• From: "Len Bullard" <cbullard@h...>
• To: "'David Lyon'" <david.lyon@p...>
• Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2007 01:12:05 -0600

Ha.   Good reply.

With IBM's entry into the virtual boardroom experiments, MS may watch for
awhile and then field something in the enterprise market.  It really isn't
that hard.   The Cybertown and Jewel of Indra sites have been conducting
meetings like for quite a while now.  It is very effective (simulation onset
cues work).   As for immersive desktops (choosing my terms carefully there),
that doesn't seem to be very practical but people experiment and that can
provide advances.  History seems contra to that.  When the web browsers came
out, they were a 30 year leap backwards to the early days of hypertext.
They quickly evolved but the initial fielding was quite crude.   3D on the
other hand is fairly evolved at this point and extremely cheap.  One wonders
if the non-immersive 2.5D desktop will be where 3D takes a leap backward to
increase scope and reach as HTML did.   Neat as that is, it doesn't interest
me much because it isn't a market where I can have much impact.  I leave
that to the Microsofts and Apples who have the distribution and the
finances.

Closer to the art and enterprise markets, what is generally lacking is
enough authors with good graphics chops plus an innate understanding of the
advantages and the limitations of real-time 3D environments.   That is why I
caution people not to consider this simply 'game technology'.   Games are a
specific animal and while there are things to learn from games, games are
not really how people interact except in a broad abstract sense.   The
advances to be made in real-time 3D environments have to improve on what
Noah mentions:  the success of the web is based on enhanced communication.
We made some pretty good inroads into that turf with HumanML, but that was
ahead of its time.   Still, something like it with XSLT and excellent 3D
libraries is easily productized via X3D.  I'm not following up because what
I want to do with 3D is a different genre.

As I said, this is an emergent market.  I expect to see a lot of progress in
2007, so where the original thread asked about predictions, this is one
domain to watch.  X3D is a done deal.  The question is now one of what kind
of conditions people will accept for other standards such as IBM is talking
about.  If they mean Collada, que bueno.  We can work with that.  If they
mean the SL browser as a standard simply by virtue of being open source,
that isn't a good story because there is nothing interesting about SL except
what is on the server and they haven't open sourced that.

It will be fascinating to see if this and the rest of the web community
really do mean what they say about open standards, or if it only applies
when their own special interests are at stake.  I suspect the latter is the
sad but broad truth. If so, there are dark days ahead for the web because
the HTML browser is reaching the end of its useful evolution and whatever
replaces it may not be as widely distributed for free.  Loss-leaders are not
what one wants to balance a spreadsheet.

len


From: David Lyon [mailto:david.lyon@p...] 

Len Bullard wrote:
> Much success then.  3D is fun stuff and it is an emergent market.  The
hype
> machines are cranking it out, but the facts are more prosaic.  There
> ....
I agree.

> So right now, the big money question is, what is Microsoft going to offer
> for distributed real-time 3D markets?
>   
hah - finally something that I know the answer to.... :-)

a new version of Halo.... :-)

• References:
  • Re: Too much power? was RE: 2007 Predictions
    • From: David Lyon <david.lyon@p...>