very real idea that 3-d is not about information presentation.
There is no compelling evidence for the human brain processing linearly. A von neumann architecture does that, but no one can prove the human brain does. Text is linear and text is one of the kinds of data that 3D doesn't help although one could say the same about shaded fonts. For a data type representation to benefit from 3D, it should have a 3D component. If what you were saying were universally true, we wouldn't have a forty year history of 3D CAD/CAM. The costs of creating and maintaining 3D physical systems in 2D representations is far greater than building and presenting 3D models.
At the other side of the universe is the back of your head.
"I would argue that the human mind is capable of understanding higher dimensions, but we think, act, and store data linearly. "
Can you back this statement up with *any* facts?! It flies in the face of all human experience. In fact, the majority of time people think, act and store data *non-linearly*.
But perhaps it's true in your case.
Tony
- Inherently flawed concept
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by
May 17, 2005 6:40 PM PDT
- Is this guy trying to unload stock? What's the deal? 3D on the web didn't die from incomplete infrastructure, it died because it is an inherently innefficient interface to the type of data available that people access. That's right, I said it.
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Reply to this comment
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- Interesting Perspective
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by
May 18, 2005 4:34 AM PDT
- Brian, I'm not sure I buy into the linearity notion. There is just too much brain research that seems to indicate that many humans process in a non-linear, iterative cycle mode. Just the research into novice vs expert problem solving would refute this basic idea.
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- At the Other Side of the Universe
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by
May 18, 2005 6:38 AM PDT
- Have bad 3D applications been built? You bet. Most of the stuff created to illustrate static data is awful. On the other hand, show me a vector space index model that displays dynamically in less than 3 dimensions with full zoom, rotate and capture. Show me a piece part that has to be positioned exactly correctly in an assembly to function that is illustrated best in two dimensions.
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- Speak for Yourself!
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by tparisi
May 23, 2005 11:33 AM PDT
- Brian,
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (70 Comments)The key to efficient information access is abstraction. Artificial dimensionality adds unwanted noise, and provides end-users no real benefits. Web users are all about simplicity. Look at the top sites on the web, all of them have a simple, clean interface, and well categorized information.
I would argue that the human mind is capable of understanding higher dimensions, but we think, act, and store data linearly.
But I also think a lot of people are missing one fundamental point about 3d. It's not about putting the "3-D V-8 Engine" in a web page. If you look at the applications that the various 3d plugin makers tout, they involve embedding complicated pictures of their products into web pages. While this MAY have some minor value, the lack of standardized implementation across plugins (this one requires Cosmo, that one requires Contact, the other one requires something else) makes it largely uselss for this purpose because many of the plugins are incompatible -- that is, I can't install them ALL on my machine and have them work. And if I'm on a Mac, I can't install any of the mainstream ones.
You're right, Brian, in asserting that this kind of application of 3-D is a non-starter.
But information presentation is not where the value of 3d resides. There.com, Second Life, and others are very firmly rooted in the creation of community. They use 3d technology to enhance social presence. Yes, it's "chat" but so is your basic cocktail party. What makes a 3d environment different from an IRC chatroom is the richness of the environment and its ability to transmit the social cues that represent presence. Add to that the various levels of interaction brought about within the creative community -- shared object creation, political interaction within self-organizing social environments, and even the drama-factor introduced by griefers and SNERTs -- and you have an implementation that goes way behind the simple -- and largely useless -- information transfer represented by "3-D V-8 Engine" embedded in a web page.
Does the technology have a long way to go? Of course. But dismissing it because "Artificial dimensionality adds unwanted noise, and provides end-users no real benefits" overlooks the very real idea that 3-d is not about information presentation.
There is no compelling evidence for the human brain processing linearly. A von neumann architecture does that, but no one can prove the human brain does. Text is linear and text is one of the kinds of data that 3D doesn't help although one could say the same about shaded fonts. For a data type representation to benefit from 3D, it should have a 3D component. If what you were saying were universally true, we wouldn't have a forty year history of 3D CAD/CAM. The costs of creating and maintaining 3D physical systems in 2D representations is far greater than building and presenting 3D models.
At the other side of the universe is the back of your head.
"I would argue that the human mind is capable of understanding higher dimensions, but we think, act, and store data linearly. "
Can you back this statement up with *any* facts?! It flies in the face of all human experience. In fact, the majority of time people think, act and store data *non-linearly*.
But perhaps it's true in your case.
Tony