At 08:44 PM 2/14/99 +1100, Miriam English wrote:
>You have probably already seen these, and I know they are slowed terribly
>by the current state of machinery, but for beautiful worlds check out the
>Chesley Bonestell dedications at:
> http://pluto.njcc.com/~paulsam/moonship/Welcome.html
Thanks for the plug, Miriam - and if any of you haven't seen my 2-scene
beginnings of an "adventure/mystery" a la 'Myst', go to:
http://pluto.njcc.com/~paulsam/alienmoon/alienmoon.html
I think you'll find that the framerate is pretty darn decent in these
scenes, in spite of being heavily textured. The second scene (which you go
to by approaching the large ovoid in the crater and then clicking on the
image of the planet that ultimately appears there) doesn't have a texture
on the ground surface because of speed issues, but I don't think that draws
away from the visual impression, particularly because of the fog.
Anyway, I've always been interested in pushing the visual envelope in VRML.
I, like Alan, would much prefer visually rich VRML experiences. Which
brings me to the point of chiming in on the "Long View" discussions - hey,
everyone's expressed lot's of good points, much of which I agree with.
BOOLEANS: I'm not sure having booleans built into the framework of the
language would provide much - except to those, like Niclas, who do (almost)
all their modeling in a text editor. What's missing is booleans in the
modelers. (Right now, there are ways around that: that's why I keep using
Cosmo HomeSpace designer, even with all that it doesn't have. Also, for
modeling basic shapes to assemble into worlds, Nendo is far superior to
many others - it makes 3D easy, and it allows you to optimize your output
for low-poly-count.) I suppose having booleans defined in the language
would then allow *ALL* the editor/modeler tools to do it easily, so that
WOULD be a plus.
SPEED: I agree that a modeling tool or world construction environment that
helped you optimize as you build would be great. Actually, although we
fight the framerate issue all the time, VRML **even as it is** has it all
over anything else you can do in realtime (other than games). I just
started investigating a new start-up company with a diferent approach to
Web 3D - Hypercosm at http://www.hypercosm3d.com/ - and the CEO gave me a
chance to look at their demos. Well, their little virtual machine & applets
downloaded and installed much easier than a VRML plugin, but on a 200mhz
Pentium without OpenGL acceleration their stuff crawled worse than even
some of my most complicated VRML (well, not slower than the Bonestell
images! ;)
INTEROPERABILITY/UBIQUITY/STABILITY: The one thing I see coming out of the
idea about integration with XML, is that we would gain in the fluidity of
the relationship between HTML and VRML/X3D. We would have a *SOLID*,
non-flaky, communication process that didn't rely on the EAI.
TEXT: I could see a long-form story with fully interactive scenes, but
with the scenes being not just embedded on a page of text but floating over
the text, or under it, and you can zoom past the text, or zoom past the
image, to view a blend of the two - how about a story you're reading which,
on a click of the mouse button, dissolves to the scene - but at the back of
the scene is the page or book you're reading, which you can go back to by
going closer or zooming to it, and turning the page - at which point if you
zoom out, away from the text, you discover that the environment has altered
to match the changes in the story. Well, anyway, that's a vision of one way
to integrate text and 3D - and I don't even know if that would be possible
with XML.
(Sorry if this is rambling a bit)
SCRIPTING: At the simplest level, having the Scripting in the HTML and the
Scripting in the VRML be essentially one-and-the-same, each being able to
call the other without the flaky EAI would be a plus!
COMMERCIALIZATION VS. ARTISTIC VISION: I agree that the artists have to
keep coming up with visions and applying imagination to content, and that
it's in the nature of the beast that the consortium is going to push what
might make money. I think both tracks are important and valuable, and that
we just push as hard as we can but keep our eyes on what's happening on the
commercial side to get a chunk of it when we can. My *ONLY* commissioned
VRML work was for a company (Victor Kokoram's) that ended up cutting way
back on the project because it was eating up resources they couldn't afford
- they fired a couple of staff, and have never ended up using the pieces I
built (possibly because I was also providing VRML training, and without
that they haven't been able to figure out how to integrate it). I expect
I'll ultimately be able to make use of what I did for them, but it was for
contract, so they own it. And I tried to pay attention to doing it the
"right" way, for interoperablity in different browsers, for speed of
interaction, and PROTO-izing re-usable interface modules.
Well, I'm running out of time right now, so I'll have to post more thoughts
later.
Len - since you started this thread about the long view, how do you think
we should summarize these thoughts for the main list or the W3DC?
- Paul
***********************************
Paul S. Hoffman
Senior Interface Designer, Cognetics Corporation
[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Company URL - http://www.cognetics.com
Personal URL - http://pluto.njcc.com/~paulsam
609-799-5005 ext.237 - FAX 609-799-8555
