On Mar 19, 2005, at 5:39 PM, Richard van Harten wrote:
Does anyone have some clue about whether they will or not, or some url where I could read about it ?
The 3d engine came from Intel. According to this article Intel revved SW3D but MM declined to release it. MM and Intel parted ways some time ago.
http://news.com.com/Intel%27s+3D+divorce+rate/2100-1038_3-5238357.html? part=rss&tag=5238357&subj=news.1038.5
Last year Intel formed an industry group called 3D industry forum. Last January they released the shockwave spec renamed to "U3D" as ECMA-363. Macromedia has not joined the 3DIF.
http://www.3dif.org/downloads/U3D/Spec/U3D_ECMA-363.pdf
This thread on slashdot talks about the history of sw3d, a little bit about what's under the hood and why architecturally it has been difficult to update.
http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=104932&cid=8933321
I spoke to an engineer from Intel about U3D at GDC. The U3D presentation was cancelled and the engineer said that the person driving it had been re-orged. He seemed to think that the future of U3D was in question.
Havok has dropped sw3d support and MM no longer distribute the havok xtra with the authoring tool or the shockwave installer.
Discreet dropped Plasma last August. http://www4.discreet.com/company/company.php?id=788
This interview with MM ceo Rob Burgess pretty much spells out his take on the past, present and future of Macromedia. When you read it substitute the word "Director" where ever "CD ROM" appears.
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1059.cfm
We are coming up on the fourth anniversary of sw3d. There have been no significant revisions to the features or functionality in that time despite the fact that there have been two major revisions to director (MX and MX04). I can't think of another feature of director that lay dormant through two major revs and then come back into play. The engineers at MM that worked on SW3D have transfered to other products or left. The technology seems to be under a cloud since the company that developed the core has parted company with MM and taken their code to a different venue. Web 3D does not appear to be a pillar of Macromedia's long term strategy.
rj
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