Elliotte Harold decides that VRML failed because it wasn't on the Mac. Jason Osgood claims it was because of XML.
Why is it on the web that people who don't do this kind of work, don't use a language, and aren't a part of the community that does get to decide that a technology is dead?
I say go to web sites such as www.octaga.com and look at the work being done in X3D. Osgood, you gave up too early. Your's is a common complaint among those who did. Is XML uglier than classic VRML syntax? XML is uglier than almost any alternative syntax. But it comes with millions of lines of supporting code so while you are in a vocal minority, you are also in a very small one. As the song says, "you made your move too soon".
If all X3D is is a transcoding, I would agree. It is an ugly transcoding. On the other hand, significant improvements were made in the VRML design that you overlook including much improved nodes, a much better object model, a much better API (SAI) that supports AJAX.
Blaming the standards group for making your move too early is like blaming your parents for your last failed relationship. They may shape your decisions but they don't make them for you. You turned on it early when it disappointed you, and you won't look ahead or give those who stayed the course credit for what they have achieved. That's mean-spirited and not just a little self-immolating.
If VRML had failed, it wouldn't still be the single largest supported format for all tools combined when importing and exporting. If VRML had failed, companies like Octaga and BitManagement wouldn't be doing multi-million dollar 3D projects today. If VRML had failed, worlds built ten years ago wouldn't still be running in browsers built in the last two. If VRML had failed, the US Homeland Security department wouldn't be using it in HLS projects for training emergency responders nor would it be a US Navy approved standard.
What VRML could not do as has been pointed out so often is make 3D designers out of web page builders. It couldn't make real-time 3D as easy as document design. What it can do and is doing is provide a royalty-free unencumbered means to create 3D on the web and off. It saved a information space for use by those who cannot afford Maya but can master tools such as Flux Studio because they have the time and are willing.
You are missing the point, Elliotte, because you need a whipping post for another project that isn't winning mindshare as fast as you want it to. Like so many I've talked to about Open Office, you don't want an open unencumbered royalty free means to create and maintain information, you want to beat Microsoft. You want to hurt them. You want it so bad that you'll tell any story you have to and make the point on any back you can find. You are a better man than that.
X3D/VRML is succeeding. Do your homework and look at the URIs. Look at the projects. Look at the software. I don't want EVERYONE to use X3D. We learned in VRML that too few have the talent and that ensures just as you find in SecondLife that a lot of the 3D is terrible. If they want to try, we provide the tutorials for free, software for free, and guarantee the lifecycle. That is all that can be expected. If they can't make a go of their business or their relationships, that's life. The world will let you die, it will let you starve, it will let you lose. All a standard can provide is a chance to live, to make money, and to win at the business or hobby or art that you choose, but if you don't, it can't.
If you don't need 3D, don't use it. If you do, look at the costs of building it and maintaining it because it is by nature one of the highest cost content types, so if you do use it, figure that out fast because you will burn your customers just as the early wysiwygers before HTML and XML burned customers with closed encumbered systems that died without even a chance of rehosting. Then take another look at VRML/X3D and ask if the only metric for winning in some markets is surviving. Osgood has an axe to grind. Elliotte, you have a cause and may you get what you need, but don't do it on the back of a worthwhile effort that has done everything necessary to succeed with its values intact and its content still wrling a decade later. There aren't too many pre-dot.bomb standards that can make that claim and those that can did because their real users kept them alive. Don't insult them because you didn't.
Caveat vendor.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Friday, April 20, 2007
It's the Network, Stupid
I do tire of the 'but where are your patents?' question for starting a Web 2.0 business. Complexity barriers and web 2.0 are antithetical. Then there is the 'how much ad revenue can you generate? Isn't that impossible in today's market?"
That is a better question. Not to be dull, but:
1. The VC approach relies on the Buffet Complexity Barrier to Competition. Thus, the VC looks for IP or other secret sauce. The VC wants a quick return because the heart of this and hedge fund investing is quick turnaround investing in the 4 for 1 range.
Say vig.
2. There is no complexity barrier in ANY content market. The music industry can explain this one to you, but essentially it is an 'any idiot can do it' market. So the content industry relies on the promotion or amplification of talent and the keiretsu of managed acts and events. Think of this as the control of resources for resources.
Note that recently Sony/RCA/Columbia Music announced and implemented a blogging policy. They don't accept CD submissions. They want musicians/composers/bands who blog and sign up on their VOX site. It is the single most interesting change in the music business in 100 years. The gates are finally blown open. That doesn't mean the politics aren't still there. They are possibly worse but they are finally accessible. This is the music industry recognizing the need to support the resources for acquiring resources at network speeds.
3. When a technology emerges, one can ride the wave until it becomes common and by that point must be large enough or well-connected enough to sustain operations to repay investors. Otherwise the churn is exactly as has been described elsewhere regardless of the size or age of the operation. Ask any mid to lower level employee of a stable company purchased by equity investors. The cruelty and the cost-cutting are legendary.
This is the result of squeezing for vig.
On the other hand, it is not impossible or even incredibly risky to run a content-based business if one takes the network or keiretsu approach. It is very hard work for those who do not have a good network of contacts for the production of the content with access to the customers for content of a given type. That is the key:
content has a type based on the associations of the customers.
Until you identify a content-type network, you don't have a Web 2.0 business. This isn't just figuring out the abstract network, but the actual members of more than one instance of it.
There is no dominance possible because by its nature such networks are quite flat. What you look for is reach. This isn't a hard idea because it is a matter of identifying the connectors, the information sinks, the producers, consumers and modifiers, then providing useful utilities that speed up or reduce the work load for every component that can effectively use a computer form or page. You don't necessarily produce content: you hook up those that do and then compete fairly for those services. VCs hate this idea. Customers love it. The money is made in maintenance and it is dammed good income if you survive.
You can also produce the content, but that is a separate business. It is not of necessity NOT a Web 2.0 business, but that is a topic for a different blog. See my other blog.
The hard part is building it to the point of getting the exponential or power law effect. A LOT of little pieces have to be assembled first and those without subject matter expertise are advised to get people who have it and to be sure that their expertise is reasonably global but immediately local. That is where the real risk is. Some content markets are entirely local by the very business rules for processing the content.
All said, it's the network, stupid, meaning, until you have identified an organic content network, meaning a network of information trading relationships, all of the cpm figuring you do, the ad relationships and so on, are so much dreaming. It isn't about getting rich quick. That is the way the Mafia does business and they are mostly sloppy, ineffective and culturally insane. Earn it by product for value. It's old fashioned but stable and grows proportionally to sane returns.
We don't all want to be pirates.
That is a better question. Not to be dull, but:
1. The VC approach relies on the Buffet Complexity Barrier to Competition. Thus, the VC looks for IP or other secret sauce. The VC wants a quick return because the heart of this and hedge fund investing is quick turnaround investing in the 4 for 1 range.
Say vig.
2. There is no complexity barrier in ANY content market. The music industry can explain this one to you, but essentially it is an 'any idiot can do it' market. So the content industry relies on the promotion or amplification of talent and the keiretsu of managed acts and events. Think of this as the control of resources for resources.
Note that recently Sony/RCA/Columbia Music announced and implemented a blogging policy. They don't accept CD submissions. They want musicians/composers/bands who blog and sign up on their VOX site. It is the single most interesting change in the music business in 100 years. The gates are finally blown open. That doesn't mean the politics aren't still there. They are possibly worse but they are finally accessible. This is the music industry recognizing the need to support the resources for acquiring resources at network speeds.
3. When a technology emerges, one can ride the wave until it becomes common and by that point must be large enough or well-connected enough to sustain operations to repay investors. Otherwise the churn is exactly as has been described elsewhere regardless of the size or age of the operation. Ask any mid to lower level employee of a stable company purchased by equity investors. The cruelty and the cost-cutting are legendary.
This is the result of squeezing for vig.
On the other hand, it is not impossible or even incredibly risky to run a content-based business if one takes the network or keiretsu approach. It is very hard work for those who do not have a good network of contacts for the production of the content with access to the customers for content of a given type. That is the key:
content has a type based on the associations of the customers.
Until you identify a content-type network, you don't have a Web 2.0 business. This isn't just figuring out the abstract network, but the actual members of more than one instance of it.
There is no dominance possible because by its nature such networks are quite flat. What you look for is reach. This isn't a hard idea because it is a matter of identifying the connectors, the information sinks, the producers, consumers and modifiers, then providing useful utilities that speed up or reduce the work load for every component that can effectively use a computer form or page. You don't necessarily produce content: you hook up those that do and then compete fairly for those services. VCs hate this idea. Customers love it. The money is made in maintenance and it is dammed good income if you survive.
You can also produce the content, but that is a separate business. It is not of necessity NOT a Web 2.0 business, but that is a topic for a different blog. See my other blog.
The hard part is building it to the point of getting the exponential or power law effect. A LOT of little pieces have to be assembled first and those without subject matter expertise are advised to get people who have it and to be sure that their expertise is reasonably global but immediately local. That is where the real risk is. Some content markets are entirely local by the very business rules for processing the content.
All said, it's the network, stupid, meaning, until you have identified an organic content network, meaning a network of information trading relationships, all of the cpm figuring you do, the ad relationships and so on, are so much dreaming. It isn't about getting rich quick. That is the way the Mafia does business and they are mostly sloppy, ineffective and culturally insane. Earn it by product for value. It's old fashioned but stable and grows proportionally to sane returns.
We don't all want to be pirates.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Kathy Sierra, Don Imus, Codes of Conduct and the Success of Meanness
A modular code:
Compassion. Tolerance. Self-restraint.
And a very old one. It works for the same reason other code does or doesn't: lots of time and many runs so thoroughly debugged.
People don't get the point until they feel the pain of the pleasure of the practice. It's not a bad thing to cheer for civility. Leaders should. But as the Imus situation is showing in America, what you are willing to do about it and how deeply you are willing to consider that action before doing it says more about your civility than your abhorrence or acceptance.
A decision, a code, any choice really is drained of its potential by all of the subclauses. As soon as you noticed Sierra's case, you spoke up. What about the years of misbehavior preceding? Did you speak up because she is your friend or a female or an attractive female? Is it a human issue of dignity or a sexist issue of gender over gender?
A thread runs through these debates and others like it. There is an increasing revulsion to violence in the world for reasons too obvious to debate. The web is not a different medium; it just has more readily available microphones so everyone is at the podium right now. That's good, but it isn't that different.
Something like the Imus case becomes an opportunity for many powerful agendas to be attached to an issue of the moment, to ride the media whirlwind into public consciousness until it is so overloaded that it fails to make much change unless followed by an even more egregious incident of the same type. That is terrorist thinking and a terrorist strategy. It is what so many are becoming because by example, they see it working and being intelligent, they adapt to the strategy that is succeeding.
Mean has been succeeding for a long time on the Internet. It isn't men being mean or women being mean, or bloggers being mean or listers being mean, it is mean succeeding. You do better to understand why mean is the successful strategy than to create complex codes that chip away at the freedoms you worked so hard to gain in society and with these technologies.
Until you know why mean succeeds, you don't know what you need to do about it.
Compassion. Tolerance. Self-restraint.
And a very old one. It works for the same reason other code does or doesn't: lots of time and many runs so thoroughly debugged.
People don't get the point until they feel the pain of the pleasure of the practice. It's not a bad thing to cheer for civility. Leaders should. But as the Imus situation is showing in America, what you are willing to do about it and how deeply you are willing to consider that action before doing it says more about your civility than your abhorrence or acceptance.
A decision, a code, any choice really is drained of its potential by all of the subclauses. As soon as you noticed Sierra's case, you spoke up. What about the years of misbehavior preceding? Did you speak up because she is your friend or a female or an attractive female? Is it a human issue of dignity or a sexist issue of gender over gender?
A thread runs through these debates and others like it. There is an increasing revulsion to violence in the world for reasons too obvious to debate. The web is not a different medium; it just has more readily available microphones so everyone is at the podium right now. That's good, but it isn't that different.
Something like the Imus case becomes an opportunity for many powerful agendas to be attached to an issue of the moment, to ride the media whirlwind into public consciousness until it is so overloaded that it fails to make much change unless followed by an even more egregious incident of the same type. That is terrorist thinking and a terrorist strategy. It is what so many are becoming because by example, they see it working and being intelligent, they adapt to the strategy that is succeeding.
Mean has been succeeding for a long time on the Internet. It isn't men being mean or women being mean, or bloggers being mean or listers being mean, it is mean succeeding. You do better to understand why mean is the successful strategy than to create complex codes that chip away at the freedoms you worked so hard to gain in society and with these technologies.
Until you know why mean succeeds, you don't know what you need to do about it.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Losing Murdock
Today we had to put our Sheltie to sleep. At age 13, Murdock's liver finally gave out and he spent the last week on the floor sleeping or on the front porch watching his enemies, the squirrels. Last night my wife slept on the floor next to him because he would bark during the night being in pain, not wanting to be alone and being scared.
Murdock was a sturdy beggar. When I picked him from the litter, it was because he was the one who ran out to bite my toes. Shelties are the sweetest breed of dog and one of the smartest. Easy to train and uncannily good at learning English and teaching dog, they are good company, good friends and the soul of what it is to be a family guardian.
Lots of tears at my house today. Two inconsolable teen agers, a Mom who needs to sleep but can't, and a Dad who needs to start looking for another Sheepdog. Murdock was my third Sheltie, the second Murdock and the last, and the best of them. He has been my company during this long period of unemployment and I'm pretty sure that next week while the kids are at school and the wife goes back to work, I'll be in front of this keyboard crying too and missing my best friend.
Murdock was a sturdy beggar. When I picked him from the litter, it was because he was the one who ran out to bite my toes. Shelties are the sweetest breed of dog and one of the smartest. Easy to train and uncannily good at learning English and teaching dog, they are good company, good friends and the soul of what it is to be a family guardian.
Lots of tears at my house today. Two inconsolable teen agers, a Mom who needs to sleep but can't, and a Dad who needs to start looking for another Sheepdog. Murdock was my third Sheltie, the second Murdock and the last, and the best of them. He has been my company during this long period of unemployment and I'm pretty sure that next week while the kids are at school and the wife goes back to work, I'll be in front of this keyboard crying too and missing my best friend.
Friday, April 06, 2007
Good Friday
The deepest love is not known by what we gladly gain for others, but by what we dearly lose.
Agnus dei,
qui tollis pecata mundi, miserere.
Dona nobis pacem.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Bluesophiles, Flame Warts And Other Irritants
I note that several bloggers are taking notice of the death threats to a female blogger. Is the Mean Machine finally getting some attention because it's a girl on the receiving end? Would it make any difference if it weren't a pretty girl? One wonders.
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2007/03/as_i_type_this_.html
Nasty stuff. No one deserves that. It is a risk of popularity and notoriety but that doesn't excuse it. I think we might want ask if the web has been rewarding the bullies because bully pulpits make for bully behavior. A kind word and a big stick have become the politics most favored by many an emergent power.
We've been reading conversations like that for years. Some have made themselves famous doing it. I remember Berners-Lee trying to mollify Jorn Barger on the old SGML list years ago when TimBL was the only one Jorn would listen to after Jorn had been banned from lists as whitebread as the Kate Bush fan list. Barger went on to be famous in Beltway circles for RobotWisdom despite the fact that just a little searching revealed he had lifted ideas from his university sponsors before being asked to leave his position there. After doing some checking, I concluded he was yet another web psychopath but he was being lauded for it. That was when I realized the web was and is Clockwork Orange. On the other hand, as irritating and nasty as he was and probably still is, Jorn signed them with his real name.
I don't think this behavior will ever stop because frankly, the web has been making heroes out of people for this for too long now. We've all flamed on from time to time and we always will, but I sign everything I write anywhere I write it and always have. Unless one is Swiftly taking on the King, it is bad practice to write using a pseudonym much less endorse it as the best way to contribute to a conversation. Game persona are crossing over into the blogosphere and that is bad juju for the blogosphere. It is one thing for commedians to write political satire; it is another for politicians to write comedy and expect us to laugh. There really are standards for that.
I usually send comments made by anonymous contributors to the garbage files. I think that is the one practice all serious or even hobbyist bloggers can use to spread baking soda on the flame warts. An oven catches fire when overheated food spills onto the burners and dries there, but it happens and the fire extinguisher is at hand because we are all a little sloppy in the kitchen. But on the web, it isn't enough to refer to polemics or past practices in other media. Few media have the amplifying effect and the pervasive cross-sectional demographics of the web. We ought to recognize the change in scale IS a change in type and be smart about adopting different rules.
Make a general rule to refuse anonymity. That is without doubt a wiser practice than to refuse a contributor because of their choice of web browser. Disallowing anonynmous posts isn't a cure, but it keeps us from burning down the kitchen.
Then we have the mob rule made popular by the whole 'wisdom of crowds' meme. There is a truth to the idea that with enough observations made, measured and compared against predictions, you get a sort of averaging toward the truth. What the meme in its populist form doesn't account for is sample size over time. Serious scholars were once taught to beware the zeitgeist because it is too easy for the spirit of a crowd at a time to be overwhelmed by the intensity of local events writ large. The right wing swing of American politics post 9/11 that enabled our catastrophic foreign policy of the last eight years to go almost uncontested is an example.
Then we have the Standards Game as it is being played in the dust up over Microsoft technologies and ISO. Some who will fight MS for any reason or none have easily been recruited into the more subtle cause of killing off the credibility of ISO which is one more front in the investor war on standards of any kind. It was realized fairly early in the Warren Buffet Fan Club that royalty-free unencumbered standards remove the complexity barrier sought by venture capitalists and the hedge firm investors. One would think they would laud ISO given ISO doesn't require those kinds of participation agreements, yet ISO has been aligning itself with the consortia that do and ISO is the gold standard of standards because of its reliance on processes and national body voting. It isn't that an ISO standard can't fixed, but it is obvious when it is done. Transparency of process is the real gold standard. Everything else is professional editing.
Where the W3C was finally reduced to being a wall trophy for its large members, others have followed their lead and ISO having recovered some of its lustre from the trampling it took in the early web years is being seen as a threat in the POTS (Proprietary Off The Shelf) initiative. Champions of POTS are the new voices of the small companies set to launch Web 3.0 by laundering their proprietary products as de facto standards before they even have products or de jure standards without understanding the meaning of that and hoping no one else does either.
So when a standard is launched, the open sourcers ask the three questions they should ask?
Is it open? Is it royalty free? Is it unencumbered?
But they don't usually understand the conditions for the conditions.
1) Those are not requirements for standards.
2) Those are conditions of participation in a given organization.
3) Those conditions are not common across all organizations.
4) Where those conditions are a requirement for participation by signatories to participation agreements, the signatory balances investor rights (ownership) against participation benefits. To not do so is to abrogate fiduciary responsibility to the owners. This is law. The IP owner has to choose and no amount of force will make that happen. The standard isn't law but the fiduciary obligation is.
To demand those conditions in all cases is unrealistic. To demand them by force of buying power is the market at work. To demand them by threat or increasing zeal demonstrated by making false claims or claims unsupported by evidence crosses a line being noted elsewhere these days in the blogosphere, but has been noted as a side-effect of anonymous contribution on the Internet in technical lists for many years before the web.
It is to use the web as a raw amplifier where seizing a microphone and pushing it into the speakers creates a disturbance irritating enough to clear most rooms. Note that this is harnessing the same effects that the Jorn Barger's of the early web days used. Note that it is no more effective in standards than in Barger's iconoclastic pursuits. It simply stinkies up the room, the list, the conversation, and actually empties them. Sometimes that is exactly the intension, but let's be clear, those are the tactics of bullies. The best thing to do with a bully is ignore them until they make a threat that crosses the legal line, then use the law to remove them from the room just as a bouncer would toss out a member of an audience who seized a microphone and stuffed it in the speakers.
If there are to be open, royalty-free, unencumbered standards, they will come not from irritation but by the signatories understanding of their power to increase marketshare by increasing the size of the market itself. They are created voluntarily. The products that conform to them must be sustained if not by profit based on sales, then by loss leader status or by other sources of revenue.
There can be values we all share for common good or majority good. We have to judge each opportunity on its merits. While the open source community is quick to claim a moral majesty for its values for its products, it is slow to recognize the greater good that other standards can create for even larger groups of customers and too often, members of that community will use any form of irritation or obsfuscation to deprive a larger community of such benefits when not offered in accordance with the open source conditions for participation.
Doing so plays into the hands of lesser angels. Some will not believe it because the use of irritation has become an enjoyable habit just as critique of music by those who cannot perform it becomes a way to assume a superior pose, but it is seen by those who do play as exactly that: a pose.
When we play to customers in clubs, we often see the Bluesophile. This is the guy that sits at the front of the audience, backwards in the chair, hands folded across his chest as if he were a music professor sitting on a jury at the end of the semester. He makes statements like "I want to hear something REAL!". When we ask what that might be he says in all seriousness as if his opinion had the weight of a passing grade, "Sweet Home Alabama." I don't make this stuff up. He really believes that. Why? He is from Michigan. He KNOWS that a "REAL" Southern musician plays that song as a matter of "AUTHENTICITY". He is to a Southern musician what a tourist asking a black farmer where his watermelons are grown is: a poser, a bigot, and a pain in the ass. His goal is to impress his friends that he can control the band with opinions he got from his massive record collection liner notes. Otherwise, he is a software engineer or a marketing executive or worse, the human resources manager at a local high tech firm without a clue about the blues, or any musical talent for that matter. He has a fat wallet and a big mouth and he knows we won't come after him as long as he has a big bar tab yet to be paid.
We hate those guys. They spend money on drinks to get the attention of the bar manager who will then listen to them. It isn't that the band won't play SHA, it is that they won't do it five times a night so this guy can get laid.
All ecosystems are systems of relatable niches, some large, some small, some brief, some sustainable, some symbiotic, some parasitic, but all niches. Convenient facts can make a case in a given context, but in no context establishes a truth for all. No niche defines an ecosystem. The working relationships do.
Watching the looming scandals in the Beltway, as the country endures another navel-gazing paroxysm not unlike 1973-74, my son asks the whys of this. I tell him that no matter how many times one is told, ‘accept this, that is life’ or ‘give a little to get a little’ or the other epithets that trade personal values for money, keep in mind that it is always a bad trade. What we give up in dignity for a job or an advance, we never get back and after awhile, the money is gone and the job is just another job. I’m an old Southerner and I never found any trade for honor worth making. I left my last job when a man looked at me and said, “It may be immoral and unethical, but strictly speaking, it isn’t illegal.” A trained lawyer knows that convenient facts can make a case, but they can’t make a truth, and it seems judgment is a matter of the authority to which one subscribes. One hopes justice never is, but if it seems to be, it is time to find another judge, and if that is not possible, another court, and if that is not possible, another lawyer.
And some nights, it is better to tell the bluesophile to shut the f**k up. And in almost all cases, if you don't want the Mean Machine to prosper, disallow anonymous comments on your blogs. You really can't rely on popular consensus when designing nuclear reactors, and you really don't get to vote on the law of gravity. In life, the wisdom of crowds and the pronouncement of the self-selected blogger is too often just the latest whimsy from the media or a guy who can't get laid without spending a lot of money first.
Lay back and enjoy the set, or move on to the next bar politely and quickly. Bar fights get out of control fast. So do oven fires in messy kitchens. So do flame warts. The best extinguisher smothers the flame at the source by denying it oxygen. The oxygen of the web is not a link. It is a link target.
Dance to the music, or hum along with your friends. Don't get wrapped up in the song too far or the notes too seriously. It is just stuff. If you go home with the right stuff, it is better stuff and when you go to work the next day, you can talk about that, or just hum and tap your feet mysteriously. Enjoy. That's when life among the mammals is real. And really life.
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2007/03/as_i_type_this_.html
Nasty stuff. No one deserves that. It is a risk of popularity and notoriety but that doesn't excuse it. I think we might want ask if the web has been rewarding the bullies because bully pulpits make for bully behavior. A kind word and a big stick have become the politics most favored by many an emergent power.
We've been reading conversations like that for years. Some have made themselves famous doing it. I remember Berners-Lee trying to mollify Jorn Barger on the old SGML list years ago when TimBL was the only one Jorn would listen to after Jorn had been banned from lists as whitebread as the Kate Bush fan list. Barger went on to be famous in Beltway circles for RobotWisdom despite the fact that just a little searching revealed he had lifted ideas from his university sponsors before being asked to leave his position there. After doing some checking, I concluded he was yet another web psychopath but he was being lauded for it. That was when I realized the web was and is Clockwork Orange. On the other hand, as irritating and nasty as he was and probably still is, Jorn signed them with his real name.
I don't think this behavior will ever stop because frankly, the web has been making heroes out of people for this for too long now. We've all flamed on from time to time and we always will, but I sign everything I write anywhere I write it and always have. Unless one is Swiftly taking on the King, it is bad practice to write using a pseudonym much less endorse it as the best way to contribute to a conversation. Game persona are crossing over into the blogosphere and that is bad juju for the blogosphere. It is one thing for commedians to write political satire; it is another for politicians to write comedy and expect us to laugh. There really are standards for that.
I usually send comments made by anonymous contributors to the garbage files. I think that is the one practice all serious or even hobbyist bloggers can use to spread baking soda on the flame warts. An oven catches fire when overheated food spills onto the burners and dries there, but it happens and the fire extinguisher is at hand because we are all a little sloppy in the kitchen. But on the web, it isn't enough to refer to polemics or past practices in other media. Few media have the amplifying effect and the pervasive cross-sectional demographics of the web. We ought to recognize the change in scale IS a change in type and be smart about adopting different rules.
Make a general rule to refuse anonymity. That is without doubt a wiser practice than to refuse a contributor because of their choice of web browser. Disallowing anonynmous posts isn't a cure, but it keeps us from burning down the kitchen.
Then we have the mob rule made popular by the whole 'wisdom of crowds' meme. There is a truth to the idea that with enough observations made, measured and compared against predictions, you get a sort of averaging toward the truth. What the meme in its populist form doesn't account for is sample size over time. Serious scholars were once taught to beware the zeitgeist because it is too easy for the spirit of a crowd at a time to be overwhelmed by the intensity of local events writ large. The right wing swing of American politics post 9/11 that enabled our catastrophic foreign policy of the last eight years to go almost uncontested is an example.
Then we have the Standards Game as it is being played in the dust up over Microsoft technologies and ISO. Some who will fight MS for any reason or none have easily been recruited into the more subtle cause of killing off the credibility of ISO which is one more front in the investor war on standards of any kind. It was realized fairly early in the Warren Buffet Fan Club that royalty-free unencumbered standards remove the complexity barrier sought by venture capitalists and the hedge firm investors. One would think they would laud ISO given ISO doesn't require those kinds of participation agreements, yet ISO has been aligning itself with the consortia that do and ISO is the gold standard of standards because of its reliance on processes and national body voting. It isn't that an ISO standard can't fixed, but it is obvious when it is done. Transparency of process is the real gold standard. Everything else is professional editing.
Where the W3C was finally reduced to being a wall trophy for its large members, others have followed their lead and ISO having recovered some of its lustre from the trampling it took in the early web years is being seen as a threat in the POTS (Proprietary Off The Shelf) initiative. Champions of POTS are the new voices of the small companies set to launch Web 3.0 by laundering their proprietary products as de facto standards before they even have products or de jure standards without understanding the meaning of that and hoping no one else does either.
So when a standard is launched, the open sourcers ask the three questions they should ask?
Is it open? Is it royalty free? Is it unencumbered?
But they don't usually understand the conditions for the conditions.
1) Those are not requirements for standards.
2) Those are conditions of participation in a given organization.
3) Those conditions are not common across all organizations.
4) Where those conditions are a requirement for participation by signatories to participation agreements, the signatory balances investor rights (ownership) against participation benefits. To not do so is to abrogate fiduciary responsibility to the owners. This is law. The IP owner has to choose and no amount of force will make that happen. The standard isn't law but the fiduciary obligation is.
To demand those conditions in all cases is unrealistic. To demand them by force of buying power is the market at work. To demand them by threat or increasing zeal demonstrated by making false claims or claims unsupported by evidence crosses a line being noted elsewhere these days in the blogosphere, but has been noted as a side-effect of anonymous contribution on the Internet in technical lists for many years before the web.
It is to use the web as a raw amplifier where seizing a microphone and pushing it into the speakers creates a disturbance irritating enough to clear most rooms. Note that this is harnessing the same effects that the Jorn Barger's of the early web days used. Note that it is no more effective in standards than in Barger's iconoclastic pursuits. It simply stinkies up the room, the list, the conversation, and actually empties them. Sometimes that is exactly the intension, but let's be clear, those are the tactics of bullies. The best thing to do with a bully is ignore them until they make a threat that crosses the legal line, then use the law to remove them from the room just as a bouncer would toss out a member of an audience who seized a microphone and stuffed it in the speakers.
If there are to be open, royalty-free, unencumbered standards, they will come not from irritation but by the signatories understanding of their power to increase marketshare by increasing the size of the market itself. They are created voluntarily. The products that conform to them must be sustained if not by profit based on sales, then by loss leader status or by other sources of revenue.
There can be values we all share for common good or majority good. We have to judge each opportunity on its merits. While the open source community is quick to claim a moral majesty for its values for its products, it is slow to recognize the greater good that other standards can create for even larger groups of customers and too often, members of that community will use any form of irritation or obsfuscation to deprive a larger community of such benefits when not offered in accordance with the open source conditions for participation.
Doing so plays into the hands of lesser angels. Some will not believe it because the use of irritation has become an enjoyable habit just as critique of music by those who cannot perform it becomes a way to assume a superior pose, but it is seen by those who do play as exactly that: a pose.
When we play to customers in clubs, we often see the Bluesophile. This is the guy that sits at the front of the audience, backwards in the chair, hands folded across his chest as if he were a music professor sitting on a jury at the end of the semester. He makes statements like "I want to hear something REAL!". When we ask what that might be he says in all seriousness as if his opinion had the weight of a passing grade, "Sweet Home Alabama." I don't make this stuff up. He really believes that. Why? He is from Michigan. He KNOWS that a "REAL" Southern musician plays that song as a matter of "AUTHENTICITY". He is to a Southern musician what a tourist asking a black farmer where his watermelons are grown is: a poser, a bigot, and a pain in the ass. His goal is to impress his friends that he can control the band with opinions he got from his massive record collection liner notes. Otherwise, he is a software engineer or a marketing executive or worse, the human resources manager at a local high tech firm without a clue about the blues, or any musical talent for that matter. He has a fat wallet and a big mouth and he knows we won't come after him as long as he has a big bar tab yet to be paid.
We hate those guys. They spend money on drinks to get the attention of the bar manager who will then listen to them. It isn't that the band won't play SHA, it is that they won't do it five times a night so this guy can get laid.
All ecosystems are systems of relatable niches, some large, some small, some brief, some sustainable, some symbiotic, some parasitic, but all niches. Convenient facts can make a case in a given context, but in no context establishes a truth for all. No niche defines an ecosystem. The working relationships do.
Watching the looming scandals in the Beltway, as the country endures another navel-gazing paroxysm not unlike 1973-74, my son asks the whys of this. I tell him that no matter how many times one is told, ‘accept this, that is life’ or ‘give a little to get a little’ or the other epithets that trade personal values for money, keep in mind that it is always a bad trade. What we give up in dignity for a job or an advance, we never get back and after awhile, the money is gone and the job is just another job. I’m an old Southerner and I never found any trade for honor worth making. I left my last job when a man looked at me and said, “It may be immoral and unethical, but strictly speaking, it isn’t illegal.” A trained lawyer knows that convenient facts can make a case, but they can’t make a truth, and it seems judgment is a matter of the authority to which one subscribes. One hopes justice never is, but if it seems to be, it is time to find another judge, and if that is not possible, another court, and if that is not possible, another lawyer.
And some nights, it is better to tell the bluesophile to shut the f**k up. And in almost all cases, if you don't want the Mean Machine to prosper, disallow anonymous comments on your blogs. You really can't rely on popular consensus when designing nuclear reactors, and you really don't get to vote on the law of gravity. In life, the wisdom of crowds and the pronouncement of the self-selected blogger is too often just the latest whimsy from the media or a guy who can't get laid without spending a lot of money first.
Lay back and enjoy the set, or move on to the next bar politely and quickly. Bar fights get out of control fast. So do oven fires in messy kitchens. So do flame warts. The best extinguisher smothers the flame at the source by denying it oxygen. The oxygen of the web is not a link. It is a link target.
Dance to the music, or hum along with your friends. Don't get wrapped up in the song too far or the notes too seriously. It is just stuff. If you go home with the right stuff, it is better stuff and when you go to work the next day, you can talk about that, or just hum and tap your feet mysteriously. Enjoy. That's when life among the mammals is real. And really life.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
New Blog: 3D On The Web. CHEAP!!
To make things a little easier for readers of Lamammals who care about things 3D or don't, I've opened a second blog for my posts on 3D. There are four articles there now, one to introduce it, one which is the article on using Flux Studio to produce Surface of Revolution objects, and two new articles that are part of a tutorial on using VRML for animation sequencing, eg, storytelling in 3D.
See 3D On The Web. CHEAP!! for the cheapest book on 3D programming and design on the web, because... well, IT'S FREE!
Code sample complete, too.
See 3D On The Web. CHEAP!! for the cheapest book on 3D programming and design on the web, because... well, IT'S FREE!
Code sample complete, too.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
3D On The Cheap: You Say You Want A Revolution?
When I was a young musician, I owned a 1966 VW Microbus just like my hero, Arlo Guthrie. As with most trends, a practical reason drove the adoption of cheap technologies: a '66 VW bus had gears on the wheels that enabled a 40hp engine to push a heavy load a long ways reliably. It wasn't fast off the line but it was very cheap. For the young musician starting out, a van that hauled equipment, a bass player and two girls we picked up at the last gig to the next gig, that was a miracle of modern technology and the market.
Today I have less hair, the same bass player, and I married a girl that rode in that Microbus; so, regardless of the zeitgeist, a good affordable technology goes a long way toward getting you to the first gig and the last. My philosophy of cheap powerful tools has not changed; only the gig. I make 3D worlds.
Courtesy of Tony Parisi and Keith Victor and Media Machines, there is a cheap 3D editor that can do what that VW microbus could do: get you to the gig on time and under budget. In fact, unlike that bus which cost me $250 in 1973 dollars, this 3D is editor is FREE!
Yes, go to Media Machines and download your own copy compliments of the VRML/X3D community that has its roots in the early days of the web that had its roots in the early days of Free Beer world that had its roots in the Summer of Love. Make of that what you will, you can't haggle with a free lunch, and yes, they do exist. So let's take this buggy out to a gig.
Today, we are making pots. No, not the Gaz-Giz kind, but the kind you put in your new virtual apartment. You have one of those, yes? Everyone who is anyone does. Geez…
To do this, we use a feature sometimes called by graphics geeks, the Surface of Revolution. It sounds cool and it is. I don't understand a lot of graphicsGeekSpeak and you probably don't either, so say, Amen and move on. Think of the Surface of Revolution as a potter's wheel or a lathe. When the object is turned, it takes the shape where ever you are pressing on the clay or the cutting blade touches the wood or metal. In Virtual Reality, all of this is virtual. Makes sense, yes? You place points to create a line that describes the outline of one side of the pot, press the Show Me button, and the computer makes the shape. It doesn't get easier than that. Or cheaper.
If you have downloaded and installed the Flux Studio 2.0 editor, open it. On the left are the windows that display what you build. Think of these as your scribing surface, drawing panel, back-of-an-IHOP-napkin. These are where objects are displayed. Parallel and on the upper right is a Treeview control that enables you to select objects by their name and position them in the scene relative to other objects. Below that is the dialog that displays the properties of these objects. Of you select an object in the Treeview, the dialog below will show you its adjustable properties. These are displayed as tabs.
At the top are drop down menus. There are icons beneath and around the borders for different construction techniques. Click on the Create menu.
In the figure above, you see the drop down Create menu. Click the Create Revolution menu item. Take a moment to enjoy that thought.
A pair of small windows pop up on the screen. The one on the left is a drawing pane. Here is where you place, move, add and delete the points of the line that is a silhouette of the shape of your revolution. If you have a copy of the Jefferson Airplane "Volunteers", now is a good time to put it on. On the left of the screen in the Treeview, notice the small vase-like icon with the label "Revolution: Revolution1". The label is duplicated in the dialog "General Node Parameters" below.
The window to the left of the drawing pane is the control window for creating revolutions. As labeled below, you see that each button changes what the cursor does when you click in the drawing pane.
Surface of Revolution Control Panel
Insert point: adds a point
Add to end: the main control that adds points to either end of the line.
Move point: click on a point and pull it to the position desired.
Delete point: enuff said
Close points: this creates a closed shape.
Show grid: turns the grid on and off.
Snap to grid: forces entered points to be on a grid line.
Update: actually the "Update Solid and Close Window" command. Geeky. This is the command to create the revolution and close the two windows. It looks like an OK hand gesture. A V for Victory might have been more Revolutionary but Ok is Ok.
Want a revolution? Got the revolution!
Play with these. Enter some points, make some lines, pull them, delete them, have fun. Notice that the shape can be made smoother or jagged by adding and deleting points. If you push them out, you get ridges. If you push them in, you get a groovier pot. Enjoy the moment.
Hint: the line should close on the diagonals on the left if you want the shape to be symmetrical and close at the top or bottom. If you want the top or bottom to be open, don't push the points to the line. After you make one or two, you'll get the idea. This is very easy stuff but the results are spectacular.
There is your line. It looks like the alien that came to Serve Man in the Twilight Zone.
Select the Update/Ok/ShowMeShapesOfThingsToCome icon. Whew! You've made a short squat top. Ok, that is a backwards pot. What can you expect from a dyslexic?
Notice the lines around the shape. These are the vertices that make up the shape. Vertices create faces. Each area in the lines is an individual face. Look at the dialog on the left. You can change the number of faces that make up the shape by adding or subtracting from the # of Sides property on the Shape tab (the icon that looks like a pot). A higher number creates more faces and a smoother shape. A smooth surface looks good, but the more faces you add, the slower the animation. In any world with a single object, you can make a perfect rendering but as the world gets more objects, the world slows down noticeably. Be prudent when building these one at a time with an eye toward putting them into a more complex world later.
At the bottom is a button labeled, "Edit Cross Section". If you click on this, you will re-open the drawing and control windows. Try it. This lets you look at the shape, then go back and edit it some more. Computers are way better than potter's wheel and lathes in this respect. You don't have to throw mistakes away.
The window with the shape is divided into four different views: top, front, right and ISO. Where is left? Don't ask. The Man might be listening. If you have a mouse with a thumbwheel, when a view is selected, you can use the wheel to bring the shape closer or further away. This is very handy for doing detail work on an object..
Click inside the Front View. Note that the lines go away and you can see your shape. Note also that the properties tab goes away. Not to worry. If you click on the vase with the label Revolution 1 in the TreeView, the properties dialog reappears.
If you don't like the size, you can change it by changing the scale. One way to do that is to select the scale command from a menu that you don't see. Right click in the Surface edit window and a floating dialog appears. It duplicates commands on the other menus and adds more. If you want to scale the top, select the Mirror/Scale/Rot (rotation) menu item.
Scaling is pretty obvious, but there is one beyond cool into marvelous feature there. Let's take a little side trip in our magic bus: notice the modest self-effacing Background Image menu item. Select it. This opens a dialog like the one you will use to paint the top as explained below.
When you select an image here, it is loaded into the Surface of Revolution drawing window so that you can use it to trace points on a complex image. Now that is just simply hot. I used an image my friends may remember from my past VRML work. It is the symbol of a certain very hot British songstress. Never will meet her; never will forget her. Kate rules.
Play with the other options as you have time. Remember you have a help file if you need to decrypt the geek speak.
At this point, you may want to look at the shape in 3D space instead of in the three views. At the top of the Flux window third row, second from the left is an icon that looks like a Windows window with a cube in it. Note I said, top, not the left side where there is also a Cube. That is for making cubes, not looking at them. Droplets optional.
Click on the Top cube. This will open the Flux Studio preview window.
There is your top in all its 3D glory. Pretty cool stuff. Notice the controls along the bottom. These enable you to move the shape around in the preview window as well as take screen snaps. This preview window is a window in the editor. Your editing commands are still on the dropdown at the top. Click on the button on the far left at the bottom with the X inside it. This will close the preview window and return you to the editor.
If you wanted a red top, you have one. On the other hand, virtual reality is psychedelic stuff and painted tops are way more psychedelic. In olden daze, we would whip out some dayglo paints so we could spin it over and over and over looking at colors whirling around and say, "Wow! Man!"
These days we can do much better than that. We can plaster pictures right on that surface with the click of a button. Click on the TreeView icon Revolution1 as before to open the properties window. Select the tab for the single texture as shown in the figure below.
Look at the properties dialog. There is a text entry box with a folder button to the right. This is for finding and loading a texture from a directory on your computer. Hint: it pays to collect textures from everywhere legal that you can get them and keep them. Cut up photos. Any spot on a photo that is reasonably flat facing you is a good candidate. Even if it is slightly skewed, you can use PhotoShop or even lowly Paint Brush skew commands to bring it back close to square. Making textures is a good hobby and it fills the time waiting for Battlestar Galactica to return.
Notice that the dialog also lets you use movie textures such as animated gifs or even, those movies you are hiding from your kids. If you want a spinning top with Auntie Grizelda picking you up as a baby or an animation of geeks playing leap frog, have at. This is your world. No one can tell you what to do here. Way better than dayglo.
Click on the folder icon. This will open a File Dialog for finding and opening images. Note that it also optionally will display thumbnails of the images in any directory you open. This is handy, but since thumbnails aren't always large enough to see what they really are, any image you select is automatically opened in a larger preview window. This is very very cool.
For my version of the top, I've selected a free stock photo of a wild rose. I'm an aging flower child. Sue me.
Hit the open button and the texture is automatically applied to the shape in the drawing pane. That's it. Not a single geeky graphics chore in the lot.
But you may want to adjust it. Images are sometimes too large, too small, or upside down, or sideways. Not to worry. If you look back at texture properties window, you will see Drag options. Having Drag options is one of the most spiritual choices aging flower children and some nightclubs could ever dream of.
Select the Drag To Scale if it is not selected, then put your cursor on the shape in the drawing pane. Move it up and down or left and right. Notice the image on the shape gets bigger and smaller, or multiplies. This allows you to set the texture sizes and positions to your tastes. You can also enter values into the text boxes.
When you have more time, play around with the Multi-texture features. This lets you use multiple textures on the same shape not as additional pictures, but as a composite that changes the appearance by making it more luminous…. Eyurp… shinier, or gives it bumps like fabric by combining the textures in special geeky ways. You can waste many weekends playing with this feature.
The next to last step is to look at your master work in a real 3D viewer. Flux Studio comes bundled with Flux, an X3D/VRML viewer. When you select the button at the top left of the Flux Studio window, the one that has X3D in stoned looking letters (who makes this stuff up?), the shape automatically opens up in the Flux viewers. Play with the controls to fly around it, rotate/examine it. Welcome to Virtual Reality!
You want to save the top. Select the File command at the top far left. You can save your file as:
A Flux file. The editor internal format that enables it to be reloaded without importing it.
An X3D file. This is the new version of VRML97. It has two syntax options: the classic curly syntax or XML. X3D has more features than VRML97 and improved modeling fidelity. Spend some time on the web lists learning about these.
VRML97: the original Virtual Reality Modeling Language (version 2) still in wide use today.
Compressed or uncompressed: the file can be saved as a gzip file for better life as a good netizen (say smaller and faster). Or if you like to hack inside the language itself, save it out as uncompressed and you can open it in PFE (Professional File Editor) for VRML or any of the amazing XML editors. Making objects in Flux Studio then studying the uncompressed file is a good way to learn the language.
This is a vase I made with Flux Studio for a temple in the River of Life VRML/X3D Virtual Reality world. My wife wants one these for her real world knick knack shelves. This proves the online world and the real world are not only blurring, they are feeding on the same karma which is ultimately, the same thing. Very zen.
The image on the vase is from a real Hindu temple wall panel.
In the old days, I would have stashed combustible comestibles in this. Today, I'd keep it for my cremation remains.
Ashes to ashes... bus to dust.
Namaste!
Today I have less hair, the same bass player, and I married a girl that rode in that Microbus; so, regardless of the zeitgeist, a good affordable technology goes a long way toward getting you to the first gig and the last. My philosophy of cheap powerful tools has not changed; only the gig. I make 3D worlds.
Courtesy of Tony Parisi and Keith Victor and Media Machines, there is a cheap 3D editor that can do what that VW microbus could do: get you to the gig on time and under budget. In fact, unlike that bus which cost me $250 in 1973 dollars, this 3D is editor is FREE!
Yes, go to Media Machines and download your own copy compliments of the VRML/X3D community that has its roots in the early days of the web that had its roots in the early days of Free Beer world that had its roots in the Summer of Love. Make of that what you will, you can't haggle with a free lunch, and yes, they do exist. So let's take this buggy out to a gig.
Today, we are making pots. No, not the Gaz-Giz kind, but the kind you put in your new virtual apartment. You have one of those, yes? Everyone who is anyone does. Geez…
To do this, we use a feature sometimes called by graphics geeks, the Surface of Revolution. It sounds cool and it is. I don't understand a lot of graphicsGeekSpeak and you probably don't either, so say, Amen and move on. Think of the Surface of Revolution as a potter's wheel or a lathe. When the object is turned, it takes the shape where ever you are pressing on the clay or the cutting blade touches the wood or metal. In Virtual Reality, all of this is virtual. Makes sense, yes? You place points to create a line that describes the outline of one side of the pot, press the Show Me button, and the computer makes the shape. It doesn't get easier than that. Or cheaper.
If you have downloaded and installed the Flux Studio 2.0 editor, open it. On the left are the windows that display what you build. Think of these as your scribing surface, drawing panel, back-of-an-IHOP-napkin. These are where objects are displayed. Parallel and on the upper right is a Treeview control that enables you to select objects by their name and position them in the scene relative to other objects. Below that is the dialog that displays the properties of these objects. Of you select an object in the Treeview, the dialog below will show you its adjustable properties. These are displayed as tabs.
At the top are drop down menus. There are icons beneath and around the borders for different construction techniques. Click on the Create menu.
In the figure above, you see the drop down Create menu. Click the Create Revolution menu item. Take a moment to enjoy that thought.
A pair of small windows pop up on the screen. The one on the left is a drawing pane. Here is where you place, move, add and delete the points of the line that is a silhouette of the shape of your revolution. If you have a copy of the Jefferson Airplane "Volunteers", now is a good time to put it on. On the left of the screen in the Treeview, notice the small vase-like icon with the label "Revolution: Revolution1". The label is duplicated in the dialog "General Node Parameters" below.
The window to the left of the drawing pane is the control window for creating revolutions. As labeled below, you see that each button changes what the cursor does when you click in the drawing pane.
Surface of Revolution Control Panel
Want a revolution? Got the revolution!
Play with these. Enter some points, make some lines, pull them, delete them, have fun. Notice that the shape can be made smoother or jagged by adding and deleting points. If you push them out, you get ridges. If you push them in, you get a groovier pot. Enjoy the moment.
Hint: the line should close on the diagonals on the left if you want the shape to be symmetrical and close at the top or bottom. If you want the top or bottom to be open, don't push the points to the line. After you make one or two, you'll get the idea. This is very easy stuff but the results are spectacular.
There is your line. It looks like the alien that came to Serve Man in the Twilight Zone.
Select the Update/Ok/ShowMeShapesOfThingsToCome icon. Whew! You've made a short squat top. Ok, that is a backwards pot. What can you expect from a dyslexic?
Notice the lines around the shape. These are the vertices that make up the shape. Vertices create faces. Each area in the lines is an individual face. Look at the dialog on the left. You can change the number of faces that make up the shape by adding or subtracting from the # of Sides property on the Shape tab (the icon that looks like a pot). A higher number creates more faces and a smoother shape. A smooth surface looks good, but the more faces you add, the slower the animation. In any world with a single object, you can make a perfect rendering but as the world gets more objects, the world slows down noticeably. Be prudent when building these one at a time with an eye toward putting them into a more complex world later.
At the bottom is a button labeled, "Edit Cross Section". If you click on this, you will re-open the drawing and control windows. Try it. This lets you look at the shape, then go back and edit it some more. Computers are way better than potter's wheel and lathes in this respect. You don't have to throw mistakes away.
The window with the shape is divided into four different views: top, front, right and ISO. Where is left? Don't ask. The Man might be listening. If you have a mouse with a thumbwheel, when a view is selected, you can use the wheel to bring the shape closer or further away. This is very handy for doing detail work on an object..
Click inside the Front View. Note that the lines go away and you can see your shape. Note also that the properties tab goes away. Not to worry. If you click on the vase with the label Revolution 1 in the TreeView, the properties dialog reappears.
If you don't like the size, you can change it by changing the scale. One way to do that is to select the scale command from a menu that you don't see. Right click in the Surface edit window and a floating dialog appears. It duplicates commands on the other menus and adds more. If you want to scale the top, select the Mirror/Scale/Rot (rotation) menu item.
Scaling is pretty obvious, but there is one beyond cool into marvelous feature there. Let's take a little side trip in our magic bus: notice the modest self-effacing Background Image menu item. Select it. This opens a dialog like the one you will use to paint the top as explained below.
When you select an image here, it is loaded into the Surface of Revolution drawing window so that you can use it to trace points on a complex image. Now that is just simply hot. I used an image my friends may remember from my past VRML work. It is the symbol of a certain very hot British songstress. Never will meet her; never will forget her. Kate rules.
Play with the other options as you have time. Remember you have a help file if you need to decrypt the geek speak.
At this point, you may want to look at the shape in 3D space instead of in the three views. At the top of the Flux window third row, second from the left is an icon that looks like a Windows window with a cube in it. Note I said, top, not the left side where there is also a Cube. That is for making cubes, not looking at them. Droplets optional.
Click on the Top cube. This will open the Flux Studio preview window.
There is your top in all its 3D glory. Pretty cool stuff. Notice the controls along the bottom. These enable you to move the shape around in the preview window as well as take screen snaps. This preview window is a window in the editor. Your editing commands are still on the dropdown at the top. Click on the button on the far left at the bottom with the X inside it. This will close the preview window and return you to the editor.
If you wanted a red top, you have one. On the other hand, virtual reality is psychedelic stuff and painted tops are way more psychedelic. In olden daze, we would whip out some dayglo paints so we could spin it over and over and over looking at colors whirling around and say, "Wow! Man!"
These days we can do much better than that. We can plaster pictures right on that surface with the click of a button. Click on the TreeView icon Revolution1 as before to open the properties window. Select the tab for the single texture as shown in the figure below.
Look at the properties dialog. There is a text entry box with a folder button to the right. This is for finding and loading a texture from a directory on your computer. Hint: it pays to collect textures from everywhere legal that you can get them and keep them. Cut up photos. Any spot on a photo that is reasonably flat facing you is a good candidate. Even if it is slightly skewed, you can use PhotoShop or even lowly Paint Brush skew commands to bring it back close to square. Making textures is a good hobby and it fills the time waiting for Battlestar Galactica to return.
Notice that the dialog also lets you use movie textures such as animated gifs or even, those movies you are hiding from your kids. If you want a spinning top with Auntie Grizelda picking you up as a baby or an animation of geeks playing leap frog, have at. This is your world. No one can tell you what to do here. Way better than dayglo.
Click on the folder icon. This will open a File Dialog for finding and opening images. Note that it also optionally will display thumbnails of the images in any directory you open. This is handy, but since thumbnails aren't always large enough to see what they really are, any image you select is automatically opened in a larger preview window. This is very very cool.
For my version of the top, I've selected a free stock photo of a wild rose. I'm an aging flower child. Sue me.
Hit the open button and the texture is automatically applied to the shape in the drawing pane. That's it. Not a single geeky graphics chore in the lot.
But you may want to adjust it. Images are sometimes too large, too small, or upside down, or sideways. Not to worry. If you look back at texture properties window, you will see Drag options. Having Drag options is one of the most spiritual choices aging flower children and some nightclubs could ever dream of.
Select the Drag To Scale if it is not selected, then put your cursor on the shape in the drawing pane. Move it up and down or left and right. Notice the image on the shape gets bigger and smaller, or multiplies. This allows you to set the texture sizes and positions to your tastes. You can also enter values into the text boxes.
When you have more time, play around with the Multi-texture features. This lets you use multiple textures on the same shape not as additional pictures, but as a composite that changes the appearance by making it more luminous…. Eyurp… shinier, or gives it bumps like fabric by combining the textures in special geeky ways. You can waste many weekends playing with this feature.
The next to last step is to look at your master work in a real 3D viewer. Flux Studio comes bundled with Flux, an X3D/VRML viewer. When you select the button at the top left of the Flux Studio window, the one that has X3D in stoned looking letters (who makes this stuff up?), the shape automatically opens up in the Flux viewers. Play with the controls to fly around it, rotate/examine it. Welcome to Virtual Reality!
You want to save the top. Select the File command at the top far left. You can save your file as:
VRML97: the original Virtual Reality Modeling Language (version 2) still in wide use today.
This is a vase I made with Flux Studio for a temple in the River of Life VRML/X3D Virtual Reality world. My wife wants one these for her real world knick knack shelves. This proves the online world and the real world are not only blurring, they are feeding on the same karma which is ultimately, the same thing. Very zen.
The image on the vase is from a real Hindu temple wall panel.
In the old days, I would have stashed combustible comestibles in this. Today, I'd keep it for my cremation remains.
Ashes to ashes... bus to dust.
Namaste!
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Why Numbers Matter
There was a recent request for numbers of web3D developers by which the seeker was trying to differentiate Second Life and WoW from the VRML/X3D developers and users. The reply made was that SL and WoW are monolithic applications, not standard 3D languages. Comparing these numbers can misinform. If the numbers misinform, then perhaps we shouldn't look for the numbers.
Perhaps we should look at why the numbers happen.
<personalRantFollows />
What is in the content? Why does some number of users go to SL? Why does some number of developers keep developing in VRML97 or X3D? Is SL really an entertainment site or is it the new page metaphor, a world metaphor that wraps activities that people want to do communally? What are the activities that draw them there? Is it entertainment or sales? Or is it what works in most media: entertainment financed by sales? Google is a search company being financed by ads. They used that to expand the activities they support such as user-generated content that enables them to provide targeted ads. Isn't SL a VR world that provides activities to focus sales? Is that what the Toyota Scion site is (shop and race)? Doesn't this combine sales and games just as Google combines search and ads?
The numbers don't interest me as much as the activities. I build content but I don't think the content I build is relevant to those business models any more than network news is relevant to selling hybrids unless they pair news pieces on hybrids with advertisements for Prius's and they do. So how is my content relevant to a revenue generating activity? Do I care? Should I? Well, sure, but maybe the art I make is more relevant to showing other artists (in my case, musicians) how they can return to a profit basis for writing songs? Where do I sell that?
I suppose the real basis for wanting numbers is to show that there is traffic, eyeballs as some used to say, to prove one generates profit-seeking activities. Businesses need those profits or they have to cut quality or services.
There is no free lunch and damm little justice, but karma and duty to the investors are very reliable. So when you look at numbers and what generates numbers, remember you have to keep making more than you made last year to keep investors happy, so you will have to enter into some kind of bargain for access to those eyeballs just as CNet has to put an article up a day on SL and SL has to pay marketing to see to it they do. Restructuring and leveraged buy outs are crueler than the hook in the shiny lure to the fishbrains who swim toward them without hesitation.
Numbers aren't the only reason for doing this. We did Irishspace a) because we could b) because it was fun c) because we were asked and d) because we could make something good happen for a small village trying to make something good happen for their children. None of that is wrong. All of it is valued for some n of value. Did it generate numbers? It did in Tralee and almost a decade later, I had the pleasure with my wife and kids of seeing the real world Jeanie Johnston sail into Savannah harbor and I had a round with the crew. Did it generate big numbers for some n of big. Nope. Should it have? I don't care. Never did.
I'm not particularly interested in YouTube because videos of fat geeks dancing around their computers bore me. A world of poetry and music and beautiful 3D art with a sultry sad devadasi won't interest a lot of people who are perfectly happy with YouTube and FARK. I don't care. I can't care. The generation gap is as real as age discrimination and there isn't much one can do to change that. My tastes are for slower, classier, deeper emotionally evocative content. I'll take the worst Beethoven string quartet over the best song ever sung on American Idol. It's an age thing.
I do it for the joy of doing it and doing it well. I wish that was a profit-seeking activity but it isn't. It isn't entertainment precisely. It is pleasure seeking, not profit seeking, where the person I'm pleasing is me. So perhaps it is entertainment. It just isn't paced to the nerd subculture of fast, short, thin, pale and lacking in fidelity even if long on earnest spiritual values if not practice.
If that makes me selfish, unconcerned about the numbers, unconcerned about the web, I can only say that I've kept my promise made in Monterey a decade ago to fight for the community, to stick with it. That I've done through the lean times. Heck, I've received email that claims I am personally responsible for the demise of VRML. Maybe I am but I don't think so. It takes a hero to make tragic mistakes of those proportions and I am no hero, just a musician who hacks VRML.
Do we need heros? If this is a time of big numbers, it is not a time of heros. It is a time of men with spreadsheets and revenue estimates, a time Pesce said would come. And I'm glad for that. That means I can work on content, enjoy it, and look for work. Managers you will have a plenty, and they will have you too.
Numbers are not the cause of art. They are sometimes a side effect of it, but I'm not clever enough to predict when that will happen. If 2ndLifers want to look at what I do any time soon, they'll have to download an X3D/VRML app. The only good news for me there is that if they want to do that in ten years, it will probably still work on at least one viewer. If SL can make that claim in 2017 given the pressures to make profits and sustain growing numbers, my hat is off to them. By that time, good Lord willing and the oceans don't rise, I'll use Flux to convert it again.
The key to content is that if it is good enough, it keeps being converted and rehosted... year after year, platform after platform. Ask the folks who own the American song bag about that.
Numbers matter. Content cycles. That's why standards trump platforms.
I want a longer cycle even if at a lower profit. If I don't get that, at least I had more fun trying. Rick Nelson had it right:
Perhaps we should look at why the numbers happen.
<personalRantFollows />
What is in the content? Why does some number of users go to SL? Why does some number of developers keep developing in VRML97 or X3D? Is SL really an entertainment site or is it the new page metaphor, a world metaphor that wraps activities that people want to do communally? What are the activities that draw them there? Is it entertainment or sales? Or is it what works in most media: entertainment financed by sales? Google is a search company being financed by ads. They used that to expand the activities they support such as user-generated content that enables them to provide targeted ads. Isn't SL a VR world that provides activities to focus sales? Is that what the Toyota Scion site is (shop and race)? Doesn't this combine sales and games just as Google combines search and ads?
The numbers don't interest me as much as the activities. I build content but I don't think the content I build is relevant to those business models any more than network news is relevant to selling hybrids unless they pair news pieces on hybrids with advertisements for Prius's and they do. So how is my content relevant to a revenue generating activity? Do I care? Should I? Well, sure, but maybe the art I make is more relevant to showing other artists (in my case, musicians) how they can return to a profit basis for writing songs? Where do I sell that?
I suppose the real basis for wanting numbers is to show that there is traffic, eyeballs as some used to say, to prove one generates profit-seeking activities. Businesses need those profits or they have to cut quality or services.
There is no free lunch and damm little justice, but karma and duty to the investors are very reliable. So when you look at numbers and what generates numbers, remember you have to keep making more than you made last year to keep investors happy, so you will have to enter into some kind of bargain for access to those eyeballs just as CNet has to put an article up a day on SL and SL has to pay marketing to see to it they do. Restructuring and leveraged buy outs are crueler than the hook in the shiny lure to the fishbrains who swim toward them without hesitation.
Numbers aren't the only reason for doing this. We did Irishspace a) because we could b) because it was fun c) because we were asked and d) because we could make something good happen for a small village trying to make something good happen for their children. None of that is wrong. All of it is valued for some n of value. Did it generate numbers? It did in Tralee and almost a decade later, I had the pleasure with my wife and kids of seeing the real world Jeanie Johnston sail into Savannah harbor and I had a round with the crew. Did it generate big numbers for some n of big. Nope. Should it have? I don't care. Never did.
I'm not particularly interested in YouTube because videos of fat geeks dancing around their computers bore me. A world of poetry and music and beautiful 3D art with a sultry sad devadasi won't interest a lot of people who are perfectly happy with YouTube and FARK. I don't care. I can't care. The generation gap is as real as age discrimination and there isn't much one can do to change that. My tastes are for slower, classier, deeper emotionally evocative content. I'll take the worst Beethoven string quartet over the best song ever sung on American Idol. It's an age thing.
I do it for the joy of doing it and doing it well. I wish that was a profit-seeking activity but it isn't. It isn't entertainment precisely. It is pleasure seeking, not profit seeking, where the person I'm pleasing is me. So perhaps it is entertainment. It just isn't paced to the nerd subculture of fast, short, thin, pale and lacking in fidelity even if long on earnest spiritual values if not practice.
If that makes me selfish, unconcerned about the numbers, unconcerned about the web, I can only say that I've kept my promise made in Monterey a decade ago to fight for the community, to stick with it. That I've done through the lean times. Heck, I've received email that claims I am personally responsible for the demise of VRML. Maybe I am but I don't think so. It takes a hero to make tragic mistakes of those proportions and I am no hero, just a musician who hacks VRML.
Do we need heros? If this is a time of big numbers, it is not a time of heros. It is a time of men with spreadsheets and revenue estimates, a time Pesce said would come. And I'm glad for that. That means I can work on content, enjoy it, and look for work. Managers you will have a plenty, and they will have you too.
Numbers are not the cause of art. They are sometimes a side effect of it, but I'm not clever enough to predict when that will happen. If 2ndLifers want to look at what I do any time soon, they'll have to download an X3D/VRML app. The only good news for me there is that if they want to do that in ten years, it will probably still work on at least one viewer. If SL can make that claim in 2017 given the pressures to make profits and sustain growing numbers, my hat is off to them. By that time, good Lord willing and the oceans don't rise, I'll use Flux to convert it again.
The key to content is that if it is good enough, it keeps being converted and rehosted... year after year, platform after platform. Ask the folks who own the American song bag about that.
Numbers matter. Content cycles. That's why standards trump platforms.
I want a longer cycle even if at a lower profit. If I don't get that, at least I had more fun trying. Rick Nelson had it right:
You can't please everyone, so you got to please yourself.
NEW! Flux Studio 2.0
I use different X3D/VRML editors. Some of them like V-Realm Builder are deadware from the the 1990s but given the stability of the language, still an excellent tool as long as one is building VRML97. Others such as Professional File Editor never go away because a basic ASCII editor has to be in the toolbox of anyone creating works with the web open formats in pointy and curly syntaxes, but again, mostly curly. Some such as Numedia Avatar Studio do one complex task so well and so simply that the tool keeps being downloaded, copied to new servers, distributed and used lonnnggg after the team that produced it is disbanded.
Then something really powerful and affordable (say FREEE!!!) comes out and quickly jumps to the top of the stack. It takes in all of the functions of these editors, complements them, adds even newer and better features, accommodates multiple syntaxes and application languages, and does it all so elegantly that it becomes the workhorse.
Such an editor is Media Machines Flux Studio 2.0.
Provided free for personal use (is there any other kind in 3D?), this is astounding. Flux Studio is the next generation incarnation of a favorite among the furry vermelers, Spazz 3D by Keith Victor. Keith teamed up with one of the VRML inventors, Tony Parisi and his Media Machines company to produce Flux Studio. That's enough history.
3D editors are notoriously expensive beasties when doing high end work. Though there are good free ones such as Blender, most are complex and tend to be useful only by those with a deep understanding and skill set in the mathematics and buzzwords of 3D technology. While Flux has no lack of this, it wraps it in visualization techniques and GUI that make a straightforward work process possible. Features such as multi-texture editing can consume a week of experimentation.
Applying textures and scaling them are simple tasks. Boolean carving is provided. There is a Javascript editor and a Smart Object editor. 3D preview mode (rendering in a 3D browser) is a pushbutton away.
Whereas early VRML editors were strictly VRML editors, Flux Studio imports and exports VRML classic and X3D encodings flawlessly. When converting VRML97 up to X3D, the look of the output is worth the download. Flux Studio scrubs the code and formats it for ease of reading in the ASCII editor. But wait! There is more! Flux Studio can also import and export Google KML files for those doing Google Earth work. The beloved Avatar Studio avatars can be imported and animated using the character animation features.
Extruded text is tough to do without editor support and is an expensive object in the vertex economy but great for startup screens. Flux Studio not only provides it, it provides canned animations. Speaking of this, there are canned animations for cameras as well. Export the code, look at the scripts, and modify to your own needs. There is 2D layer support for HUDs. Very cool!
The complementing product is the Flux Viewer. Also free, this supports streaming media which for the musicians among us, is vital. MP3s are a must have when building kick-ass 3D for the web although I confess I prefer wav files for CD products. Now I can have the best of both.
Soon Flux will have a network node that provides what 3D on the Web builders have needed since the early days: a simple routing mechanism for communications with the web from inside the world without the laborious work involved with setting up Java applets and deep knowledge of network protocol code. This is one feature I am eagerly waiting to see. It is to be demoed at the Perugia conference this spring. Very very cool!
Parisi and Victor continue to provide the Web 3D community a level of dedicated support that is hard to find these days but was so common in the early days of the web. One has to admire that dedication to the values of the pioneers of the web and the continued improvement of the Media Machines product while providing it to the web content community, an underpaid bunch of zealous junkyard dogs by reputation and fact, for a price they can afford: $0. Unreal! The furries say THANK YOU!
Full disclosure: I have zero financial affiliation with Media Machines. I have 100% affiliation with their community values and continued innovation in the open web 3D market.
Then something really powerful and affordable (say FREEE!!!) comes out and quickly jumps to the top of the stack. It takes in all of the functions of these editors, complements them, adds even newer and better features, accommodates multiple syntaxes and application languages, and does it all so elegantly that it becomes the workhorse.
Such an editor is Media Machines Flux Studio 2.0.
Provided free for personal use (is there any other kind in 3D?), this is astounding. Flux Studio is the next generation incarnation of a favorite among the furry vermelers, Spazz 3D by Keith Victor. Keith teamed up with one of the VRML inventors, Tony Parisi and his Media Machines company to produce Flux Studio. That's enough history.
3D editors are notoriously expensive beasties when doing high end work. Though there are good free ones such as Blender, most are complex and tend to be useful only by those with a deep understanding and skill set in the mathematics and buzzwords of 3D technology. While Flux has no lack of this, it wraps it in visualization techniques and GUI that make a straightforward work process possible. Features such as multi-texture editing can consume a week of experimentation.
Applying textures and scaling them are simple tasks. Boolean carving is provided. There is a Javascript editor and a Smart Object editor. 3D preview mode (rendering in a 3D browser) is a pushbutton away.
Whereas early VRML editors were strictly VRML editors, Flux Studio imports and exports VRML classic and X3D encodings flawlessly. When converting VRML97 up to X3D, the look of the output is worth the download. Flux Studio scrubs the code and formats it for ease of reading in the ASCII editor. But wait! There is more! Flux Studio can also import and export Google KML files for those doing Google Earth work. The beloved Avatar Studio avatars can be imported and animated using the character animation features.
Extruded text is tough to do without editor support and is an expensive object in the vertex economy but great for startup screens. Flux Studio not only provides it, it provides canned animations. Speaking of this, there are canned animations for cameras as well. Export the code, look at the scripts, and modify to your own needs. There is 2D layer support for HUDs. Very cool!
The complementing product is the Flux Viewer. Also free, this supports streaming media which for the musicians among us, is vital. MP3s are a must have when building kick-ass 3D for the web although I confess I prefer wav files for CD products. Now I can have the best of both.
Soon Flux will have a network node that provides what 3D on the Web builders have needed since the early days: a simple routing mechanism for communications with the web from inside the world without the laborious work involved with setting up Java applets and deep knowledge of network protocol code. This is one feature I am eagerly waiting to see. It is to be demoed at the Perugia conference this spring. Very very cool!
Parisi and Victor continue to provide the Web 3D community a level of dedicated support that is hard to find these days but was so common in the early days of the web. One has to admire that dedication to the values of the pioneers of the web and the continued improvement of the Media Machines product while providing it to the web content community, an underpaid bunch of zealous junkyard dogs by reputation and fact, for a price they can afford: $0. Unreal! The furries say THANK YOU!
Full disclosure: I have zero financial affiliation with Media Machines. I have 100% affiliation with their community values and continued innovation in the open web 3D market.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Vista Premiere: Good in the Barn, not On the Dance Floor
I attended a locally-hosted Vista premiere last night. Some observations:
Microsoft should reconsider the policy of having locals present Vista in cities bursting with technologists as the area I live in is. There are too many unanswered questions, not a good pace to the presentation, and the audience comments tend to take over
I won’t buy this soon. The graphics eat any machine more than three years old. If like me, you have one of those Dell’s that can only accept 512k RAM max, you are as we say, SOL.
The voice recognition is impressive. The trouble is what will you do with that? It’s a cool demo when you can speak to Notepad and it gets a very high percentage of that right, but for anything very long, unless you are sight-impaired or arthritic, text composition by typing is a hand-to-eye learned activity and fingers don’t wear out as fast as a voice does. Still it is very impressive.
Did I say the graphics eat the machine? While Aero’s see through panes and 3D-like displays are great eye-candy, I didn’t see anything very productive about them. Is it worth buying another machine to do jobs I can already do with the machine I have? No.
The biggest feature that is appreciably touted in a one hour demo is the improved security. Unfortunately, that is like a demo of the brakes in your car. Until you are in trouble at high speed, it is a nice-to-have when you finally need it, but not a feature that is demo-enhancing. There are better features for setting up a machine but these are not used that often outside of a computer installation shop, so the ratings system that impressed the demo technician doesn’t get more than a yawn out of me. I suspect that there are a lot of new Vista features that are like that. They are real improvements but only in that they fix the glaring bugs of the previous system, or are mostly useful when the system is first set up or to the technicians who do that often. In other words, it is solid, but not sexy.
The almost subtle but possibly most revelatory feature is that the web browser is just another window as it should have always been. In other words, Vista clearly shows that web ubiquity is here but like the ubiquity of paved roads and traffic lights, not to be noticed unless absent.
Overall, I don’t think I’ll be interested in Vista until the applications written for it are so compelling that it is a must have. Microsoft’s mystifying failure to recognize and provide for the hot 3D market is an indicator that once again, their futurists and evangelists are behind the curve the same way Nashville is behind New York and Los Angeles when it comes to music. The Music Row mindset is very good at getting out product that the middle of the demographics wanted yesterday, but not so good at changing mindsets for a new and different paradigm of user-computer interaction, much less the follow-on social interactions that come of systems who’s main application is human-to-human communication.
So far, Vista looks good in the barn, but not on the dance floor.
Overall, I don’t think I’ll be interested in Vista until the applications written for it are so compelling that it is a must have. Microsoft’s mystifying failure to recognize and provide for the hot 3D market is an indicator that once again, their futurists and evangelists are behind the curve the same way Nashville is behind New York and Los Angeles when it comes to music. The Music Row mindset is very good at getting out product that the middle of the demographics wanted yesterday, but not so good at changing mindsets for a new and different paradigm of user-computer interaction, much less the follow-on social interactions that come of systems who’s main application is human-to-human communication.
So far, Vista looks good in the barn, but not on the dance floor.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Emergence Juju
Real time 3D engines are the kinds of toys Georg Cantor wished he had.
I was taught that a computer was like a sewing machine; set the pattern and it will repeat that pattern without fail endlessly. Math buffs know different and why. Programmers live with the digital uncertainty and keep their fingers crossed that nobody is ever silly enough to let the machines run the planet or vote.
Every now and then, the VRML/X3D engine I use (BitManagement) will surprise me. One example is when the headlight turns itself on or other bits of randomness like binding to a new viewpoint without warning (typically when in motion), or routed events that don't fire even when the code is apparently correct, usually lights or sound events.
One tonight was grand. The opening title world has a golden fog node in it to give the sequence a bit of hazy slow depth (a hazy shade of summer?). Anywho, when the replaceWorld script fired, it replaced all of the nodes as it is commanded to do, then randomly turned the golden fog back on a few seconds after the new world loaded. It hung around quite neatly until the purple fog timer fired and replaced it (a scheduled purple haze all around her brain). That's a stack error but it looked mondo neat until it disappeared.
Part of the fun of real-time 3D is pseudo-randomness. Some behaviors emerge because different timers conspire to create different appearances in scheduled sequences such as the boat ride or when the camera follows Kamala. Others creep out when the software bugs conspire to play tricks on the author. Both would be in the bag if I could get the engine to do them twice, but are so much cooler because they won't.
Ya gotta love this stuff when the world starts hitting a level of complexity that it really does become emergent as chaos drives the evolution of a scene. I wrote it and I've been through it thousands of times and it still surprises me. Good juju.
... or bugs. Hard to tell the difference sometimes. Maybe that is why evolution horrifies creationists. They keep thinking someone or something is in control when in fact, it just wrote the scene and is now watching for the fascination of not knowing. They believe they are rooting for God when in fact, it was Lucifer that was horrified by the messiness and unknowingly, they've joined the wrong team.
If nothing is beyond the infinite, maybe Friedrich August von Hayek's 'necessary ignorance' is that nothing that has to be in the plan to satisfy the creative urge.
I was taught that a computer was like a sewing machine; set the pattern and it will repeat that pattern without fail endlessly. Math buffs know different and why. Programmers live with the digital uncertainty and keep their fingers crossed that nobody is ever silly enough to let the machines run the planet or vote.
Every now and then, the VRML/X3D engine I use (BitManagement) will surprise me. One example is when the headlight turns itself on or other bits of randomness like binding to a new viewpoint without warning (typically when in motion), or routed events that don't fire even when the code is apparently correct, usually lights or sound events.
One tonight was grand. The opening title world has a golden fog node in it to give the sequence a bit of hazy slow depth (a hazy shade of summer?). Anywho, when the replaceWorld script fired, it replaced all of the nodes as it is commanded to do, then randomly turned the golden fog back on a few seconds after the new world loaded. It hung around quite neatly until the purple fog timer fired and replaced it (a scheduled purple haze all around her brain). That's a stack error but it looked mondo neat until it disappeared.
Part of the fun of real-time 3D is pseudo-randomness. Some behaviors emerge because different timers conspire to create different appearances in scheduled sequences such as the boat ride or when the camera follows Kamala. Others creep out when the software bugs conspire to play tricks on the author. Both would be in the bag if I could get the engine to do them twice, but are so much cooler because they won't.
Ya gotta love this stuff when the world starts hitting a level of complexity that it really does become emergent as chaos drives the evolution of a scene. I wrote it and I've been through it thousands of times and it still surprises me. Good juju.
... or bugs. Hard to tell the difference sometimes. Maybe that is why evolution horrifies creationists. They keep thinking someone or something is in control when in fact, it just wrote the scene and is now watching for the fascination of not knowing. They believe they are rooting for God when in fact, it was Lucifer that was horrified by the messiness and unknowingly, they've joined the wrong team.
If nothing is beyond the infinite, maybe Friedrich August von Hayek's 'necessary ignorance' is that nothing that has to be in the plan to satisfy the creative urge.
Friday, February 09, 2007
Is VRML Dead? Part II (No, It just smells funny)
Our colleague in France, Eric Maranne, wrote back to me:
Eric is a prodigious author of VRML applications, ahem VR applications for public safety and homeland security. Being familiar with his work, I can say with sincerity, he is very serious. Still I have to reply contentiously being a contender and not one to let sleeping dogs lie or even sleep around much.
I don't mind at all, Eric.
As I said, I'm still authoring a VRML97 application. At some point, I'll transform it up to being an X3D world. Why do I use this dead language? It still works and I have the tools and the training. Convenience trumps standards and latest and greatest until someone pays for the transition. And you know something, when a technology is convenient, IT NEVER DIES. As one pundit pointed out, Fortran and Cobol are still alive. That is supposed to be a criticism until you find out how much Cobol is running your bank accounts today and into the foreseeable future and how much Fortran is running missile control systems worldwide.
The fun of all of those quotes in part one is a) they tend to lead eventually back to one or two groups of people and b) they don't ever make a case for why it is technically dead. They just keep beating the horse, the Famous Mr. Dead. And we all know that Mr. Dead Will Never Speak.
Let's say they are right. In fact, yes, VRML97 (not VR: everyone likes that term in the marketing department despite the fact that very few definitions for it hold up under case-based examination), is dead. X3D has replaced it and VR and a host of other applications are being built with X3D now. Let's not debate that because we both know we are debating a syntax, a handful of nodes, and some improvements in the object model.
The not fun is they created an impression across the web that the ISO-standard technology isn't worth working with. Note Peddie's comments. He never says why we are furry or why he might get all of those emails. He just dismisses the whole idea. Clay Shirky tried that too but Clay got so much nastry feedback, being the trendster he is, he has stepped back to reevaluate and now decided that 3D is useful but the winner is games. Raph Koster, a former creative director at Sony, (Sony was once a very serious player in the VRML market) says 'no one serious' works with VRML but misses completely the serious applications in public safety, in homeland security, in cultural training, in scenario based simulations for terrorist defense, for medical applications, in fact, in so many applications we have to look for where it isn't being applied.
Well, that's easy: big dollar games online or offline. Hmmm ... a theme.
Now one comment made was quite cogent: we are of the first generation of the web. Some of us are actually cavemen who taught the first generation to walk upright, but I digress and don't want to upset my knuckle draggin' cousin in the Geico commercial. The point is fair though: the upcoming generation simply doesn't care. As with most new generations, they tend to dis whatever their parents did when they were teens, get lost in their twenties in a bar somewhere, and in the their thirties, get married and bring back their parents' music as 'classics'.
I suspect that is where VRML97 ends up but the point is, they will believe what they read and adopt what they experience among their own peers. They have been learning game building from Unreal and Quake engines. They can't imagine why one can't build online games with high performance and they won't accept excuses because they've seen it done. They may or may not know too much about the optimizations of those engines or those designs or care that highly optimized engines aren't generically applicable.
Now we look around at the gaming market itself. I'm no expert but if what I read is right, it's a very expensive undertaking for competitive products. So anyone trying to do something new or investment worthy in that space starts looking at adjacent markets if they don't have the budgets for the game to accompany the movie "Anna Nicole: Her Second Life" particularly since there is no mystery about her death: her first life killed her.
Lo and behold, thanks to SL, there are the social networking applications that with their vast expertise, can be turned into games. And because this is the web and we all know the web is about interoperability and interchangeability, in short, it is a standards game, they are learning the game of standards.
Sounds good, really but is the gaming community, historically a community of one-off testosterone charged couldn't get laid in high school geeks the right community to create "real standards for 3D On The Web"? I dunno.
Could be. If the cavemen couldn't make a go of it, maybe the Cro-Magnons can.
But the serious question for serious thinkers is are games the right place to create a core set of standards for all of the diverse applications for 3D On The Web. I think games are a sub-genre of real-time 3D and that the goals of game designers are very different from the goals of medical applications. The goals of say 'cultural immersion' applications have a bit more in common with games but maybe not as much as the 'immersive album' can.
The criteria one might look at is does the user get emotionally involved when using the application? I'm not going to spend time here investigating as the VR academics do, why people become emotionally involved. We did those rants about VR in the 90s. The fact is, people are emotionally attached to everything from their remote controls to their garage openers to the outcome of American Idol judging, so maybe that is too common an experience to be worthy of a PhD thesis. One might get emotionally involved with a real-time 3D rendering of a cave mining system (I'm sure the cavemen do) or a plot of the brain centers activated in autistic children, but likely the emotionally involved will be the audience: parents, and not the users, not the doctors. For these applications of real-time 3D or VR, I don't think emotional involvement is the point of the presentation as it is with a game.
The fact of something being VR or a game or any real-time 3D genre is the styles, constraint and goals for the users of the *content type*, not necessarily the technology. People will not know or care about the technology underneath; they will know one when they see one or play one. That's all the buying public actually cares about.
So now, what should be the features of core standards for 3D on the Web? The new generation hasn't revealed that yet. And I think it is a safe bet that they won't until their products are fielded. Then while they try to keep their heads above the shakeout, they may open source their products, and of course, open source is what standards are all about. Of Course Of Course, just ask the horse.
I'll bet that after a shakeout, these people who have so actively diss'ed VRML and now X3D, these so 'serious that we have to invent our own standards' will replicate what is already in the ISO standard, but take a lot longer to achieve its buy in ACROSS the applications or in currently investing organizations because they don't have the experience across the applications or in cooperating to build a standard across companies, across communities. In short, I doubt they have the process skills, the legal expertise or the sheer selfless tenacity to see to it that the outcome creates the greatest good for the greatest number.
Yes they'll have products. No doubt. But standards? I think we'll see a lot of motion but no results. It's a familiar story in all businesses these days, but on the web, it is already as the musicians say, a standard.
Yes, we really should listen to what they have to say and if it is different note that, and if it is better *embrace and extend* it. And if it is neither, put that fact with URLs for supporting facts on billboards from San Francisco to San Juan, at least, in virtual reality representations of those places.
Why? Because that is how the west was won: advertising ... and a dead horse.
Do you mind if, for me, I'd like to consider X3D as *a* VRML ? I may be old school but I don't care using VRML or X3D. I use both ...
It's just that X3D is a VR Modelling Language for me, and that's what for I'm using it. VRML isn't dead... some people keep on calling it X3D, I'm not, that's all. I for myself am authoring VR, not X stuff (my mother wouldn't like it), nor simply 3D (I'm so bad at 3D I couldn't sell it). Please read X3D when I write VRML, unless I speak of VRML of course. Useless thread. Eric.
Eric is a prodigious author of VRML applications, ahem VR applications for public safety and homeland security. Being familiar with his work, I can say with sincerity, he is very serious. Still I have to reply contentiously being a contender and not one to let sleeping dogs lie or even sleep around much.
I don't mind at all, Eric.
As I said, I'm still authoring a VRML97 application. At some point, I'll transform it up to being an X3D world. Why do I use this dead language? It still works and I have the tools and the training. Convenience trumps standards and latest and greatest until someone pays for the transition. And you know something, when a technology is convenient, IT NEVER DIES. As one pundit pointed out, Fortran and Cobol are still alive. That is supposed to be a criticism until you find out how much Cobol is running your bank accounts today and into the foreseeable future and how much Fortran is running missile control systems worldwide.
The fun of all of those quotes in part one is a) they tend to lead eventually back to one or two groups of people and b) they don't ever make a case for why it is technically dead. They just keep beating the horse, the Famous Mr. Dead. And we all know that Mr. Dead Will Never Speak.
Let's say they are right. In fact, yes, VRML97 (not VR: everyone likes that term in the marketing department despite the fact that very few definitions for it hold up under case-based examination), is dead. X3D has replaced it and VR and a host of other applications are being built with X3D now. Let's not debate that because we both know we are debating a syntax, a handful of nodes, and some improvements in the object model.
The not fun is they created an impression across the web that the ISO-standard technology isn't worth working with. Note Peddie's comments. He never says why we are furry or why he might get all of those emails. He just dismisses the whole idea. Clay Shirky tried that too but Clay got so much nastry feedback, being the trendster he is, he has stepped back to reevaluate and now decided that 3D is useful but the winner is games. Raph Koster, a former creative director at Sony, (Sony was once a very serious player in the VRML market) says 'no one serious' works with VRML but misses completely the serious applications in public safety, in homeland security, in cultural training, in scenario based simulations for terrorist defense, for medical applications, in fact, in so many applications we have to look for where it isn't being applied.
Well, that's easy: big dollar games online or offline. Hmmm ... a theme.
Now one comment made was quite cogent: we are of the first generation of the web. Some of us are actually cavemen who taught the first generation to walk upright, but I digress and don't want to upset my knuckle draggin' cousin in the Geico commercial. The point is fair though: the upcoming generation simply doesn't care. As with most new generations, they tend to dis whatever their parents did when they were teens, get lost in their twenties in a bar somewhere, and in the their thirties, get married and bring back their parents' music as 'classics'.
I suspect that is where VRML97 ends up but the point is, they will believe what they read and adopt what they experience among their own peers. They have been learning game building from Unreal and Quake engines. They can't imagine why one can't build online games with high performance and they won't accept excuses because they've seen it done. They may or may not know too much about the optimizations of those engines or those designs or care that highly optimized engines aren't generically applicable.
Now we look around at the gaming market itself. I'm no expert but if what I read is right, it's a very expensive undertaking for competitive products. So anyone trying to do something new or investment worthy in that space starts looking at adjacent markets if they don't have the budgets for the game to accompany the movie "Anna Nicole: Her Second Life" particularly since there is no mystery about her death: her first life killed her.
Lo and behold, thanks to SL, there are the social networking applications that with their vast expertise, can be turned into games. And because this is the web and we all know the web is about interoperability and interchangeability, in short, it is a standards game, they are learning the game of standards.
Sounds good, really but is the gaming community, historically a community of one-off testosterone charged couldn't get laid in high school geeks the right community to create "real standards for 3D On The Web"? I dunno.
Could be. If the cavemen couldn't make a go of it, maybe the Cro-Magnons can.
But the serious question for serious thinkers is are games the right place to create a core set of standards for all of the diverse applications for 3D On The Web. I think games are a sub-genre of real-time 3D and that the goals of game designers are very different from the goals of medical applications. The goals of say 'cultural immersion' applications have a bit more in common with games but maybe not as much as the 'immersive album' can.
The criteria one might look at is does the user get emotionally involved when using the application? I'm not going to spend time here investigating as the VR academics do, why people become emotionally involved. We did those rants about VR in the 90s. The fact is, people are emotionally attached to everything from their remote controls to their garage openers to the outcome of American Idol judging, so maybe that is too common an experience to be worthy of a PhD thesis. One might get emotionally involved with a real-time 3D rendering of a cave mining system (I'm sure the cavemen do) or a plot of the brain centers activated in autistic children, but likely the emotionally involved will be the audience: parents, and not the users, not the doctors. For these applications of real-time 3D or VR, I don't think emotional involvement is the point of the presentation as it is with a game.
The fact of something being VR or a game or any real-time 3D genre is the styles, constraint and goals for the users of the *content type*, not necessarily the technology. People will not know or care about the technology underneath; they will know one when they see one or play one. That's all the buying public actually cares about.
So now, what should be the features of core standards for 3D on the Web? The new generation hasn't revealed that yet. And I think it is a safe bet that they won't until their products are fielded. Then while they try to keep their heads above the shakeout, they may open source their products, and of course, open source is what standards are all about. Of Course Of Course, just ask the horse.
I'll bet that after a shakeout, these people who have so actively diss'ed VRML and now X3D, these so 'serious that we have to invent our own standards' will replicate what is already in the ISO standard, but take a lot longer to achieve its buy in ACROSS the applications or in currently investing organizations because they don't have the experience across the applications or in cooperating to build a standard across companies, across communities. In short, I doubt they have the process skills, the legal expertise or the sheer selfless tenacity to see to it that the outcome creates the greatest good for the greatest number.
Yes they'll have products. No doubt. But standards? I think we'll see a lot of motion but no results. It's a familiar story in all businesses these days, but on the web, it is already as the musicians say, a standard.
Yes, we really should listen to what they have to say and if it is different note that, and if it is better *embrace and extend* it. And if it is neither, put that fact with URLs for supporting facts on billboards from San Francisco to San Juan, at least, in virtual reality representations of those places.
Why? Because that is how the west was won: advertising ... and a dead horse.
Is VRML Dead? Part I
We're having a contentious debate on the X3D and VRML lists. As usual and not surprisingly to my friends, I'm contending. Loudly as always. This blog has two parts.
Is VRML Dead? Well... yeah.
VRML IS DEAD
Despite the fact that you and I still use it to build, in point of fact of continued features evolution or market uptake, or standardization, it is "really quite sincerely dead" to quote the coroner.
It has been replaced by X3D, the next generation. It lives on in the largesse of the browser vendors who continue to support its nodes in their products but who aren't adding any features that make it into the official ISO standard because, well, that version of the standard is now obsolete. It is generally considered bad to work on obsolete technology unless you happen to be NASA who can't afford to replace a Shuttle every year because the production lines shut down two decades ago, or the guys who paint the Eiffel Tower and fix rusted bolts and the like (where do they get those bolts now?)
Is X3D just dressed up VRML? Someone else can work that rant. But it is certainly the case that it isn't VRML. Casual inspection will reveal that. One can make the case that X3D isn't an improvement. I think that would be on very thin ice.
Worse, VRML is obnoxiously dead, deliberately dead, and celebrated dead. Just plain old quit breathing dead, autopsied and signed out to the coroner dead. How do we know? Well, the wisdom of the crowds thing again. We keep reading about the demise on the web. Time to accept it, yes?
Here are some expert quotes. The first is from a comment on Ajax3D.
http://www.opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/search/label/vrml
Wow Dude. If I had to do it without a dictionary, I'm not sure I could spell 'antediluvian'. Is that the same as "not merely dead"?
http://www.3d-test.com/interviews/jonpeddie_1.htm
Got that last bit right, Jon.
Raph Koster's comment about the yawning reception in the VRML community to the Metaverse Summit (you can hear the trumpets and the choirs of angels for that one) are fatal. You should read the attached comments as well. Note that Raph is a 'serious' thinker and was a chief designer of entertainment at Sony, a mover in the Ultima game and so on, so we have to take him very seriously:
http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/05/08/cnet-on-the-metavese-summit/
Ok Raph, don't get excited. You'll get your turn at the podium again.
This one is good reading because it takes all groups to task for not noticing what the cultures have to offer to each other:
http://mmocodex.com/blog/?p=6633
Note the quote though:
So yeah, there is quite a bit of us vs them out there. You have to decide if you care. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I was bitten in the ass by a furry vermal once. It hurt. A lot.
This one takes the whole 3D market to task and uses VRML as the whipping horse because apparently this fellow didn't get his VRML cookie when they were plentiful on the freebies table of Web 1.0:
http://www.fudco.com/habitat/archives/000047.html
Note the repeating theme here and in the comments: 3D Good; VRML Failure; let's not do VRML again. We won't. As the coroner I must confer that I've thoroughly examined her.
If maps from these next guys load as badly as their Flashy web page, I gotta wonder about their chops in geospatial:
I lost the URL for that one. Probably a merciful forgetting given the load time.
I actually like this article from Prokovsky:
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2006/12/clay_shirky_or_.ht
ml
The comments are great too.
Then from someone who likes pasta and who's rants on this topic are better than mine and quite a bit more opaque:
http://tecfa.unige.ch/perso/staf/nova/blog/2006/04/29/place-panel-at-the-net
publics/
Scary stuff that psychogeographic markup. It must be awesome for Halloween candy trail planning.
From Slashdot:
No one serious but we forgot about ADA too. Oh wait; the government still pays very high rates for ADA programmers. Nevermind. The Shaggy Dog Story of all programming languages is still healthy and living at Fort Meade.
From one of the Electric Sheep blogs, a fun mention of two of our VRML regulars with a funny anecdote:
http://blogs.electricsheepcompany.com/jerry/?m=200607&paged=2
Poor Tony. Being antediluvian must be a helluva comedown from being antidisestablishmententarian for so many years in Internet Time.
There are more quotes. You find most of them by typing "VRML Raph Koster" into the Google search box, so as I say, he is some kind of strange attractor for the funeral seating arrangments, but these put the eulogies in perspective.
For all the protests coming out of Europe on this topic, you Frenchies need to understand that you may not believe what is going on here, but this is what the Consortium reps have to face when they discuss 3D On The Web. That they are succeeding in spite of it testifies to their commitment to this technology and their sheer tenacity because this must be no fun at all.
After all, no one wants to be the coroner. On to part II...
Is VRML Dead? Well... yeah.
VRML IS DEAD
Despite the fact that you and I still use it to build, in point of fact of continued features evolution or market uptake, or standardization, it is "really quite sincerely dead" to quote the coroner.
It has been replaced by X3D, the next generation. It lives on in the largesse of the browser vendors who continue to support its nodes in their products but who aren't adding any features that make it into the official ISO standard because, well, that version of the standard is now obsolete. It is generally considered bad to work on obsolete technology unless you happen to be NASA who can't afford to replace a Shuttle every year because the production lines shut down two decades ago, or the guys who paint the Eiffel Tower and fix rusted bolts and the like (where do they get those bolts now?)
Is X3D just dressed up VRML? Someone else can work that rant. But it is certainly the case that it isn't VRML. Casual inspection will reveal that. One can make the case that X3D isn't an improvement. I think that would be on very thin ice.
Worse, VRML is obnoxiously dead, deliberately dead, and celebrated dead. Just plain old quit breathing dead, autopsied and signed out to the coroner dead. How do we know? Well, the wisdom of the crowds thing again. We keep reading about the demise on the web. Time to accept it, yes?
Here are some expert quotes. The first is from a comment on Ajax3D.
Here's what a rather useful white paper on the subject by Tony Parisi, one of the pioneers of the by-now antediluvian VRML standard has to say: ..."
http://www.opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/search/label/vrml
Wow Dude. If I had to do it without a dictionary, I'm not sure I could spell 'antediluvian'. Is that the same as "not merely dead"?
We are celebrating the 10th anniversary of VRML... but, is VRML dead?
We refer to the people who practice the art of VRML as furry vermals. VRML was developed to make moving CAD files easier. Some people with great visions, (perhaps too much) imagination, and seemingly unlimited energies pushed VRML into the realm of virtual reality and from there into web 3D. It never satisfied any of those visions and a lot of hearts and wallets were broken. VRML still isn't dead, but then neither is Fortran. Things don't seem to die in this industry. But neither Fortran or VRML are mainstream or considered as a viable vehicle for anything any more. And I know this will bring out of the wood work and from under the rocks all those VRML lovers who still toil away at proving what magnificent thing VRML is, or will be with the next release that is.
http://www.3d-test.com/interviews/jonpeddie_1.htm
Got that last bit right, Jon.
Raph Koster's comment about the yawning reception in the VRML community to the Metaverse Summit (you can hear the trumpets and the choirs of angels for that one) are fatal. You should read the attached comments as well. Note that Raph is a 'serious' thinker and was a chief designer of entertainment at Sony, a mover in the Ultima game and so on, so we have to take him very seriously:
http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/05/08/cnet-on-the-metavese-summit/
I'll be blunt: there are next to no important things being done in terms of online virtual worlds using VRML, and I don't know any significant players in the field who use VRML. The people with practical experience avoid it like the plague. Give up already on VRML!
Ok Raph, don't get excited. You'll get your turn at the podium again.
This one is good reading because it takes all groups to task for not noticing what the cultures have to offer to each other:
http://mmocodex.com/blog/?p=6633
Note the quote though:
... for young people, or newly-enabled and tekkified old people, especially women and non-Americans who have taken to SL by leaps and bounds, these old fuddy-duddy concerns like 'skepticism triggered by the historical failure of things like LambdaMOO or VRML' don't compute. What the hell is LambadaMOO? I never heard of it until I branched out from SL into geek-world; I'm certain I wouldn't recognize VRML if it bit me in the ass; but I have a full and engaging Second Life.
So yeah, there is quite a bit of us vs them out there. You have to decide if you care. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I was bitten in the ass by a furry vermal once. It hurt. A lot.
This one takes the whole 3D market to task and uses VRML as the whipping horse because apparently this fellow didn't get his VRML cookie when they were plentiful on the freebies table of Web 1.0:
http://www.fudco.com/habitat/archives/000047.html
Note the repeating theme here and in the comments: 3D Good; VRML Failure; let's not do VRML again. We won't. As the coroner I must confer that I've thoroughly examined her.
If maps from these next guys load as badly as their Flashy web page, I gotta wonder about their chops in geospatial:
Along similar lines, what happened to VRML? Remember when Microsoft even had their own VRML browser, World View, and included it with Internet Explorer (3.0, I think)? Many of these 3D visualization tools seem to hold so much promise for the geospatial community. A new one blossoms every few years and then just wilts on the vine. Is it some technical barrier that they run up against, or just lack of interest?"
I lost the URL for that one. Probably a merciful forgetting given the load time.
I actually like this article from Prokovsky:
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2006/12/clay_shirky_or_.ht
ml
The comments are great too.
Then from someone who likes pasta and who's rants on this topic are better than mine and quite a bit more opaque:
http://tecfa.unige.ch/perso/staf/nova/blog/2006/04/29/place-panel-at-the-net
publics/
9. VRML blew it. Will there be a successor spatiality to HTML? Of course there are stuff like that, especially in the GIS world + also in the open cartography community there are already few instances: annotating space with metadata; about building semantic models of places; about exchanging geospatial data in RDF, what Jo Walsh does a simple vocabulary for describing physical spaces and the connections between them there is also PML: Psychogeographical Markup Language:
PML is a unified system to capture meaningful psychogeographical [meta]data about spaces which can be used to compose psychogeograms: diagrammatic representations of psychogeographically experienced space.
Scary stuff that psychogeographic markup. It must be awesome for Halloween candy trail planning.
From Slashdot:
Ten years ago i was working in the virtual reality field. People swore we would have a 3D web in ten years ten years ago. Anyone remember VRML?"
No one serious but we forgot about ADA too. Oh wait; the government still pays very high rates for ADA programmers. Nevermind. The Shaggy Dog Story of all programming languages is still healthy and living at Fort Meade.
From one of the Electric Sheep blogs, a fun mention of two of our VRML regulars with a funny anecdote:
http://blogs.electricsheepcompany.com/jerry/?m=200607&paged=2
I'm excited about one of our new presenters in the line-up (we'll have a number of short talks spark conversation). You can't talk about the metaverse space without looking back over VRML, an early attempt to create a 3D standard on the Web that famously tanked. Tony Parisi who helped create and evangelize VRML back in 1994 will be joining us to talk about what happened there and what he learned, as well as look forward to his new adventures with Media Machines.
Poor Tony. Being antediluvian must be a helluva comedown from being antidisestablishmententarian for so many years in Internet Time.
There are more quotes. You find most of them by typing "VRML Raph Koster" into the Google search box, so as I say, he is some kind of strange attractor for the funeral seating arrangments, but these put the eulogies in perspective.
For all the protests coming out of Europe on this topic, you Frenchies need to understand that you may not believe what is going on here, but this is what the Consortium reps have to face when they discuss 3D On The Web. That they are succeeding in spite of it testifies to their commitment to this technology and their sheer tenacity because this must be no fun at all.
After all, no one wants to be the coroner. On to part II...
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Standards Whack A Mole
The Standards Game as Instrument of Competition and Regulation is the whack-a-mole of the web culture. Rick Jeliffe takes issue with it and Rick has plenty of experience with all sides of this game.
The status of the document as a legal or regulatory instrument and the status or provenance of the body which creates it can be usefully separated. A document can be regulatory given the context of its citation. For example, a standard cited in a contract has a legal basis for regulating the conduct of actions performed under the contract.
Provenance (typically, the history of the ownership of a document) is a murky term in this context but I don't have a better one to describe the committee that controls the creation and history of the document handling (its history). I am equally horrified by self-selection as the sole means of determining who can contribute to a document that may be citable in a regulatory context. Standards editors need reasonable credentials.
Volunteerism is a good force but not always an adequate credential.
Now are the economists are telling us to ignore the technical and understand the economic?
Ok. Weirder and weirder.
1. A VC wants a four for one punch on their ‘contribution’. That means barriers to competition (patents or press) or a pyramid scheme (faux economy and press). Is that economic or technical?
2. A standard works best if there are multiple implementations prior to standardization. IBM says we need to accept SecondLife as a standard for 3D on The Web because it needs standards. Raph Koster announces a new company with himself as the President developing a new product to be a standard for 3D on the Web RSN. There is an existing ISO standard for 3D On The Web with 17 existing implementations and diverse applications. The aforementioned have one: social networks, but the first one has subscribers and the second one has 'an expert who has done interesting work'. Who should be the standard editor? Is this technical or economic?
This is classic "money rules" rules. The deal is to make as big a splash initially as possible, call it a standard, flip it up, take the cash and leave the shell behind. If we accept that for product standards, we are creating carnage. It is well and good to compete on product features that improve the fundamentals of some technology. Races are won at Grand Prix by figuring out a better implementation for weight to power and fuel consumption (fire air fuel). If it works, it makes it into a generation of muscle cars AND hybrids for eco-sensitive implementations. That's standard. That might improve sales for some manufacturer. That's economic.
But legislation to pick a technology by fiat without substantial credible improvements in the performance of the technology, that's piracy by government fiat. Economists become the pirate in the crow's nest surveying the horizon for the next victim.
Sun execs need to take a hard look at their business model and their own executive suite. Standards games didn't give them a profitable quarter for the first time in years. Improvements in hardware performance did. If they don't get that, they need to replace Schwartz and anyone he hired. IBM will do as it has been: make money on services and if a technology comes along to improve the performance of those services, they switch. Investments in standards are chump change in that model.
Microsoft will continue to push its own technology to perform better and build bridges to any technology with a customer base large enough to justify the investment. That's economics.
The status of the document as a legal or regulatory instrument and the status or provenance of the body which creates it can be usefully separated. A document can be regulatory given the context of its citation. For example, a standard cited in a contract has a legal basis for regulating the conduct of actions performed under the contract.
Provenance (typically, the history of the ownership of a document) is a murky term in this context but I don't have a better one to describe the committee that controls the creation and history of the document handling (its history). I am equally horrified by self-selection as the sole means of determining who can contribute to a document that may be citable in a regulatory context. Standards editors need reasonable credentials.
Volunteerism is a good force but not always an adequate credential.
Now are the economists are telling us to ignore the technical and understand the economic?
Ok. Weirder and weirder.
1. A VC wants a four for one punch on their ‘contribution’. That means barriers to competition (patents or press) or a pyramid scheme (faux economy and press). Is that economic or technical?
2. A standard works best if there are multiple implementations prior to standardization. IBM says we need to accept SecondLife as a standard for 3D on The Web because it needs standards. Raph Koster announces a new company with himself as the President developing a new product to be a standard for 3D on the Web RSN. There is an existing ISO standard for 3D On The Web with 17 existing implementations and diverse applications. The aforementioned have one: social networks, but the first one has subscribers and the second one has 'an expert who has done interesting work'. Who should be the standard editor? Is this technical or economic?
This is classic "money rules" rules. The deal is to make as big a splash initially as possible, call it a standard, flip it up, take the cash and leave the shell behind. If we accept that for product standards, we are creating carnage. It is well and good to compete on product features that improve the fundamentals of some technology. Races are won at Grand Prix by figuring out a better implementation for weight to power and fuel consumption (fire air fuel). If it works, it makes it into a generation of muscle cars AND hybrids for eco-sensitive implementations. That's standard. That might improve sales for some manufacturer. That's economic.
But legislation to pick a technology by fiat without substantial credible improvements in the performance of the technology, that's piracy by government fiat. Economists become the pirate in the crow's nest surveying the horizon for the next victim.
Sun execs need to take a hard look at their business model and their own executive suite. Standards games didn't give them a profitable quarter for the first time in years. Improvements in hardware performance did. If they don't get that, they need to replace Schwartz and anyone he hired. IBM will do as it has been: make money on services and if a technology comes along to improve the performance of those services, they switch. Investments in standards are chump change in that model.
Microsoft will continue to push its own technology to perform better and build bridges to any technology with a customer base large enough to justify the investment. That's economics.
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Are All 3D Worlds Games?
Clay Shirky again, is not a fan of VR but having been challenged in his opinions, he keeps mulling the problem over, and not being a dumb guy, he zeros in on the issues. This one is better reasoned. It supports what some have been saying: games are a category of real-time 3D, a genre, and the genre has special qualifications that make this category different from VR. Equating all 3D with ‘games technology’ as some do isn’t a very good categorization and the analyses resulting are flawed.
I concur. On the other hand, I think his magic circle analogy while correct misses the obvious unstated fact: the engine of immersion is positive and negative feedback, all that ANY human interface requires to achieve immersion, and it is the same engine driving search technology. Games simply narrow the rules and acceptance of the rules like the suspension of disbelief in dramatic presentation is the crucial buy in. Shirky is actually trying to diminish the status of real-time worlds such as Second Life, but he is stumbling around the right concepts at last, and that is progress.
3D, unlike the naive Wladavsky-Berger comparison with broadband, is not a push technology: it is a pull technology where the database is the human brain. Shirky is almost there in what he is saying but missing the critical distinction that any interface can be made to pull. 3D is quite a bit better than some alternatives and this isn’t limited to sexual expression. He is being male and somewhat childish there. A good looking avatar works for many applications and as fascinating as that is, it can be combined as sex has always been combined in marketing advertising with other stimuli for different tasks.
Still, he is making a good case that low-feedback VR worlds don’t compete well even where MU. Determining ahead of the design what the rules are and what the buy in has to be by the user to accept those rules is crucial to good design.
The SIMS inventor has some good points about GUI design in these worlds that ought to be reviewed by everyone, particularly, that the first tasks on entering a world should teach the rules for navigating it. I am surprised but humbled by the fact that most people I demo for don’t know to press the left mouse button, hold it down, then push it in a direction. Then when shown that, they are very bad at it for the first five minutes. Then they get proficient and if I try to correct anything they do, they resist me and keep whacking away. That is a good thing. They are getting hooked by the struggle and the need to prove themselves. Only after I show them how to follow Kamala and that she leads them to cool presentations do they start to notice the music and actually get hooked into the content the world is wrapping. Then they ask me if they can ‘fly’ and I show them the right-click menu. Then they ask me about having an avatar of their own, and I show them the choice on the right click menu. Then I sit back and watch.
Will they come back? Maybe, maybe not, but I built the world to sell the music, not the other way around. Once they buy it; I'm done. :-)
So there is an aspect of game in every world we build but how we emphasize it and how we get past it, those are the delicacies of our craft.
I concur. On the other hand, I think his magic circle analogy while correct misses the obvious unstated fact: the engine of immersion is positive and negative feedback, all that ANY human interface requires to achieve immersion, and it is the same engine driving search technology. Games simply narrow the rules and acceptance of the rules like the suspension of disbelief in dramatic presentation is the crucial buy in. Shirky is actually trying to diminish the status of real-time worlds such as Second Life, but he is stumbling around the right concepts at last, and that is progress.
3D, unlike the naive Wladavsky-Berger comparison with broadband, is not a push technology: it is a pull technology where the database is the human brain. Shirky is almost there in what he is saying but missing the critical distinction that any interface can be made to pull. 3D is quite a bit better than some alternatives and this isn’t limited to sexual expression. He is being male and somewhat childish there. A good looking avatar works for many applications and as fascinating as that is, it can be combined as sex has always been combined in marketing advertising with other stimuli for different tasks.
Still, he is making a good case that low-feedback VR worlds don’t compete well even where MU. Determining ahead of the design what the rules are and what the buy in has to be by the user to accept those rules is crucial to good design.
The SIMS inventor has some good points about GUI design in these worlds that ought to be reviewed by everyone, particularly, that the first tasks on entering a world should teach the rules for navigating it. I am surprised but humbled by the fact that most people I demo for don’t know to press the left mouse button, hold it down, then push it in a direction. Then when shown that, they are very bad at it for the first five minutes. Then they get proficient and if I try to correct anything they do, they resist me and keep whacking away. That is a good thing. They are getting hooked by the struggle and the need to prove themselves. Only after I show them how to follow Kamala and that she leads them to cool presentations do they start to notice the music and actually get hooked into the content the world is wrapping. Then they ask me if they can ‘fly’ and I show them the right-click menu. Then they ask me about having an avatar of their own, and I show them the choice on the right click menu. Then I sit back and watch.
Will they come back? Maybe, maybe not, but I built the world to sell the music, not the other way around. Once they buy it; I'm done. :-)
So there is an aspect of game in every world we build but how we emphasize it and how we get past it, those are the delicacies of our craft.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Trading in Virtual Goods
Business Week writes that we are on the cusp of another web shakeout as the frictionless business mavens discover the difference between a 'science experiment' and a going business. The cost of the prototype is less but the constants required for scaling remain the same, employees, machines, insurance, marketing, customer service, and so on.
The only economy that seems to evade inspection is the black market in virtual goods being reported at CNet. eBay banned sales of virtual goods but gave Linden Labs a pass because it is supposed to have a virtual economy that translates to the real economy. There are two problems with that:
One gets the feeling that there is some kind of weird shakeout and wakeup call coming in this market. The pundits who have been promoting it will be there to tell they saw it coming all along. And so it goes.
The only economy that seems to evade inspection is the black market in virtual goods being reported at CNet. eBay banned sales of virtual goods but gave Linden Labs a pass because it is supposed to have a virtual economy that translates to the real economy. There are two problems with that:
- As reported in the last blog, ValleyWag analysts show that the LL virtual economy is a Ponsi game.
- Second Life is a closed system. Owning or selling something there doesn't mean you can actually take it anywhere else.
One gets the feeling that there is some kind of weird shakeout and wakeup call coming in this market. The pundits who have been promoting it will be there to tell they saw it coming all along. And so it goes.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Life IS A Do-Over At Least Virtually
Just as the most brilliant economic minds gather at the World Economic Forum and ooh and aah over the alledged invention of the most important technology to come along in years
Second Life
an independent researcher confirms what the real pioneers in the field have been saying for some time now. Yes, friends, Linden Dollars are a Ponsi scheme (aka, pyramid).
The problem for the rest of the real-time 3D genre vendors will be to be at sea when the wave crashes and not moored to the dock waiting. That means building markets not reliant on SL-allied community efforts. It is actually not difficult to do but don't be perceived as an SL cognoscenti when it happens. Pick another genre or prove why your implementation is NOT like SL at least where the content economy is concerned.
Between the tempest over Microsoft paying a very real expert, Rick Jeliffe, to edit the technical contents of a Wikipedia article, and the self-selected experts for VR like Daniel Terdimann at News.com (Fox News by another name) who have yet to build a world in a field they say they are experts about and point to their Wikipedia bio to justify that claim, one begins to ask if the web has simply devolved into a British tabloid where the facts are as suspect as their Prime Minister's sharable military intelligence and the taste is the same as their cooking.
Next time we go to war, let's take London and give it to the Aussies.
Second Life
an independent researcher confirms what the real pioneers in the field have been saying for some time now. Yes, friends, Linden Dollars are a Ponsi scheme (aka, pyramid).
The problem for the rest of the real-time 3D genre vendors will be to be at sea when the wave crashes and not moored to the dock waiting. That means building markets not reliant on SL-allied community efforts. It is actually not difficult to do but don't be perceived as an SL cognoscenti when it happens. Pick another genre or prove why your implementation is NOT like SL at least where the content economy is concerned.
Between the tempest over Microsoft paying a very real expert, Rick Jeliffe, to edit the technical contents of a Wikipedia article, and the self-selected experts for VR like Daniel Terdimann at News.com (Fox News by another name) who have yet to build a world in a field they say they are experts about and point to their Wikipedia bio to justify that claim, one begins to ask if the web has simply devolved into a British tabloid where the facts are as suspect as their Prime Minister's sharable military intelligence and the taste is the same as their cooking.
Next time we go to war, let's take London and give it to the Aussies.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Slippery When Wet
The markets of virtual reality are filling up with virtual posers. It was to be expected. The rich and the want-to-be famous always find a technology just as it pops and then make claims on it. In this case, we have the Davos self-admirers speaking longingly and lovingly about their new discovery: Second Life, the most revolutionary technology to come along.
Except the technology has been there for years. The high rents haven't. That's a new wrinkle: virtual land for rent. I love it. Too bad the power grids don't but hey, since when has that bothered the rich and the posers?
For those aborigines who have been working and playing in virtual worlds for over a decade now, this sudden interest in the river is just fine. We can sell them water by the river for a long long time. Or until they find something more trendy. Otherwise, real-time 3D applications are here to stay. Who says? The posers at CNet, the posers at CNN, the posers at the local VC shop.
None of whom has built a single world. But that's ok, selling them water by the river is a good business.
Do you think we should warn them that it's slippery when wet?
Except the technology has been there for years. The high rents haven't. That's a new wrinkle: virtual land for rent. I love it. Too bad the power grids don't but hey, since when has that bothered the rich and the posers?
For those aborigines who have been working and playing in virtual worlds for over a decade now, this sudden interest in the river is just fine. We can sell them water by the river for a long long time. Or until they find something more trendy. Otherwise, real-time 3D applications are here to stay. Who says? The posers at CNet, the posers at CNN, the posers at the local VC shop.
None of whom has built a single world. But that's ok, selling them water by the river is a good business.
Do you think we should warn them that it's slippery when wet?
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Chung A Lung: Kaching! Kaching!
One of the strangely predictable bits of web evolution is how the online 3D worlds and their contractors and publicists have adopted the Hollywood tricks for generating publicity. The article linked in the title to the CNet article is an example of the Hollywood CatFight where two major stars embark on a public spat designed to bring in cameras and mentions in the tabloids. CNet has slowly devolved into a 'bloid and the SecondLife capital must be burning fast. I have to admit a sneaking respect for the Graef's for their clever exploitation of the griefers who decorated their CNet interview with flying penises. One wonders if some insiders didn't set this up for exactly this purpose, but what the heck; it's just virtual gamesmanship.
I stumbled into a site by a fellow named Rafe Koster. He seems to be one of the new breed of 3D pundits who have become the 'this lives; this dies' critics I guess who thrive as the counterbalance to Clay Shirky. The Terra Nova guys write funny stuff. It duplicates the same kinds of faux academia that we saw in the early days of VRML and Cybertown. They tell us that X3D is soooo over and that online communities avoid it like the plague. Rafe missed some major contracts that have been let out of Federal agencies specifying the use of the international 3D standards so his death spat may be a little premature, but again, that's ok. These are not the applications where one writes treatises on the social economy of the avatar or books on the history of virtual communities somewhat like histories of Spider Man and The Green Goblin.
Online communities are one way to use real-time 3D. Probably they aren't the most advanced but nonetheless, they are thriving. The pundits like Rafe keep rooting on the closed systems like Second Life and who can blame them. As with the Macintosh, the closed system handled complexity by locking the customer to its formats and its tools. Is that a metaverse? Could be. It's yet another iPod or Apple and it will sell well wherever ease is traded for the ability to reuse content. Remember, when Second Life tells the author that content is owned by the author, that is a true statement. It is owned by them the same way the public owns a statue in the park. They all have the right to visit it. They don't have the ability to take it home.
I stumbled into a site by a fellow named Rafe Koster. He seems to be one of the new breed of 3D pundits who have become the 'this lives; this dies' critics I guess who thrive as the counterbalance to Clay Shirky. The Terra Nova guys write funny stuff. It duplicates the same kinds of faux academia that we saw in the early days of VRML and Cybertown. They tell us that X3D is soooo over and that online communities avoid it like the plague. Rafe missed some major contracts that have been let out of Federal agencies specifying the use of the international 3D standards so his death spat may be a little premature, but again, that's ok. These are not the applications where one writes treatises on the social economy of the avatar or books on the history of virtual communities somewhat like histories of Spider Man and The Green Goblin.
Online communities are one way to use real-time 3D. Probably they aren't the most advanced but nonetheless, they are thriving. The pundits like Rafe keep rooting on the closed systems like Second Life and who can blame them. As with the Macintosh, the closed system handled complexity by locking the customer to its formats and its tools. Is that a metaverse? Could be. It's yet another iPod or Apple and it will sell well wherever ease is traded for the ability to reuse content. Remember, when Second Life tells the author that content is owned by the author, that is a true statement. It is owned by them the same way the public owns a statue in the park. They all have the right to visit it. They don't have the ability to take it home.
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