Re: VR "for the rest of us" (was Re: [fonc] Re: SecondPlace, QwaqLife or TeleSim? Open ended, comments welcome)

[BGB]

On 8/9/2011 5:37 PM, David Barbour wrote:
On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 3:40 PM, BGB > wrote:


ideally, we should probably be working with higher-level
"entities" instead of lower-level geometry.


I agree with rendering high-level concepts rather than low-level 
geometries.


But I favor a more logical model - i.e. rendering a set of logical 
"predicates".


Either way, we have a set of records to render. But predicates can be 
computed dynamically, a result of composing queries and computing 
views. Predicates lack identity or state. This greatly affects how we 
manage the opposite direction: modeling user input.




note that at a conceptual level (in the map format), entities are still 
declarative. whether or not they have "identity" is also uncertain.


at runtime, entities have state and identity, but need not necessarily 
map 1:1 with those present in the map definition. in my engine, both 
types of entity actually have different in-memory types and representations.





possibly, ultimately all levels should be expressed, but what
should be fundamental, what should be expressed in each map, ...
is potentially a subject of debate.


I wouldn't want to build in any 'fundamental' features, except maybe 
strings and numbers. But we should expect a lot of de-facto standards 
- including forms, rooms, avatars, clothing, doors, buildings, 
landscapes, materials, some SVG equivalent, common image formats, 
video, et cetera - as a natural consequence of the development model. 
It would pay to make sure we have a lot of /good/ standards from the 
very start, along with a flexible model (e.g. supporting declarative 
mixins might be nice).


fair enough, albeit how I imagined it was potentially a little lower-level.

possibly much of the "baseline" would be defined in terms of various 
core entity types, matters of basic scene rendering and representation, ...





I am not familiar with the Teatime protocol. apparently Wikipedia
doesn't really know about it either...


Teatime was developed for Croquet. You can look it up on the VPRI 
site. But the short summary is:

* Each computer has a redundant copy of the world.
* New (or recovering) participant gets snapshot + set of recent messages.
* User input is sent to every computer by distributed transaction.
* Messages generated within the world run normally.
* Logical discrete clock with millisecond precision; you can schedule 
incremental events for future.
* Smooth interpolation of more cyclic animations without discrete 
events is achieved indirectly: renderer provides render-time.




sounds vaguely similar to something I had done long ago.


This works well for medium-sized worlds and medium numbers of 
participants. It scales further by connecting a lot of smaller worlds 
together (via 'portals'), which will have separate transaction queues.


It is feasible to make it scale further yet using specialized 
protocols for handling 'crowds', e.g. if we were to model 10k 
participants viewing a stage, we could model most of the crowd as 
relatively static NPCs, and use some content-distribution techniques. 
But at this point we're already fighting the technology, and there are 
still security concerns, disruption tolerance concerns, and so on.




fair enough.

I would likely assume using a client/server model and file-based worlds.
granted, an issue is that "level of abstraction" could become an issue.


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Re: VR "for the rest of us" (was Re: [fonc] Re: SecondPlace, QwaqLife or TeleSim? Open ended, comments welcome)

[Casey Ransberger]

This is actually exactly what I mean when I'm talking about turtles. I want
to be able to express a cartoon fairytale castle that uses forced
perspective to look bigger than it is in as little code as possible. Terrain
seems best arrived upon by way of parameters to fractals, but I haven't
figured out a way to this with man made structures quite yet (I'm sure
there's a way to do it, and I don't count the Seattle Art Museum, which just
looks like an amorphous blob.)

On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 1:44 PM, David Barbour  wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 11:09 AM, Steve Wart  wrote:
>
>> 3D design is extraordinarily expensive to develop properly
>>
>
> That is not an essential property of 3D design. We could have an ontology /
> 'markup language' just for building and animating avatars, similar to
> dressing up a doll, if we want to make one. And a modular ontology for
> buildings (including concepts such as crenelations and gargoyles). And
> another for environments. Etc. Given a suitably modular meta-language, we
> can even have dedicated languages for describing zombies.
>
> I see the impoverished languages of today as an opportunity. For
> accessibility reasons - e.g. desktop vs. iPhone access to a world - it is
> preferable that we develop in these high-level ontologies anyway.
>
> My own vague interest has steered me towards modular, reusable,
> multi-player interactive fiction - with a lot of inspiration from the Inform
> 7 language [1]. I have a bunch of half-formed designs from my earlier work
> on the subject, and my efforts in language design.
>
>
>
>>
>> And also note the lack of porn (although WoW has a high level of
>> titillation it also has been very successful in attracting women).
>>
>
> Lol. Pornography is a human trait with an ancient and ignoble history, even
> if male dominated. I once watched a rather funny (but somewhat perverted)
> video called 'Ballad of the Sex Junkie' developed in WoW. It's NSFW, but is
> tame enough for Youtube.
>
> Anyhow, I'm speaking at the federated world level. It would be silly to
> deny that those red-lights districts will exist. This rule is the same for
> all computer security: you cannot protect against a threat by ignoring it! I
> prefer soft security, wherever possible, and this means recognizing and
> accommodating threats in order to gain some control of them. By recognizing
> red lights districts, and the inevitable fallout (such as naked avatars
> waltzing through worlds), we can isolate them (e.g. by ensuring that the
> avatar has suitable clothing upon entering a 'no shirt no shoes no service'
> world).
>
>
>>
>>  The original concept of VRML as a standard in the hypertext model still
>> makes sense to me, but the gaming platforms seem to prefer the silo model.
>>
>
> VRML is an awfully low-level ontology for building 3D models! I would
> suggest that this is part of *why* we favor the silo model.
>
> Think about what it would take to build designs that let us achieve
> something similar to CSS for 3D and avatar animation. Separation of artistic
> rendition (presentation) from content is important. Anything short of that
> is ultimately unsuitable for world mashups! Working with cones and boxes is
> not the right level for this.
>
> I think we really do need an ontology for architecture, avatars,
> environments, etc. as a common foundation in the world.
>
>
>>
>> The Teatime model seems promising
>>
>
> Teatime protocol is unscalable and insecure. It is suitable for LANs where
> you trust the participants, but would die a slow, choking death if faced
> with 'flash crowds', 'script kiddies', and their like. No variation on
> Teatime will ever work at scale. Transactions scale poorly and have plenty
> of flaws [2]
>
> But there are some lessons you can take away from Teatime. Use of temporal
> semantics is a suitable basis for consistency even without transactions - we
> can tame this with a more commutative/idempotent model and *eventual
> consistency*. Explicit delay is an effective approach to achieve near
> wall-clock determinism in the face of distribution latencies (e.g. a signal
> propagates to multiple clients, but triggers at some specific time in the
> future).
>
> I have developed a very simple and effective programming model - Reactive
> Demand Programming - for solving these and related concerns [3]. One might
> think of RDP as a fusion of eventless FRP and OOP - i.e. OOP where messages
> and responses are replaced by continuous control signals, and state is
> primarily replaced by continuous integrals. RDP is, by no small margin, the
> most promising model for developing modular, federated, distributed command
> and control systems, augmented reality systems, and 3D worlds.
>
>
>> Croquet always felt awkward to me, partly it was performance, but it was
>> also because some of the primitives were too primitive.
>>
>
> I agree that this is a problem. VRML is a problem for the same reason -
> i.e. it is not clear what the physics should be, nor

Re: VR "for the rest of us" (was Re: [fonc] Re: SecondPlace, QwaqLife or TeleSim? Open ended, comments welcome)

[Casey Ransberger]

On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 4:17 PM, David Barbour  wrote:

The best way to have a conversation with someone is in person,
>>
>
> I think it depends on the nature of the conversation. There are significant
> advantages to written conversations, such as: the ability to spend more time
> thinking about our responses, the ability to operate at different times, and
> having a written record you can search and reference.
>

Well put. This is an excellent point, and I stand *quite* corrected. I wrote
this while slightly irked that a message I sent via a popular textual
communication medium was "too long."

I still prefer a mailing list for most of the stuff I like to talk about:
case in point.

-- 
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Re: VR "for the rest of us" (was Re: [fonc] Re: SecondPlace, QwaqLife or TeleSim? Open ended, comments welcome)

[David Barbour]

On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 3:40 PM, BGB  wrote:

> ideally, we should probably be working with higher-level "entities" instead
> of lower-level geometry.
>

I agree with rendering high-level concepts rather than low-level geometries.

But I favor a more logical model - i.e. rendering a set of logical
"predicates".

Either way, we have a set of records to render. But predicates can be
computed dynamically, a result of composing queries and computing views.
Predicates lack identity or state. This greatly affects how we manage the
opposite direction: modeling user input.


> possibly, ultimately all levels should be expressed, but what should be
> fundamental, what should be expressed in each map, ... is potentially a
> subject of debate.
>

I wouldn't want to build in any 'fundamental' features, except maybe strings
and numbers. But we should expect a lot of de-facto standards - including
forms, rooms, avatars, clothing, doors, buildings, landscapes, materials,
some SVG equivalent, common image formats, video, et cetera - as a natural
consequence of the development model. It would pay to make sure we have a
lot of *good* standards from the very start, along with a flexible model
(e.g. supporting declarative mixins might be nice).


>
> I am not familiar with the Teatime protocol. apparently Wikipedia doesn't
> really know about it either...
>

Teatime was developed for Croquet. You can look it up on the VPRI site. But
the short summary is:
* Each computer has a redundant copy of the world.
* New (or recovering) participant gets snapshot + set of recent messages.
* User input is sent to every computer by distributed transaction.
* Messages generated within the world run normally.
* Logical discrete clock with millisecond precision; you can schedule
incremental events for future.
* Smooth interpolation of more cyclic animations without discrete events is
achieved indirectly: renderer provides render-time.

This works well for medium-sized worlds and medium numbers of participants.
It scales further by connecting a lot of smaller worlds together (via
'portals'), which will have separate transaction queues.

It is feasible to make it scale further yet using specialized protocols for
handling 'crowds', e.g. if we were to model 10k participants viewing a
stage, we could model most of the crowd as relatively static NPCs, and use
some content-distribution techniques. But at this point we're already
fighting the technology, and there are still security concerns, disruption
tolerance concerns, and so on.

Regards,

Dave
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Re: VR "for the rest of us" (was Re: [fonc] Re: SecondPlace, QwaqLife or TeleSim? Open ended, comments welcome)

[David Barbour]

On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 4:50 AM, Casey Ransberger
wrote:

> I think being able to point at things and see by the eyes and the angle of
> the head what people are looking at (shared attention) are probably pretty
> powerful in general.
>

I think you need to balance that against ability to actually see what the
person is looking at. To see both an avatar and the target would imply an
oblique angle on both, which could be a phenomenal waste of screen
real-estate.

In an avatar-less model, you might share attention by other means: tags,
flags, subscriptions, RSS, other annotations. In bulletin boards, and
mailing lists, we get shared attention by simply pushing to the top that
which people have recently commented on.

I think the main benefit of avatars would be support for facial language -
recognizing irritation, sarcasm, surprise, et cetera. These benefits are not
realized with today's technology, except in games such as Heavy Rain that
make significant use of them.


>
> The best way to have a conversation with someone is in person,
>

I think it depends on the nature of the conversation. There are significant
advantages to written conversations, such as: the ability to spend more time
thinking about our responses, the ability to operate at different times, and
having a written record you can search and reference.

A slightly more formal language can be very valuable; I think an interesting
experiment would be an argument forum where arguments are mapped out with
premises and reduction rules, and the computer system helps us identify
plausibility, internal consistency, and locate (and link) relevant arguments
and counter-arguments for the premises. It could change how we build
arguments.

Speaking in person has advantages of body language (which is  surprisingly
expressive to most people) that helps the speaker recognize where
clarification is necessary. But a state-of-the-art 3D avatar won't help much
there. We should train a camera on the user and push facial twitches and
gestures across the network.


> Also, a hand drawn character looks less... creepy than the current state of
> the art puppet, even if the puppet is more realistic now. Uncanny valley.
>

I wonder if cel shading can help a lot with bridging the uncanny valley. It
gets you the look and feel of hand-drawn art while allowing state-of-the-art
techniques in developing the 3D models.


>
> I like fractals. But it ends up being a mix in all likelihood. Voxels are
> great for doing clouds at a distance, etc. But up close clouds made out of
> little cubes aren't very convincing. Minecraft overcomes this by making low
> resolution textures and huge voxels a kind of fashion statement.
>

I suspect you could do some sort of 'anti-aliasing' for voxels, perhaps
using GPU shaders. Use of GPU shaders, for example, can turn an ugly bowl of
triangles into a rather pretty tree (
http://the-witness.net/news/2011/06/witness-trees/).

Beyond that, level-of-detail projections are also quite feasible.


>
>
>> how to make it able to be used at *any* real scale on current HW
>> (voxels+FEM is not exactly a lightweight combination).
>>
>
> What if the "simulation overhead" could be distributed to every machine
> currently participating?
>

For gaming, that can become a security/cheating risk that is rather
difficult to reason about.

I also think distribution-for-performance should not be a first choice.
There are probably a ton of useful things we can do with level-of-detail,
shaders, high-level culling, etc.


> ocular occlusion in order to avoid simulating things that no one is present
> to perceive


World physics should be fully deterministic and cheap to compute in the
absence of external influence. This includes NPC schedules and such. When a
metaphor flaps its wings, we should know exactly what the 'game-state'
consequences will be - if there are any.

If we can reduce the world model to a fixpoint continuous integral - using
algebraic signals of time - we can actually compute world state far more
cheaply than would be possible with piecewise discrete-state simulations.
But, either way, computing game state is often a lot cheaper than computing
the animations.

Consider, for example: when two NPCs converse (a sort of 'collision' event
between NPCs) we might model them as exchanging information, objects,
and germs. That would be the 'game-state' consequence of the collision. But
the actual animation might involve handshakes, vocal exclamations, speech
generation. All of that could be elided in the absence of an observer.

The NPCs themselves could similarly be elided if they are part of the
'background' (i.e. to make a city look busy) rather than relevant to game
state.

The distinctions between game state modeling and animation can thus be a
level-of-detail concern.

We can carefully add a dose of indeterminism to the game by modeling an
external controller - a game master, or more than one - and giving some of
those to humans or expert systems. In a mul

Re: VR "for the rest of us" (was Re: [fonc] Re: SecondPlace, QwaqLife or TeleSim? Open ended, comments welcome)

[BGB]

On 8/9/2011 1:44 PM, David Barbour wrote:
On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 11:09 AM, Steve Wart > wrote:


3D design is extraordinarily expensive to develop properly


That is not an essential property of 3D design. We could have an 
ontology / 'markup language' just for building and animating avatars, 
similar to dressing up a doll, if we want to make one. And a modular 
ontology for buildings (including concepts such as crenelations and 
gargoyles). And another for environments. Etc. Given a suitably 
modular meta-language, we can even have dedicated languages for 
describing zombies.


I see the impoverished languages of today as an opportunity. For 
accessibility reasons - e.g. desktop vs. iPhone access to a world - it 
is preferable that we develop in these high-level ontologies anyway.


My own vague interest has steered me towards modular, reusable, 
multi-player interactive fiction - with a lot of inspiration from the 
Inform 7 language [1]. I have a bunch of half-formed designs from my 
earlier work on the subject, and my efforts in language design.




yes, although sadly existing technology and tools have done a terrible 
job at this, and are still mostly at the level of:

create a cube;
stretch it to about the right size;
put a "building exterior" texture or similar on it;
...;
call it done.

or, one wants to build a building, and so resorts to endless geometric 
fiddling (placing/sizing/texturing cubes to make walls/doors, import a 
chair model and copy/paste it a crapload of times, ...).


yes, granted, a few programs have procedural modeling features, ...




And also note the lack of porn (although WoW has a high level of
titillation it also has been very successful in attracting women).


Lol. Pornography is a human trait with an ancient and ignoble history, 
even if male dominated. I once watched a rather funny (but somewhat 
perverted) video called 'Ballad of the Sex Junkie' developed in WoW. 
It's NSFW, but is tame enough for Youtube.


Anyhow, I'm speaking at the federated world level. It would be silly 
to deny that those red-lights districts will exist. This rule is the 
same for all computer security: you cannot protect against a threat by 
ignoring it! I prefer soft security, wherever possible, and this means 
recognizing and accommodating threats in order to gain some control of 
them. By recognizing red lights districts, and the inevitable fallout 
(such as naked avatars waltzing through worlds), we can isolate them 
(e.g. by ensuring that the avatar has suitable clothing upon entering 
a 'no shirt no shoes no service' world).


possibly, if done more like the existing web, then a person will have 
different user accounts and different avatars for different servers.


transferring from one location to another, or going to favorite places, 
may then inevitably involve some number login screens...





The original concept of VRML as a standard in the hypertext model
still makes sense to me, but the gaming platforms seem to prefer
the silo model.


VRML is an awfully low-level ontology for building 3D models! I would 
suggest that this is part of /why/ we favor the silo model.




VRML also looked like a mishmash of things that would not normally go 
together in game data files.


in many game engines, most of the game contents are spread across a 
large number of different files, each format typically fairly 
specialized, and integrated into a single combined world.


VRML seems to try to be more like HTML, and express the entire world 
structure in a single file.

IMO, this is not a terribly great approach.


granted, I hold a similar complaint against Collada as well (although it 
sees the world more from the POV of a traditional 3D modeling app).



Think about what it would take to build designs that let us achieve 
something similar to CSS for 3D and avatar animation. Separation of 
artistic rendition (presentation) from content is important. Anything 
short of that is ultimately unsuitable for world mashups! Working with 
cones and boxes is not the right level for this.




yep.

ideally, we should probably be working with higher-level "entities" 
instead of lower-level geometry.


like, say, one goes about defining an entity type, allowing for certain 
input parameters, ...


then, later, a piece of code may import the entity.

entity {
classname="someapp/my_entity_type"
origin="..."
...
}


Quake-series engines have generally done similar for most "higher-level" 
entities (excluding basic map geometry).


to some extent (and with a different syntax) Valve is already doing 
something vaguely similar with entities which may also import map 
geometry (one can do things like, say, import premade world objects in 
Hammer Editor, ...).


applying this at a larger scale may make some sense.


taken further, it could mean the elimination of "brushes" as 
traditionally understood in the "map" sense, with brushes essentially 
becoming

Re: VR "for the rest of us" (was Re: [fonc] Re: SecondPlace, QwaqLife or TeleSim? Open ended, comments welcome)

[David Barbour]

On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 11:09 AM, Steve Wart  wrote:

> 3D design is extraordinarily expensive to develop properly
>

That is not an essential property of 3D design. We could have an ontology /
'markup language' just for building and animating avatars, similar to
dressing up a doll, if we want to make one. And a modular ontology for
buildings (including concepts such as crenelations and gargoyles). And
another for environments. Etc. Given a suitably modular meta-language, we
can even have dedicated languages for describing zombies.

I see the impoverished languages of today as an opportunity. For
accessibility reasons - e.g. desktop vs. iPhone access to a world - it is
preferable that we develop in these high-level ontologies anyway.

My own vague interest has steered me towards modular, reusable, multi-player
interactive fiction - with a lot of inspiration from the Inform 7 language
[1]. I have a bunch of half-formed designs from my earlier work on the
subject, and my efforts in language design.



>
> And also note the lack of porn (although WoW has a high level of
> titillation it also has been very successful in attracting women).
>

Lol. Pornography is a human trait with an ancient and ignoble history, even
if male dominated. I once watched a rather funny (but somewhat perverted)
video called 'Ballad of the Sex Junkie' developed in WoW. It's NSFW, but is
tame enough for Youtube.

Anyhow, I'm speaking at the federated world level. It would be silly to deny
that those red-lights districts will exist. This rule is the same for all
computer security: you cannot protect against a threat by ignoring it! I
prefer soft security, wherever possible, and this means recognizing and
accommodating threats in order to gain some control of them. By recognizing
red lights districts, and the inevitable fallout (such as naked avatars
waltzing through worlds), we can isolate them (e.g. by ensuring that the
avatar has suitable clothing upon entering a 'no shirt no shoes no service'
world).


>
>  The original concept of VRML as a standard in the hypertext model still
> makes sense to me, but the gaming platforms seem to prefer the silo model.
>

VRML is an awfully low-level ontology for building 3D models! I would
suggest that this is part of *why* we favor the silo model.

Think about what it would take to build designs that let us achieve
something similar to CSS for 3D and avatar animation. Separation of artistic
rendition (presentation) from content is important. Anything short of that
is ultimately unsuitable for world mashups! Working with cones and boxes is
not the right level for this.

I think we really do need an ontology for architecture, avatars,
environments, etc. as a common foundation in the world.


>
> The Teatime model seems promising
>

Teatime protocol is unscalable and insecure. It is suitable for LANs where
you trust the participants, but would die a slow, choking death if faced
with 'flash crowds', 'script kiddies', and their like. No variation on
Teatime will ever work at scale. Transactions scale poorly and have plenty
of flaws [2]

But there are some lessons you can take away from Teatime. Use of temporal
semantics is a suitable basis for consistency even without transactions - we
can tame this with a more commutative/idempotent model and *eventual
consistency*. Explicit delay is an effective approach to achieve near
wall-clock determinism in the face of distribution latencies (e.g. a signal
propagates to multiple clients, but triggers at some specific time in the
future).

I have developed a very simple and effective programming model - Reactive
Demand Programming - for solving these and related concerns [3]. One might
think of RDP as a fusion of eventless FRP and OOP - i.e. OOP where messages
and responses are replaced by continuous control signals, and state is
primarily replaced by continuous integrals. RDP is, by no small margin, the
most promising model for developing modular, federated, distributed command
and control systems, augmented reality systems, and 3D worlds.


> Croquet always felt awkward to me, partly it was performance, but it was
> also because some of the primitives were too primitive.
>

I agree that this is a problem. VRML is a problem for the same reason - i.e.
it is not clear what the physics should be, nor how we should recharacterize
for a different artistic style, and so on.

Regards,

Dave

[1] http://inform7.com/
[2] http://awelonblue.wordpress.com/2011/07/05/transaction-tribulation/
[3] http://awelonblue.wordpress.com/2011/05/21/comparing-frp-to-rdp/
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Re: VR "for the rest of us" (was Re: [fonc] Re: SecondPlace, QwaqLife or TeleSim? Open ended, comments welcome)

[Casey Ransberger]

Cut it down to what I'm responding too, and inline.

On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 11:09 AM, Steve Wart  wrote:

>
>
> Despite its commercial nature Minecraft seems very open and easy to adapt.
> Interestingly this implementation does a lot more to show that Java is "fast
> enough" for real-time 3D environments than Croquet was able to with Squeak.
> Croquet always felt awkward to me, partly it was performance, but it was
> also because some of the primitives were too primitive.
>

Have you checked out OpenQwaq? Runs on Cog. I have a feeling if I ran the
server on a different computer, rather than in VMWare on the same modest
hardware, performance would be a non-issue unless I allowed extremely
complex meshes or high-rez textures in. It's even totally acceptable and
usable even the way I'm currently running it, which is in a relatively
resource starved way. It chunks just a wee bit from time to time. I've been
really impressed with the performance so far. It would not, in any previous
year, have occurred to me to run an application that rendered 3D graphics
alongside an application that virtualized a big old enterprise operating
system at the same time on the same machine, but here I am doing it:)


> Regards,
> Steve
>
> ___
> fonc mailing list
> fonc@vpri.org
> http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
>
>


-- 
Casey Ransberger
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Re: VR "for the rest of us" (was Re: [fonc] Re: SecondPlace, QwaqLife or TeleSim? Open ended, comments welcome)

[Steve Wart]

On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 8:47 AM, David Barbour  wrote:

>
> I think any solution will need to accommodate porn, or it simply won't be
> accepted. The idea should be, instead, to keep it from infecting everything
> else and allow parents to protect their children.
>

3D design is extraordinarily expensive to develop properly - the
adult-oriented free-for-all in Second Life failed because it didn't scale
and there was no revenue model.

However some 3D virtual worlds are extraordinarily successful. World of
Warcraft, Minecraft and Roblox are some of my favourite examples.

And also note the lack of porn (although WoW has a high level of titillation
it also has been very successful in attracting women).


> My own interest, when I was pursuing this in 2003-4, was scalable
> composition of federated worlds.
>

It would have been good if some of the ideas that SL and others were
pursuing at the time took off. The original concept of VRML as a standard in
the hypertext model still makes sense to me, but the gaming platforms seem
to prefer the silo model.

The Teatime model seems promising but I confess I still have a hard time
getting my head around it. There are papers I need to read again, but I
found myself disagreeing with some of the assumptions and when that happens
I usually remain stuck with my preconceived notions.

Despite its commercial nature Minecraft seems very open and easy to adapt.
Interestingly this implementation does a lot more to show that Java is "fast
enough" for real-time 3D environments than Croquet was able to with Squeak.
Croquet always felt awkward to me, partly it was performance, but it was
also because some of the primitives were too primitive.

While Croquet allows the arbitrary import of geometric meshes, many other
important complex graphical and physical characteristics are completely
unsupported. Minecraft limits its primitives to simple blocks. While
counter-intuitive, they provide a useful abstraction that simplifies the
introduction of physics, lighting models and particle effects.


> Today, I'm somewhat interested in 3D as an abstract space for layout of
> information. For example, we can have a sort of XSLT or XQuery generating 3D
> content, and thus see the same 'world' with many different views. This could
> possibly solve the problems 3D has with information density. We'd get a 3D
> world where the only real content is 'information', and the layout of that
> information is up to the client.
>

Field is an exciting tool for visualization:
http://openendedgroup.com/field- it's very Smalltalk-like with an
extremely capable graphics library.

Regards,
Steve
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Re: VR "for the rest of us" (was Re: [fonc] Re: SecondPlace, QwaqLife or TeleSim? Open ended, comments welcome)

[David Barbour]

On Mon, Aug 8, 2011 at 6:55 PM, Casey Ransberger
wrote:

> 2. Their entire business model ended up being a cultural toxin. Free
> accounts mean spam and griefing/trolling/abuse. A profit motive for users
> seemed like a good idea at the outset, as it's about the most marketable
> universal out there, but it seems that DRM+UGC = red light district, real
> estate, fashion, and a handful of enterprise applications which would
> probably be served at least as well by Teleplace. I think one ultimately
> wants user generated content, but I'm not sure what the right way to do it
> is. One might read a book about Logo:)
>

I think any solution will need to accommodate porn, or it simply won't be
accepted. The idea should be, instead, to keep it from infecting everything
else and allow parents to protect their children.

My own interest, when I was pursuing this in 2003-4, was scalable
composition of federated worlds.

Today, I'm somewhat interested in 3D as an abstract space for layout of
information. For example, we can have a sort of XSLT or XQuery generating 3D
content, and thus see the same 'world' with many different views. This could
possibly solve the problems 3D has with information density. We'd get a 3D
world where the only real content is 'information', and the layout of that
information is up to the client.
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Re: VR "for the rest of us" (was Re: [fonc] Re: SecondPlace, QwaqLife or TeleSim? Open ended, comments welcome)

[David Barbour]

On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 2:05 AM, BGB  wrote:

> if clients use their own avatars (which are bounced along using the
> webserver to distribute them to anyone who sees them), and a persons' avatar
> is derived from copyrighted material, there is always a risk that some
> jerkface lawyers may try to sue the person running the server, or the author
> of the VR software, with copyright infringement (unless of course one uses
> the usual sets of legal disclaimers and "terms of use" agreements and
> similar).
>

I can think of two more problems. First, there will undoubtedly be avatars
shaped like giant billboards, dicks, and other objectionable material.
Unlike signatures on bulletin boards, this will be a lot harder to police
since avatars move around.

Second, we probably want the ability to stylize avatars as they move between
worlds. For example, some worlds may prefer a cell-shaded art style. When I
was pursuing this back in 2003-4, I was looking into possibilities such as
CSS for 3D - not just for avatars, but for the world itself, so that people
could support proper world mashups.

My ideas there were more along the lines of providing a sort of 'DNA' for
the avatars and 3D worlds, describing them in a common ontology, with
variations from a norm (male, female; height, body-shape; crooked-nose, snub
nose; etc.) and sometimes tweaks or non-standard extensions per world. This
would allow developers of the world to prevent 'literal' dicks from entering
their world. It would also allow people to become non-humans (e.g. werewolf,
vampire, or orc, ... or dick) when they enter certain worlds... i.e. to take
on various roles in common games.

>
> games is a major application area for 3D, but the more open-ended world
> that is non-game systems is a much bigger problems, and the relative merits
> of 3D are much less obvious.
>

Yeah, 3D tends to be rather sparse of informational content. Today, I'm
interested in possibility of augmented reality... e.g. look through your
Tablet's video camera, and see a mixed camera/3D rendering of the scene.

A few pictures of a printer in context, along with meta-data about location
and network address, and we might be able to drag and drop documents onto a
'visible' printer in a 3D space.

There are a lot more privacy issues, of course, with augmented reality -
i.e. keeping people out of our homes and businesses unless they belong
there.
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VR "for the rest of us" (was Re: [fonc] Re: SecondPlace, QwaqLife or TeleSim? Open ended, comments welcome)

[Casey Ransberger]

Inline and abridged... and rather long anyhow. I *really* like some of the
ideas that are getting tossed around.

On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 2:05 AM, BGB  wrote:

>  On 8/8/2011 6:55 PM, Casey Ransberger wrote:
>
>  I almost missed this thread. I'm also hunting that grail. VR for consumers
> that isn't lame. CC'd FONC because I think this is actually relevant to that
> conversation.
>
>  My feeling is, and I may be wrong, that the problems with Second Life are
> twofold:
>
>
> [sorry in advance, I mostly ended up running off in an unrelated direction,
> but maybe it could still be interesting].
>

You're fine, I do it all the time:)

IMO, probably better (than centralized servers) is to have independent
> world-servers which run alongside a traditional web-server (such as Apache
> or similar).
>

This appears more or less to be the way OpenQwaq works. I'm pretty sure that
I haven't fully comprehended everything the server does and how that relates
to the more familiar (to me) client, though. I note that the models and such
seem to live on the server, and then get sent (synced?) to the client.


> one can jump to a server using its URL, pull down its local content via
> HTTP, and connect to a server which manages the shared VR world, ...
>

Ah, you're talking about running in a web browser? Yeah, that will probably
happen, but the web browser strikes me as a rather poor choice of life
support system for a 3D multimedia collaboration and learning environment at
least as of today... OTOH I guess it solves the problem of not being able to
deploy (e.g.) GPL'd code on platforms like iOS. I should say that I'm a huge
fan of things like Clamato and Lively Kernel, but I'm not sure the WebGL
thing is ready for prime time, and I'm not sure how something like e.g.
Croquet will translate at this point in time. I also don't have a Croquet
implemented in Javascript lying around anywhere, and it's not exactly a
small amount of work to implement the basis. I don't even understand how all
of the parts work or interact yet...


> a partial issue though becomes how much client-specific content to allow,
> for example, if clients use their own avatars (which are bounced along using
> the webserver to distribute them to anyone who sees them), and a persons'
> avatar is derived from copyrighted material, there is always a risk that
> some jerkface lawyers may try to sue the person running the server, or the
> author of the VR software, with copyright infringement (unless of course one
> uses the usual sets of legal disclaimers and "terms of use" agreements and
> similar).
>

Heh, yes. Fortunately there are places one can go to purchase assets which
can then be used under commercially compatible licenses... to be honest,
though, the avatar I've been testing with is *cough* Tron. Found it on the
web and couldn't really resist. Got to take him out of there before I can
deploy anything, I think, but I Am Not A Lawyer, so I can't say that I
actually know, and like most folks, I'm going to play it safe... what I do
know is that this is slightly embarrassing :O

Working on an original protagonist/avatar for my "game" but she's not quite
done yet. It's all dialed in but the clothes aren't right yet. Having to
learn to use this pile of expensive 3D animation software as I go... I
really wish I could just draw everything using a pencil and then use a
lightbox to transfer the keyframes to cell and paint, but I don't know how
to make hand drawn animation work in 3D. This is actually why I was curious
about the availability of the sources to SketchPad, because that constraints
in 3D idea seems to underly the automated inbetweening that goes on nowadays
and you could do stuff in 3D using a light pen with SketchPad, which seems
better than what I have now in a lot of ways.


> allowing user-created worlds on a shared server (sort of like a Wiki) poses
> similar problems.
> the temptation for people to be lazy and use copyrighted images/music/...
> in their worlds is fairly large, and nearly any new technology is a major
> bait for opportunistic lawsuit-crazy lawyers...
>

So it *seems* like the way most businesses deal with this is by taking UGC
down without quarter whenever someone complains. I'll probably end up having
to do something like this. It's still painful because one then needs to
employ people to actually handle that every day. I don't know, maybe there's
some way to use community policing to accomplish this.

In my view, though, if it happens, it isn't the worst problem in the world
to have. It means someone noticed that your product/service or what have you
exists! And if it was fatal, I don't think YouTube would still be on the
internet. In fact all of that "bad press" probably helped YouTube get
traction.

yep, and there is a question of what exact purposes these 3D worlds serve vs
> more traditional systems, such as good old web-pages.
>

I think being able to point at things and see by the eyes and the angle of
the head what peop