Slashdot Mirror
Universal 3D File Format In The Works
telstar writes "The Register is reporting that more than 30 companies are working together to define a new file format intended to serve as a universal 3D file format. The new file format will be named the 'Universal 3D Format', or U3D. According to the article, they hope to make the new format as standard as MP3 has become for audio, and JPEG has become for 2D images. Interesting that they would choose two lossy media formats as models for comparison."
Not only did they pick two lossy formats to use as examples, both MP3 and JPEG are patent-encumbered formats. (The validity of the Forgent patent on a piece of JPEG is a bit of a still-contested issue... but I'll leave that to others to discuss.) If you want to write a program using either of those formats, you're going to have to pay the toll.
Let's hope U3D is able to stay clear of such entanglements. Having a patent involved in a file format makes it questionable if FOSS can legally use the format.
Interesting that they would choose two lossy media formats as models for comparison.
Would one really notice slight noise in the coordinates of points of a mesh or in texel color values?
Frankly, I'm more worried about this from the article:
MP3 is not free. Will Intel or one of Intel's licensors pull a Unisys after this format has become popular? Apparently, the 3D Industry Forum's FAQ page doesn't even contain the word "patent".
...right here.
There's also a separate 3DIF site.
The Army reading list
will allow 3D data to be more easily incorporated into other apps, such as web browsers
I hope the Christmas Island people get their act together before this becomes widely used... the horror... the horror...
Trolling is a art,
3D maps?
3D wireframes?
3D solid objects?
3D interior spaces?
JPEG != MP3, and wishing will not make disparate needs and functionality the same.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Interesting that they would choose two lossy media formats as models for comparison
Yeah, they're probably working on a lossy 3D format. Duh.
The fact that MP3 and JPEG are lossy formats doesn't have anything to do with this, and no, it's not "interesting".
Martin
Ok, so its ASSOCIATED with some random application (3d studio max), but ANYTHING that does 3d will read/write to a .3ds file, if they take themselves seriously. Whats wrong with that?
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
How was choosing lossy formats even mildly interesting? That comparison was only for the purpose of pointing out that well defined standards for some audio and images exist. I would think fighting between 3d-studio and every other 3d graphics program allows for little to no transfering. Think every 3d program writing it's own non published file format and then think about having 1 published standard that everyone uses. Things like word and excel as open standards would also be nice.
:(){
Why haven't I heard anything about that 3d format in the past 5 years.
Is it not scalable or something?
I was always under the impression that it was as open as html.
Kaydara Motionbuilder (.fbx I think) files seem to be becoming one of the defacto standard file formats for 3D - it stores mesh, bone, and UVW/texture information (to my knowledge), as well as animation info and most of the major apps now have Kaydara support.
You have a point with MP3, but the author of BurnAllGIFs.org seems to think the JPEG patent wouldn't stand up in a court of law.
U3D will get a head start due to early release and saturate the market with crappy files while formats with better compression and quality are ignored by the public because "it's good enough"
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
I use a WYSE terminal, you insensative clod!
But...
One restriction I wouldn't mind, however, is the same sort of compatibility requirement that JAVA has: If something follows the format, it MUST follow it exactly and have no proprietary extentions. This tripped up MS when they tried to hijack JAVA for their own nefarious purposes.
Just my views on this...
The Cheese Stands Alone.
The Register is reporting that more than 30 companies are working together to define a new file format intended to serve as a universal 3D file format.
I forget who said it, but I think this fits very well: "The great thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from."
They really meant was how popular the two formats are... everyone even your grandma has heard of an mp3 player, and jpeg is very popular image format.
So are they gonna ask for royalties from everyone that uses the format?
How these people can omit this common format is absolutely mind boggling.
Will this new universal 3D standard specify a certain graphical capability? I think it'd be great if developers could use this format to make clean, effective 3D images that run well on older, less hardware-intensive machines that don't necessarily have the latest nVidia or ATI cards in them.
"they hope that such a standard will allow 3D data to be more easily incorporated into other apps, such as web browsers, to make 3D imagery more widespread" Web browsers?!? I really hope not. I find the idea of a banner ad requiring a minimum of a GeForce 4 and pixel shader support offensive. "Shoot the 3D rendered monkey in each limb and win a prize!" *shudder*
We had VRML.
And an XML based X3D (?)
Were those other formats that bad that we need U3D?
"Provided by the management for your protection."
[coordinate noise would] create a jittery effect
In skeletal animation, noise in the mesh would move more or less rigidly with each bone, creating a bit of roughness but no jitter. In non-skeletal animation, one could move a slider to increase the precision with which the animation tool stores coordinates. Remember that even 64-bit floating point isn't perfect.
Intel uses Pro/Engineer in many of their operations. Back when I worked for PTC I used to talk to them al the time. It will be interesting to see what format Pro/Engineer adopts in the future and if they don't go with this if Intel switches to something else.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Aren't there enough proprietary 3d formats already! It's time for an open source / free software GPL type format. Maybe SGI now that they love Linux can work with the community to free up some of their proprietary standards and make it really happen.
I'm guessing that Microsoft will come up with something called "Universal File Format MS" with all sorts of patented extensions.
I guess I'm becoming cynical.
It is annoying when given a 3D engine, it cannot load a 3D Format which happens to be the only one that your 3d Modeller can export to. I would be happy for that problem to disappear!
But how general will it be? If it can handle detailed CAD models, and open landscape, and UT2003 style maps, high polygon characters and so on, then will it end up being unspace-effective for all of them?
Is there a reason why right now 3DS seems to be the nearest to a standard we have, when it doesn't even have many features?
JPEG might be the standard for images, but it isn't used for everything: Sometimes PNG and TIFF are used for particular reasons. TGA and PNG for example support Alpha channels, while JPEG does not. My friend draws pictures, and sometimes she gets good compression with JPEG, but sometimes the quality loss is terrible. Sometimes GIF is better, or something PNG is. And then there are vector graphics.
MP3 is nearly a standard, but we use OGG for political/legal reasons, or a lossless format when that is important. Real is often used when the sound needs to be streaming.
So, really, how useful will this standard be? And how free?
- Jax
"Interesting that they would choose two lossy media formats as models for comparison."
Well, this is probably a sign that the new 3d format will probably reduce 3d files to 2d or 2.5d. So you'll lose some of the third dimension when you save in it.
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
Just ask microsoft
*DrugCheese rants*
Actually i really hope that his works. .obj format. but even blender has a hard time with uv mapping in that area. as far as lossy, there is no such thing, 3d models dont work that way a model has so many meshes so many polygons and so many textures, how you choose to render it determines the lossyness of it. nut a u3d standard would be great because than i could buy models from anyone and know they would work.
about a year ago i started doing 3D animations, this year i wanted to buy a collection of 3D models but in the end i found that 1 the app that i use has terrible support for model importing (blender) and 2 there are two many different formats out there. someone previosly mentioned 3ds but thats the stupidest thing ive ever heard because 1 its proprietary 2 it sucks. the closest thing to a standard is the
and for the 3ds guy your modeling software sucks and is a POS.
from a multimedia point of view, we have been trying to make flash animation support 3d but no format was light enough and easy to render, with director mx, we have 3d objects but the format is proprietary for macromedia and u have to transform every element and the rendering is without shadows and lights. a decent open 3d format is exactly what we (as multimedia developpers) need to take us to the next level to deliver virtual interactive environments.
who wants to rule the world?
Most likely has to do with the fact that .mp3 and .jpeg are ubiquitous more so than anything. If they said, for example, .FLAC, they would have confuzlled the hell out of a good chunk of people.
Seriously, can someone tell me why this is needed/wanted? (Besides the ub3r factor.)
Hooray! I've missed this troll. All on one line please though, I'm a stickler for tradition.
As there are so many different ways to represent the geometric structure of a 3D object that tie to the engine rendering that object. The fact of the matter is that 3D graphics rendering is still a non-trivial problem which requires optimizations for the use in question. Just about any piece of hardware still in use can handle JPEG and MP3 without a notable performance hit.
3D applications still push the limits of the hardware they run on and are keyed for specific intents; 3D games sacrifice detail and accuracy of modeling the interaction of light on surfaces for speed, while povray and RenderMan go for full hardcore ray tracing to make sure each pixel on the screen is accurately representing a reflective light model to the capacity of their respective engines.
Sadly, I don't think this arena has trivialized to a one size fits all format yet.
"Give away the stone, let the oceans take and transmutate this cold and faded anchor." - Maynard James Keenan
It will be XML based (i.e. text file with tags), use MIME to encode bitmaps, and be so bloated you will need a 10GHz P5 with 4GB of RAM just to render a rotating "Hello, World!" file...
... let it not be XML-based. If there is a God in heaven he will not let it be in XML!
Thanks,
--
Matt
U2.9998999D?
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
Ooooor, it's interesting that they compared it to a few formats that have allowed real people with real-world storage capacity to enjoy/share media of different flavors.
"Dude, you should see this 3D monster I created! Just let me plug my iEverything into the accompanying 70 lb. iRenderFarm."
You know what?
Without Apple (OpenGL), SGI (OpenGL), or Sun (Java3D), this is going to die a quick death as a "universal format," at least in the consumer marketplace.
Slashdotters are notorious for extending comparisons and metaphors to unbelievable lengths in order to:
s cussion
a) prove they are "correct"
b) prove someone else is "incorrect"
c) bring the discussion around to something they understand and can talk about. You know the ol' number_of_people_able_to_discuss_subject being inversely proportional to amount_of_knowledge_required_to_participate_in_di
heh. gotta love 'em.
I have enough trouble getting 5 people to agree on where to go for dinner or for which movie to go see... and we're all friends!
These guys want to get 30 companies to agree to one specific file format that would probably have an impact on the work they do???
Good luck!
Who cares if the formats are lossy?
It says "they hope to make the new format as standard as MP3 has become for audio, and JPEG has become for 2D images". JPEG and Mp3 are well known media formats. All they were trying to say is that they want the format to be well adopted!
http://brandonbloom.name
This is the big question to my mind. Comments on the 3DIF site indicate that the format will support materials. If they don't support programmable shaders, they'll be excluding most of the interesting stuff happening in 3D at the moment. If they do support programmable shaders, how are they going to handle the plethora of incompatible shader definition languages (OpenGL's GLSLang, Direct3D's HLSL, NVIDIA's Cg etc) in a suitable platform-neutral manner?
small article about some people having way too much time on their hands, trying to re-invente the wheel and dissing a file format, because it is proprietary? WTF? diss it because it is closed. CAD is opened.
In particular, they hope that such a standard will allow 3D data to be more easily incorporated into other apps, such as web browsers, to make 3D imagery more widespread - and, in turn, boost demand for faster processors and graphics chips.
I see what's goin on here. Microsoft and Intel... always making things unnecessarily bloated just to convince people that they always need to keep upgrading their CPUs!
So this is basically a "no one has any reason to buy our 3 ghz chips, so let's force them into doing it by making a 'standard'!"
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
They want to make 3D content be as widespread as 2D (images) and 1D (audio) content? Creating a universal file format only benefits hardware manufacturers, really. 3D content is still markedly harder to author than pictures or sound, regardless of the file format being used.
Is there such thing as a lossless representation of mesh coordinates? Any operation on coordinates, such as rotation or scaling, will introduce roundoff noise. I'll guess that "lossy" means that the user of a 3D tool can specify the precision with which the tool stores coordinates in a file.
We already have a standard 3d format:
.gifs.
Animated
Erik
YOU ARE SAYING IMPUDENCE TO ME! THAT IS IMPUDENCE!
What I don't quite understand is how copy protection of 3d models will be addressed.
Imagine some indie studio extracts models, modifies the mesh so no one will be able to say it's the same model, and use it in own project, to save money on top-notch modeller.
Not saying it's too bad of course - in general scheme of things everyone wins, but... Won't big studios just say "fuck it" and convert to propertiary formats then ?
Interoperability is great of course.
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!
The lossiness of MP3 and JPEG was only relevant because it allowed the actual files to become small enough to transmit over slow connections and fit on small hard drives. Additionally, while they may be lossy, the "lost" information goes completely unnoticed by the end-user, 99.99% of the time. If they come up with a convenient way of storing 3D information that is "lossy" but doesn't lose anything that will be missed, then more power to them.
Additionally, the demand for small files, and therefore for MP3 and JPEG, draws on preexisting "content" sets that are enormous; all the audio data ever recorded (including in analog media), and all the static, 2D visual data ever recorded (including photos, texts, drawings, etc). By comparison, there are currently relatively few recordings of true 3D data; and the present uses of that recorded data are so specialized that a general file format would probably be insufficient anyway.
So the day that Wal-mart starts selling digital cameras that laser-scan the whole room and render a complete 3D model, and the day they start selling holographic projectors for those 3D models, at prices that are reasonable for personal use, then there will be a market for a generic 3D file format.
X3D is finally starting to get support by some software
X3D homepage:
http://www.web3d.org/
They do seem to be backed by some large companies.
Someone says: "oooh, this should be updated to a valid XML DTD and such and such", since it's just begging for it.
But flash and Quicktime started being used extensively by developers, and each has a "solution" for viewing 3D models that's just as useful as featureful as a seperate VRML browser might be. So targeting VRML became kinda pointless because other more common frameworks had support, and there are excellent content creation tools for those environments.
So no one had any reason to keep the VRML standard going.
Also VRML is presentation oriented, which makes it only useful at the "edge". You don't keep the files around, but you have the original models. So it sort of quietly disappears.
It sounds like U3D will be useful both for a workflow and for archival (and hence presentation) purposes. I think it's probably the right time to tackle that and design it with lessons learned.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Lossy becomes interesting when you start proposing using 3D data for something that matters. Imagine a data format that is 30% lossy. If you try to apply that data to a medical application where the granularity of the data matters, it won't work. I think that's why the comparison to two lossy media formats is interesting. Sure, there's a whole other ball of wax with the JPEG and MP3 licensing issues, but precision matters when you're talking about more than just flying around some silly map on a website.
Yet again I suspect the ideal of striving for a format that is to be universal enough to cntain the whim of each individual's perceived wants. So one guy wants a lean mean 3d rendering browser machine, while somebody else wants an ultra high-res VR format for rendering the cosmos together with different behavioural and physical law models. So what happens: either an inadequate format for the one, or a massively complicated overkill spec for lighter requirements. If they can bound the problem of 3D rendering (like they did with 640k of RAM:/) then they might have a chance. A format like HTML is simple and limited which is why it is still so pervasive. "Universal" is becoming a synonym for "One of Many"
Before I even finished reading this headline, the words "XML" went through my mind. This seems like the obvious choice, especially if you want to pipe it to web browsers.
And what's all this talk about losiness? Aren't most 3D formats essentially groups of points and lines?
PS: Blender rules.
The only question that matters:
IS IT PATENT ENCUMBERED?
All other issues are secondary.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Slashdotters aren't notorious period. Random anonymous nerds shouldn't have such an inflated sense of self-importance.
Get over yourselves, losers!
The Hierarchical Data Format (HDF) http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu is one option. Suposidly open and royalty free, supports compression, and multi resolutional datasets. When I was playing with it (circa 2001), they did not deal with pologional datasets well, but there were some people addressing that...
What's wrong with VRML. :)
of this.
Conformal surface parameterization allows you generate a geometry image from an arbitrary mesh. The geometry image is a parameterization of the mesh on a uniform grid where the (r,g,b) coordinates are considered to be (x,y,z) spatial coordinates. You can now use the image format of your choice, lossy or not.
word.
Where is VRML? What about OpenGL?
How many formats are still in use for 2D images?
What about audio and video? Why do people need to have 3 media players installed? (Windows, Quicktime, Real)
What about instant messaging? That is 4 apps that are imcompatible between each other, but all do the same thing. (AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo)
Yes, I do know about gaim and mplayer, but the average user in a windows box is a different story.
I think the industry that created this mess would be better off first cleaning this up, where it impacts the end user, and worry about 3D formats, which aren't widely used, after.
Talk is nice, but it is the mighty buck that does the walk.
Interesting that they would choose two lossy media formats as models for comparison.
floating point?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Not to long ago there was a push for Microsoft to adopt open file formats for their office suite. They naturally didn't follow through. Their reason is they have a virtual monopoly in office suites - despite very viable alternatives. If they adopted an open file format then that would, in their mind, strengthen the competitors and weaken customer lock-in.
Their motive for advocating an opne 3D graphic format is that they have no stake in the 3D imaging market. If an open format is adopted then that gives them a leg up on taking over the 3D image market.
The interesting thing is how Microsoft "embraced and extended" the SVG format - only to make their own incompatible format wvg. This is inspite of the fact that Microsoft was involved in the specification. I would suspect they will use the same strategy with U3D.
"Anything is possible with enough programmers, time and pizza." (Substitute caffeine for time as needed.)
--- AC laughs to self ---
I work in medical imaging (MR, CT) where everything is volumetric. In the global scheme of things its a relatively small group of people and a relatively small group of vendors all dealing with relatively large available resources ($$$) --- have we arrived at a good standard for this -- NO.
Good luck.
--- shakes head, chuckles and walks off ----
Bring on the 3d porn sites. This can only be a good thing.
everybody's got one!
I put -
Company: Expecting some people later on.
yeah, nothing like defining a "standard" between 30 companies, especially when those companies include M$, Intel and Adobe. I wonder whose interests this will serve???
.. answer = they don't. The only "standard" that will emerge is the requirement to use the software or hardware that supports the format (which, by the way, will not be "universal" by any stretch of the imagination)
.. there's already a universal 3D exchange format developed by Kaydara (www.kaydara.com) ... the format is called FBX and supports 3D objects, lights, textures, animation and camera information ...
.. sounds like we need to be creating a new standard then ... /sarcasm
This is like the definition of "free speech" in america (you can say whatever you want, as long as the majority doesn't get offended)
but, instead, it will be "you can build whatever support you want into this 'standard', as long as we (M$, Intel, Adobe, et al. stand to make crap loads of profit from it because it will force people to use our closed, and proprietary software).
How does the end user benefit from a 3D "standard" like this?
By the way
what's that? M$ doesn't create 3D software that can actually utilize this information? fancy that
-- i'm not paranoid. who told you that???
Basically VRML wasn't designed to scratch a real itch, just a theoretical one. It was just a neat idea that was designed by committee, with predictable results.
At least according to the reports I could find, Alias and Autodesk are not members/founders of 3DIF. I would be very surprised if a "universal" 3D format is created without their help.
The problem is that there are many diverse needs/users for 3D data and the data is so large and/or hard-to-render that simplifying it to a single format that meets the needs of CAD, film animation, sci-vis, game animation, 3D web content, and GIS is not reasonable.
On the other hand, VRML may have been too early, but a poly+texture+simplebehaviours format that was well supported by all applications would be a good thing to (re)create.
So what's the point here? Will this enable me to model dancing hamsters and spinning thingies in Alias or Rhino and export them directly to Front Page and Power Point? Be still, my beating heart.
"In a hierarchy every employee will rise to his level of incompetence". The Peter Principle
I think this is a great opportunity for the Open-Source Community to try to jump the gun on our proprietary counterparts. If we came up with a standard, got some big names to back it (as we do have several big names interested in us now), and copylefted or GNUd it, we could guarantee it stays open and standard. If we do it first or immeadietly after, it can make first revisions of 3D software as an alternative to the proprietary "standard"!
Alright, this is all very well and good for games and general purpose stuff, but (since 3DIF is slow at getting login confirmations) I looked at the rather small list of supporting companies in their FAQ, and this is what I saw:
Adobe, Boeing, Dassault/Systemes, NGRAIN, Lattice, Microsoft, Parallel Graphics, SGDL Systems and Tech Soft
Where's discreet (3dsMax), where's avid (Softimate), maxon (Cinema4d), or alias (Maya), or how about newtek (Lightwave)? Maybe this can become the universal CAD format, but if those are their backers, don't expect this to become a standard in the high-end 3D arena. Someone mentioned Kaydara Motionbuilder earlier -- that's good, but proprietary.
I wouldn't give this much credibility as a UNIVERSAL format until they get some of those companies in on it... And if they are, and they aren't listing it in their FAQ, they're foolish.
Would one really notice slight noise in the coordinates of points of a mesh or in texel color values?
;-)
I've got a feeling that this format is specified not only for 3D as in virtual reality/animation but also for 3D as in mechanical CAD work. Do you REALLY want that rivet in a wing of a plane you fly to be "just a little bit" off?
Paul B.
Interesting that they would choose two lossy media formats as models for comparison.
Hrm... nope, not interesting. They're referring to their ubiquity, nothing more. (Duh.) I would shudder to think how a lossy 3D modelling standard would work, but luckily I don't have to, since that's an idiocy.
What's marginally interesting is that they would name two standards that are encumbered in a thicket of patent disputes.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
GopherVR
called x3d
web3d's x3d
so if they think iso is gonna aprove a second 3d format they are being pretty silly
back in the day we didnt have no old school
Shouldn't your iEverything come with a built-in iRenderFarm?
AFIC the W3C team are gods of standards and should be incharge, they should also be incharge of the entire world! These people are not recognised for their work and instead people implementing W3C standards go out of their way to totally screw it up and negate the entire point of it - HTML & CSS is a perfect example of this, VRML its true is old but they are working on the next thing already, these guys pretty much cover every corner and while their standards might seem hard to figure out at first but when you finally do get it its like a high and zen enlightenment!
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
link
With MS involved, I have a feeling that there is going to be a lot of ``embrace and extend'' beyond what goes on in Ballmers office.
I do research in computer graphics. Finding 3d models is a pain. There are so many formats, and converting between formats is no fun. Sometimes parts of the model get messed up. For example the surfaces normals come out backwards or the material properties disappear. I think if they release a nice file format, and a nice and fast API for loading and saving files i would check it out. And if there were a lot of nice 3d models available in that format, i would be all for it.
Burbank, CA - A consortium of one programmer is working to
define a new file format intended to seve as a universal
file format for all data. The new file format will be
named the 'Universal File Format', of UFF. According to
the consortium, he hopes to make the new format as
standard as MP3 has become for audio, and JPEG has
become for 2D images.
"The basic structure of my file format is a sequence of
8-bit numbers," says the consortium, "in which each
number can represent anything required by the users of
the file."
I suspect it'll be more like TIFF and MPEG-4.
TIFF had so many options that it was years before a common subset developed.
MPEG video is a maze of twisty little codecs all different.
"boost demand for faster processors and graphics chips" - Will it be that bad?
Just use the XML format and define a tag structure.Traditional 3D file formats are really easy to define. This is because they all contain the same types of data. Its just arranged differently.
, y,z,...d ex1,uvind ex2,uvindex3,normalindex,MaterialID1,MaterialID2,M aterialID3,....
.COB and .SCN formats are good in this regard too since the file is a series of data chunks defined by a simple header that makes it easy to skip chunks you don't care about or currently can't handle.
Doesn't all decent 3d software support the importing of other vendors file formats? I have caligari TrueSpace 3.2 (way old version -- cost me over $380 and I see no reason to upgrade for making game models-- works great)
Below is an example of a simple 3d structure (minus scene lights).
MaterialName
MaterialID
color r,g,b
specular r,g,b
diffuse r,g,b
texture filename
typehint (texture,envrionment,bump,lightmap)
Object
MeshName
ParentID
ObjectID
Position x,y,z #used to build the transform matrix
Rotation x,y,z
Scale x,y,z
Shear x,y,z
PointList
x,y,z,...
SurfaceNormalList
x
UVList
u,v,...
TriangleList #more than one uv & MaterialID needed for multitexture support
pointindex1,pointindex2,pointindex3,uvin
The difficulty comes in incorperating the special features of 3d programs. Nurbs, Metaballs, Plastiform, Physical simulation attributes and any other exosteric way of defining a 3d mesh and its attributes.
This is why I think XML would be good. The software could ignore any tags it doesnt understand.
The Truespace
This already exists. It's called X3D, an XML-ized VRML. It works, it's extendable, it's XML. To me it seems that all these "industry" folks want to do is re-package VRML now that there's actual hardware and market to support it. I wouldn't concern myself with this much. Just go on creating fantastic stuff with the tools you have and let your actions dictate what becomes a standard. These people obviously have nothing better to do.
JPEG is not *necessarily* lossy. The JPEG specification allows for both lossy and lossless compression.
In common parlance, however, JPEG refers to the *JPEG baseline algorithm* which is lossy (but allows you to define the amount of loss). Note that even though you can create images that are visually lossless, baseline JPEG can never produce truly (mathematically) lossless compression. (no, not even if you set quality=100)
If you want lossless JPEG compression, there's the standard called *lossless JPEG* (LJPEG) which doesn't provide a high degree of compression though. There's also *JPEG-LS* which is another JPEG standard which provides for lossless compression.
If that's not enough JPEG for you, there's the new standard called *JPEG 2000* which allows a host of features such as the ability to choose between lossy and lossless compression, progressive transmission etc.
So calling JPEG lossy is true only if you are referring to baseline JPEG.
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
"Their reason is they have a virtual monopoly in office suites - despite very viable alternatives."
I love how you throw in "virtual" to save your argument. How can you have a monopoly when there are "very viable alternatives"? Mono - single, one, i.e. no alternatives. Microsoft isn't a monopoly, it just has sometimes shady business practices.
Do something cool, and THEN move to standardize it. This was the fundamental problem with VRML. Standards locked it down far before it was useful.
(ducks for cover...) ;-)
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
The other problem I heard people complain about (but was not a problem for me) was the "JavaScript" problem -- people on comp.lang.vrml didn't like that their web VRML was human-readable and stealable.
I've always been curious as to how much of a real risk this is. How many contracts do developers *really* lose because someone used a snippit? I write open source C/C++/etc code without worries, because I'm quite comfortable believing that given the vast number of computing needs in the world that aren't being met, the market for people to produce software is not going to vanish (may change a lot, become less lucrative, but not vanish). If Bob Smith writes a "right click save image blocker" Javascript, and Mary Jones uses the same thing, what is the actual chance that Bob Smith was going to get hired in place of Mary Jones? I mean, I can understand it for some things, but a lot of web code is website-specific. The Web is an expanding and rapidly-changing medium, and it's not as if that Javascript snippit is likely to be in use seven years from now.
May we never see th
How the hell did they EVER think of that name...I mean, that is just as clever as you can get. They must have Harvard and Yale graduates thinking of that one all day.
Does this mean if an alien in another universe doesn't use this format that he/she/it will have compatibility issues? Will Earth be liable if they sue us for not offering support for the products they bought? Oh wait that is right, we live in a country that doesn't discipline a company for screwing over customers and not supporting their products, it rewards them with huge contracts and laws that favor them and only them. Us americans should be ok unless they decide to screw us over in yet another way, shape or form.
If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up. - Comedian Mitch Hedberg R.I.P. 03/30/68-2/24/05
X3D is the successor to VRML, it is mostly the same but in a XML type format. You can check it out at web3d.org . A lot of software packages can import/export it but the flurry of VRML browsers declined when VRML content creation didn't reach the expected levels. Also, if i am not mistaken, a lot of material data frequently used by 3D artists (multi texturing, bump maps not to mention pixel shaders etc.) are not supported by the format. Which makes it crap as an interchange format. On the upside: it is now incorporated as part of the mpeg4 standard...
We all know what this is going to be: an XML definition like everything else these days.
Universal everything is a misnomer, because everything is in a constant state of evolution. What works today, will be passé in a year or two when DirectX n+1 is released with new gimmicks. Standards are good for fixed concepts, or at least ones that take a long time before having significant changes. 3D ain't one of them.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
So I'm not the only geek with OCD? Lossy compression bugs the hell out of me!
-I am an elective eunuch.
Perhaps the best approach is a pseudo file format with plug in codecs, like Microsoft uses for its video playback.
I thought it was pretty obvious that they were referring to polygon meshes (and possibly NURBS), which can be used to make any of the things you listed. A 3d map is a collection of vertices shaped like a map. A 3D wireframe is a mode with which you view a 3d object (it is a view setting, like smooth shaded or flat shaded), it is not an object. A 3d solid object could refer to volumetric computerized geometry, however the uses of that are so uncommon (engineering, medical, scientific visualizations) that it would not be worthwhile to create a standard 3d file format. A 3d interior space is a collection of vertices shaped like an interior space.
It's not like you have to use a different image format when create an picture of a house or a picture of a dog. It's all in how the user paints the pixels. Likewise, with a polygon model, it's all about how the user manipulates the geometry.
There *are* some 3d geometry types other than polygon meshes and NURBS, but the only need (that I've perceived anyways) for a universal 3d geometry file format is with those two categories. The others so seldomly in such esoteric groups that they'd have no need for such a thing.
the .u3d file extension is already used for a proprietary format for a neat little app called uinwrap3d, which a lot of modders use to make skins for custom game models. prolly no big deal but i just thought that was mildly relavent
maybe not...
sometimes, i wonder if i'm the only conservative on teh intarweb. ah well, back to mah hogs and warmongerin'....
They will. Don't forget Direct X. Yes, Direct X is focused at the moment on games (mainly), but that will change. And besides, Microsoft has a stake in controlling the video game industry.
From the article... In particular, they hope that such a standard will allow 3D data to be more easily incorporated into other apps, such as web browsers, to make 3D imagery more widespread - and, in turn, boost demand for faster processors and graphics chips.
...and in turn slow down computers and applications everywhere.
Shouldn't they have said....
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
Alias was acquired by AKKR recently, and with that transfer probably went the ownership of the file format rights (the cursed or blessed .mb, maya binary). I doubt that AKKR has any interest in opening the format up, unfortunately...
Interesting that they would choose two lossy media formats as models for comparison
Which makes them such good examples; despite the fact they aren't the best of the bunch, they've conquered all to become the standard
The Register is reporting that more than 30 companies are working together to define a new file format intended to serve as a universal 3D file format. The new file format will be named the 'Universal 3D Format'
Wow, what an original name. Must have taken them years to come up with that.
Consider that it would be relatively difficult to steal Boeing's new fangled turbo fan based on lossless 2D photos, but a sure thing if they posted a 3D model using correct VRML indexed face sets or Wavefront obj's. on the web or in a flight sim game.
Furthermore, because the data is intended for downstream consumption, it should be compressed to enable visualization on low bandwidth, as full fledged CAD models can take up gigs, whereas the 2D snapshot would only be a couple megs at most, a lossy mode can provide however a reasonable facsimile for the purpose at hand. Nevertheless the main concern is protection of IPR without needing to incorporate DRM into a 3D standard, which may have other hard to solve patent issues for 3D browser companies, like mine.
If you want a CAD file, need to know the resistance of that wire, or the temperature constraints on that piston, or the material used to coat the undercarriage, or submillimeter accuracy over hundreds of meters of model, etc, that is what a CAD format is for.
Also consider that there are huge wharehouses full of CAD data that can be converted to the lossy format, enabling far better 3D games with lots of stuff found in real life without being reverse enginineerable.
x,y,z
1,1,1
2,2,2
What happens when you lose data in a 3d file? in images you have less crispness and contrast between adjacent similar pixels. In audio you have the same effect between adjacent similar frequencies. What happens when adjacent vertices get confused? You wind up with corrupted geometry which makes the entire thing worthless. (this assumes that we're using specifying vertices and not just using mathematical primitives)
Then there's the companies involved. I can see intel knowing something about 3d. They make processors for all of our favorite stuff. But Microsoft usesd to own Softimage which was the industry standard for many years. But did nothing with it but let it sit and rot and eventually sold Softimage to Avid. Have you seen Adobe's 3d stuff lately? They ought to stick to 2d. Why did none of the other 30 companies get mentioned by name? Who are they? is Alias involved? Softimage? Newtek? Side Effects? Discrete? Kaydara? These are companies that I know have a clue as to what it takes to make a 3D format, they've already done it.
What kind of applications would this format be aimed at? the needs of an architect making CAD drawings are vastly different than those of an animator making character animations, which are different than those of someone making scientific visualizations. An architect doesn't need any dynamic simulation routines or an IK solver. But an animator doesn't need solid modelling features or measurement tools.
That's all my ranting for now.
Very intriguing, but it is only capable of storing raw quantized geometry (i.e. no spline-based models, unless polygon conversion is acceptable).
The universal 3d file format being proposed seems more like Rich Text File, whereas . It should not only store the meaningful content, but also basic object-organization data, comprehensive mapping coordinates, decent instance handling, intelligent scale adjustment and have flawless coordinate system conversion. Something that would store more data than a mapping of bits (as coordinates), just like Rich Text File stores than just text.
How did this get modded to +2?
Texels are not really manipulated directly in 3d content creation. Texel is a graphics term referring to a pixel of a frame occupied by geometry which is texture-mapped.
It would depend on a lot of things, but small errors can propagate. For example creating a character skeleton relies on precise positioning of "joints" that, if improperly adjusted, can become pretty screwed up. Distorting texture coordinates can result in badly misplaced textures, especially with real time work (games). Extremely detailed models can have minute detail and large objects, with some of the larger details being thousands of times larger than the smaller details. Lossy compression algorithms could result in an unacceptable level of vertex deformation in smaller things as it only tries to preserve the larger details well.
It all really depends on the degree to which precision loss exists though, which I don't think any of us can predict.
I think it highly unlikely that it'll be a lossy format. There has never been a lossy 3d geometry format, and I'm pretty sure if I consulted my colleagues they'd find the idea insane as I do. Filesize is rarely a problem with 3d geometry files (I've worked with models with hundreds of thousands of polys only a few megabytes in size), and it's not like everyone is always trying to download the latest new 3d models off of Kazaa. There's no mass low-bandwidth transfer of 3d models compared to JPGs and MP3s, so no compression is needed. Lossy compression would be a completely unnecessary feature that would effectively block it from usage in almost every area of 3d content creation.
out of order data for the cell phones of the future that will map the area around us into 3d data and upload it to an open server. The server would be serving a live 3d world representing the data from the phones. It will let everyone vitually be there through a first person view on their pc.
When the resolution is high enough to make out distinct features of the people that are around downtown for example, it will be like the pc users are ghosts, they are there but no one can see them.
what else... finaly mainstream 3D GUIs?
tutorials and howtos for hardware installation may begin to be in 3D where you can move around and check things out like it's real before you open up the box for that hot new 64/384 audio card.
anyways, seems like it's gonna be a fun ride
.3ds also can't handle spline surface geometry. I've been using IGES for that instead (exports beautifully from Maya to CATIA).
The major players in 3D modelling/content creation can't even agree on the precise interpretation of trimmed nurbs surfaces, much less on other more difficult areas like material properties and lighting for rendering. For materials no two renderers agree on what something simple like a chrome material means much less something more complicated like wood, leather or marble.
:-)
They want to define something universal that everyone making 3D software will use as a native data format -- the two main products at Alias (Studio Tools and Maya) don't even use the same file format (because they have different problem domains -- but at least they share the same interpretation of nurbs
In StudioTools, some of the textures and images in the scene can be the result of compositing a bunch of layers (like photoshop) -- are they going to embedd a photoshop like 2D format in their 3D format? Others are 16 bit/channel or float per channel -- Now add trimmed nurbs, hierarchical subdivision surfaces, construction history, particle systems, dynamics, kinematics, animation tracks, procedurally generated textures, fluids, the list goes on and on -- the number of node types for StudioTools and Maya alone would be in the thousands. I'm sure that CAD and Engineering software packages would add a couple thousand unique ones to that list.
The mind just boggles at the complexity of what they're attempting. I'm quite sure they have not the faintest idea of just how large a chunk of work they've bitten off.
When I was at IBM (10 years ago now), we used to call this sort of thing "boiling the ocean". ie. comsume enourmous resources and money for extended periods of time while producing no discernable and/or useful results.
Ian Ameline
Software Architect,
Alias.
(Not speaking for my employer.)
Ian Ameline
Yeh, 3D what? The comparisons they make are meaningless because there is no agreed upon meaning of "3D model".
Look at MP3 - A format for specifying a fixed, sampled 1D data stream.
Look at JPEG - A format for specifying a fixed, sampled 2D data stream.
and I'll throw in
MPEG - A format for specifying a fixed, sampled time sequence of sampled 2D data (or 3D sampled data if you want to thing of it that way)
All of those are relatively well defined problems. The output of the decoder is essentially either a 1D array of samples (audio), a 2D array of samples (image pixels), or a 3D array of samples (video). All of those are very well understood and very standardized in terms of meaning.
U3D - What does it encode? It's not clear. Probably the most direct analogue to the MP3 and JPG cases would be that given a U3D file you should be able to generate any 3D view of the model. A view is basically a 2D image, and you can place the camera anywhere in 3D space, and you can rotate the camera about 3 axes. Add it all up you're talking about an 8D dataset. Now using a little clever reordering you can reduce that to 5D, and what's usually called the "plenoptic function" (6D if you include time as a dimension as well, for animation), but it's still an open problem as to how to encode all that info into a reasonable sized file. So we don't. We use cheats. We explicity define triangles that approximate particular surfaces in the scene. We assign them colors. We define material properties like specularity. We assign them textures. We assign them multiple textures. But we want better, more realistic images, so that we can make something that looks like brushed metal. Or refracts like glass. Or whatever. So now we have things like register combiners to allow prettier rendering, then we get pixel shaders. And pixel shaders 1.2, and 1.3, and 1.4, and 2.0. Etc. And there will be a pixel shader 3.0 I'm sure and so on. And then there are full surface BRDF descriptions, and all the many ways to encode that efficiently like the LaFortune model or spherical harmonics and whatnot. And we're definitely not done yet. All these things go a long way to capturing a lot of the high-order terms of the plenoptic function, but it still doesn't give you a way to encode any specific 2D view from any position in space.
The point is that 1D and 2D -- even 3D -- sampled data are simple. It's just a bunch of samples. As soon as you move into describing 3D scenes you we're talking about much higher-dimensional data, and the exhaustive sampling approach breaks down. So you have to make a lot of assumptions, and use a lot of tricks, and people are still inventing the tricks. And some assumptions are useful to some people, like game designers, but completely inappropriate for others, like medical technicians. MP3s use tricks too, but the output is almost indistinguisable from the original audio for most people, same with JPEGs and a photograph. That's because sampling in low dimensional spaces is really well understood, and the raw data size isn't really that big to begin with.
My point is that it's going to be a while before we can represent 3D generically in a way that is basically indistinguishable from reality. And that is universally useful as mp3 is to audio, and Jpeg is to images. Until then we'll continue to use various appearance models like Blinn-Phong specularity, and continue to develop newer and better ones. And each one requires that the decoder know how to handle that appearance model. And may require some particular kind of hardware support, like pixel shader 2.0.
For the time being there just isn't a way to specify a 3D model that's universal. The whole idea is just silly. I don't see this being anything other than another VRML. Useful maybe, but nothing at all like Mp3 or Jpeg. The comparison is just dumb.
That's why we have so many model formats in the first place. Some people just need a plain list of triangles. CAD people need data described
High-quality 3D CAD programs *should* already be able to import the Initial Graphics Exchange Specification (IGES). IGES has absolutely been the de-facto standard for the past 10 years on data transfer between CAD packages. It handles surfaces, 2D drawings, 3D wireframe, as well as solids (although it didn't originally support solids). Unfortunately, some CAD software manufacturers *cough*AutoCAD*cough* force the consumer to buy an additional license to handle it. They want everyone to use their proprietary Drawing Exchange Format (DXF)
Some CAD packages had attempted to go to the solid model transfer format STEP (Standard for the Exchange of Product Model Data), but few have been quick to adopt it. STEP works extremely well between CAD packages that do support the format. It'll even build assembly heirarchies for the user as necessary. Unfortunately, STEP doesn't handle parametric models (models driven by dimensions, instead of the other way around).
That said, there are still some downfalls of all flavors of the current intermediate transfer formats. I look forward to the day when I don't have to worry about what format a given CAD package uses, and how they interact with each other.
-Malfaetor
Reviled did I live, said I, as evil I did deliver.
Perhaps the format doesn't care about geometry, light sources and whatnot, but simply works like MPEG, just in 3D. The cosine or wavelet transform can be done in 3D as well as it can in 2D, and codecs for such a format would be rather simple to do (and faster, I guess) than realtime rendering engines, because they don't have to bother with how to interpret the various elements of a 3D scene with actual model data. Files in that format also would be much harder to edit, with obvious advantages for the industry.
Also, the transform need not be lossy (although lack of lossless compression would mean the files get really big). Even if it is lossy, you could make certain parts of the 3D scenes much more detailed than others using clever wavelet compression.
And of course, if the format is to work that way, the comparison to JPEG and MP3 makes a lot more sense.
blow your mind already
http://www.ecma-international.org/memento/members. htm
isn't pixar one of the more popular 3d companies? at least in movies they are, and their RenderMan 3d format is pretty damn popular among photorealistic renderers. There's nothing that I know of that a RenderMan file cannot represent. I'm wondering why they're not making some effort to collaborate in this.
another question: why is apple a part of this when Pixar is not? Steve Jobs is CEO of both companies, as we all know.
A universal 3d format is needed in many places. Autodesk developed a new 3d format with Inventor, then sold copies of Volo Viewer (autocad file viewer) to try and standardize their format. All of a sudden, theyve changed their strategy from the DWG format to the DWF, leaving many customers who bought copies of Volo Viewer only last year in a limbo. New versions of Inventor produce files that cannot be read in Volo Viewer or any other reader from Autodesk, while Autodesk makes us wait for their next best thing, a batch covertor of DWG and inventor files, to the fabled DWF.
Till then we have to either hire a team of draftspeople to covert each drawing to DWF(just open and save as...), or pay for the expensive third party tools.
If there was a standard we wouldnt even get into all this.... 3D CAD format standard that is.
And then, I certainly wouldnt mind having characters from unreal, quake2, GTA3 in my counterstrike game on-the-fly.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
JPEG can be lossless compression, depending on what settings you use.
Just because it's -normally- run in a lossy mode doesn't mean that it has to be.
Whatever happened to those formats? And are they proposing to use some form of 3-d wavelet transform for the format?
I guess it's off to read the article, I just wanted to get my questions in before it's buried under several hundred responses just in case someone had a quick answer.
video is basically a 3D file...
(row,column,time)
I would love to see encoding based on that.
Also, this would be useful in computer vision. Most vision algorithms for video are really just image streams.
www.kirigin.com
Robo-Blogs of the world: UNITE!
I think one of the main pushes behind this is DirectX. Currently DirectX uses the .X format, that many professional modelling programs don't natively support. Maya 5.01 Unlimited, the latest version available to my knowledge, exports to OBJ, GE2, RTG, VRML2, and RTG. This has people turning to third party apps like Deep Exploration or hacked plug-ins*.
Microsoft wants to be certain that every available 3D modelling program can easily and accurately export to a format that will work directly with the next version of DirectX.
*Some of the export plugins available are homebrewed and don't support important features, or don't convert properly. What should a 3D format support? Polygons only, or NURBS as well? Subdivision surfaces? Camera angles, animation? How much shader information will be stored?
There is a difference between a scene files like Max's .max file and the object export file .3DS. Scene files actually hold and store texture maps, light settings, plug-in settings and anything used by the program to render the scene. An object files is just the mesh object, the actual 3D model (or models if exported with multiple models selected) the point is that there is no actual textures or plugins to import, it's just the model with refrence to textures.
I don't see how you could have a Lossy universal 3d model standard out there, if you exporting a vector based mesh...3D modelling (until rendered) is basically a 3D vector program, where points are ploted to create an object, it's not like a raster image that stores millions of colored pixels.
If I'm wrong about this let me know ( i haven't done 3D in almost a 2 years)...but i don't see how lossy compression or licensing standards even relates to a 3D object.
"Universal" is a very ambitious word. I have seen attempts at standard "universal" 3D formats and realized that the problem space of 3D is so complex that "universal" will very likely never exist. So, who do we please? CAD/CAM? LOL: within CAD/CAM there is machining, molding, prototyping, ship building, process planning, etc. Mesh editing for still-lifes and animation? That would be easier but there are already formats for that (gee, it's just a mesh and some primitives).
The problem is simply that the standards documents become so large that no one can implement them, no one can follow all the changes in them, everyone will be behind, no one will be compatible with each other. I'm talking tens of thousands of pages of standards documents, for starters. And people thought "web based" and it's hundreds of related acronyms is bad? Just you wait!
Intel should just look to history and all the failed attempts at reforming 3D (IGES, STEP, and VRML to name a few) and revise their goals a bit lower.
Vote in November. You won't regret it.
PNG
Wow, the radiant splendor of ignorance. Perhaps he means "virtual" as in precisely what it means?
"Existing or resulting in essence or effect though not in actual fact, form, or name: the virtual extinction of the buffalo."
Shady business practices, yes. Illegal, yes. And with an overwhelming marketshare (over 80%?) on the desktop OS and office suites, it's by definition a virtual monopoly. Slowly: Not. Literally. 100%, But. In. Essence.
668.5
What's wrong with 3ds, it's easy to extend without breaking compatability.... if an app doesn't know about a chunk, it just ignores it.... seems like a pretty good format for 3d to me... maybe it could have compression, but that's all I'd probably add to it.
And it is quite possible to specify an XML format which would serve as the "canonical" format for a model and specify one or more "shorthand" formats that encode the XML format more concisely with rules for transforming one to the other.
XML has several advantages - it is text based so can be easily edited by humans when necessary and there are XML editors that can simplify the process. It has many standard tools and toolchains and XSLT is maturing nicely as a transformation engine which provides for lots of additional capabilities (and don't forget XQuery, and native XML databases). Finally, it is by nature extensible, allowing for different ways to put in comments, add in vendor specific extensions that are easily ignored by other vendors (or used when possible), provide for upgrade paths and the like.
On the whole, using XML has disadvantages, but advantages as well. Given a choice between large XML and some smaller but quasi-proprietary binary format, I'll take XML every time.
Google query: Independent JPEG Group and discover that IJG just maintains the most common library for reading and writing JFIF (.jpg) files.
The name JPEG 2000 probably comes from the fact that there are about 2000 possible encoding ways/options.. :( Hard to support all that + patents etc...
Store with salt
Not to long ago there was a push for Microsoft to adopt open file formats for their office suite. They naturally didn't follow through.
This is not true. Microsoft did adopt an open file format: XML. However, it is not available in any Office suite except the uber-expensive Professional version. Standard and Basic version do not get it. So, effectively, Microsoft gets to keep their file-format monopoly because the very people most likely to want an open format are the people who'll be least likely to be able to afford it.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
They both have plenty of reasonable ways to transfer 3D geometry with enough attribute information to be perfectly useable. What they don't have is a way to express models.
Models can be animations and kinematics, or dimensions and constraints. Both often involve a significant degree of construction history as well.
Personally, I don't see this standard doing anything not currently being done. X3D is already out there and works surprisingly well with those few applications supporting it.
Part of the problem lies in the differences between representations and methods used to describe and manupulate the models. (At least as far as engineering stuff goes --I assume animation models have the same troubles.)
Perhaps no standard yet exists because we are not entirely sure how the process should be done in the first place. I knew this was the case 10 years ago, but is that still true today? Keep in mind, new product releases often continue to include new abilities not present in older releases along with usability features. In contrast, the geometry based functionality largely boils down to new usability features; thus, implying we understand geometry very well compared to modeling.
My thoughts anyway.
Blogging because I can...
Microsoft did adopt an open file format: XML.
XML hardly deserves to be called a file format. To have any meaning, the term "file format" must be usable as a way to discuss what files a program is capable of understanding. If two programs are known to both use MP3 or both use JPG, then one can predict with high certainty that they are compatible on the file level.
But if all we know is that the programs both read XML data, then we actually know nothing about what they actually do.
It would be possible for Microsoft to use XML for everything, but still not make life any easier for outsiders trying to achieve compatibility.
We wouldn't claim "binary" is a file format, and we shouldn't call "XML" one either.
Saddam Hussein may not have been an imminent threat, but then again neither was Hitler.
By the time the USA took up arms against Hitler, he certainly wasn't imminent anymore- he was active. He'd already invaded 6 different US allies by the time they decided to join the fight against Germany.
While I was a student I worked for a lab on campus that did a lot off stuff with 3D graphics. I remember how much a pain in the butt it was try to move things between different packages ( Autocad, ProE, Catia, Solidworks, 3D Studio Max, Wavefront Advanced Visualizer, Alias Studio, Softimage, Maya, you name it. )
While a universal format sounds like a great idea I am a bit skeptical about this working out. Most of the packages I have run into play with a neutral format called IGES, I use the term play, because in my experience moving any useful amount of data around in it is hit or miss at best.
With 3D data you are messing with so many variables a task specific representation is almost required. Audio isn't really that complicated, compressions techniques aside, most are just based on a pulse code modulation. 2D images start to get interesting, sure there is the good old raster images, but once you go vector there are lots of different formats. The brute force raster like approach to 3D is voxel based images, which are huge, and hardly generally useful in proportion to their size. Maybe we could model the solids, no use using storage space representing empty space. We could just store solid primitives and logic operations on then. This of course can get really big for complicated surfaces. Maybe the surface is all we need, then how do we go about it, polygon approximations? NURBS?
Part of the reason for the different formats are differences just from reinventing the wheel, but some of them are there because the representation they are using is better suited to the application at hand.
XML hardly deserves to be called a file format.
Regardless of whether or not you wish to deem it an acceptable file format, it is a file format that would allow anyone to open anywhere on any platform using any software, assuming that said software could properly parse the XML file. And the ability to parse that data is assured, since the file format is documented by Microsoft -- documents open to anyone and everyone, free of charge.
By the time the USA took up arms against Hitler, he certainly wasn't imminent anymore- he was active. He'd already invaded 6 different US allies by the time they decided to join the fight against Germany.
One is taken to wondering just how different things might've been if we'd shown more spine earlier as opposed to picking up the pieces later. Hundreds of thousands of lives might've been saved if Hitler had just known the Allies meant business. Instead, we sat around and let him get away with one international violation after another, each one emboldening him to take the next step. Churchill once said "At one point, a memo would've stopped Hitler." We stopped Saddam, but now we're being castigated for it. I imagine the same naysayers would've been present had we put a stop to Nazism back when it was in a nascent stage.
Your argument that Hitler was "active" gives lie to the silliness of avoiding pre-emptive warfare. Which is smarter, fighting a war when your enemy is weak or waiting until he is strong, bold, and has the initiative? Naysayers cling to the idea that pre-emptive war is folly. It's pity they haven't learned from history, because if they had their way, we'd all be doomed to repeat it.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the IGES format was supposed to be a "universal" 3d file format.
I know 3D Studio MAX and Rhino3D support it and I believe SoftImage and Lightwave do, too.
But what about Intel's motive? From the article:
Getting a chipmaker involved in a 3D file format committee sounds like a good way to ensure a very computationally inefficient format that needs custom hardware to encode and decode. Heck, why not get some RAM manufacturers, hard drive manufacturers and bandwidth suppliers on the committee to make sure the file sizes are huge, too?
>> My ultraviolent Linux switch video.
Problem is, Hussein was never going to be "strong, bold, and have the initiative." He was the dictator of a small, poverty-ridden, country in which there were (at least) three very opposed different populations. Hitler was "dictator" of a larger, already strong, country, that was in a depression but by no means third-world, and was able to harness the emotions and power of practically the whole country to get what he wanted.
End result: Hitler was a threat to the US. Saddam wasn't. Hitler would have, eventually, gotten enough power to defeat the US if we hadn't joined the war in time. Saddam would have just sat there on his throne, killing off a few people (which a) we could have prevented in ways other than war, and b) was AFAIK fewer than are dying now due to the terrorists that weren't there before but are now and the worsened living conditions) and not posing any threat at all to us.
And as to pre-emptive war, the problem with it is that it sets a precedent for any other country that wants to start a pre-emptive war too. Because of that, there are a lot more wars total. And unless you happen to like war, I'm sure you'll agree that that's a bad thing.
There are 11 types of people in the world: those who can count in binary, and those who can't.
The main reason why there is not one standard file format is because each one implements different features.
Some file formats may require that polygons be all adjacent per object/mesh and some don't. Some formats are editable by text editors (XML, OBJ) and some are completely binary. Some formats implement feature X, but others implement feature Y, and maybe a third format implements X and Y, but not Z which just came out and is needed by the game to work, so they had to make another texture format. Then they learn that yet another format got extended to include Z, but still only partially implements Y for some cases. Then suddenly someone comes out with another new feature that requires another texture, so ever format needs to be modified, but this will break compatibility. The story goes on and on and never ends until the time when new video cards and drivers stop being made.
There needs to be a file format that includes all the features that were needed for most programs created and had extensibility, so that newer versions could easily be made without breaking compatibility.
Sadly, this is not likely to happen, since standards organizations take 2 years to make 5 year old technology into standards or update them, so the extensibility will not be updated correctly, and different programs will make different non-standard extensions based on their needs. Basically it will end up like HTML. And finally standards organizations come up with a better file format that implements much more, and maybe even future features (like XHTML) And the story continues... But everyone will still use the old format (HTML) because it is more supported. by this time, it will be too late. And then, even the new format will be old, so yet another, and even less suported file format will come in another 5 years.
This is in some ways similar to image formats. There are JPEG, PNG, BMP, PPM, SVG, ..., etc. JPEG gets best (but lossy) compression, but PNG gets better quality, but PPM is easy to edit, but takes forever to load, and BMP is easy to load, etc. Then SVG is completely different and draws lnes and objects instead of by pixel. Each format is different based on the needs.
it is a file format that would allow anyone to open anywhere on any platform using any software, assuming that said software could properly parse the XML file.
Flat-out wrong. The ability to parse a file doesn't imply that you can understand it!
One is taken to wondering just how different things might've been if we'd shown more spine earlier as opposed to picking up the pieces later.
By "spine", I assume you mean strictness or aggression. But actually, for optimal results, the Allies (US+UK+France) should've been more gentle earlier. Then WWII never would've happened. (I wouldn't expect you to understand what I mean without an uncommon knowledge of history)
For interchange among the major 3D packages, Kaydara has the free (like beer) FBX file format, which seems to work pretty well. They've even gotten it incorporated into Quicktime, so it might be viable for online/relatime content as well.
Hello? Who's moderating here? Take your godwin crap to your journal.
the Allies (US+UK+France) should've been more gentle earlier. Then WWII never would've happened.
Do you mean: by not demanding unreasonably large reparations from Germany at Versailles while simultaneously denying them the means to pay them, Germany would not have considered its several expansionist adventures in the early 30s and Hitler wouldn't have had as much appeal?
Funny... a new 'standard' seems to pop up every few months.
: .3ds .obj
:)
Despite even a good deal of acception, such as the FiLMBOX format, I keep seeing people falling back to
- export and import
- export and import
- export and import through third party plugins
- in-house export/import routines
I'd be all for an XML format. Yes, I know, storage space.. but considering there's a limited datatypeset, a compression routine could easily be written that collapses the file to a tidy binary, which a decompressor could then stream right back out to tidy XML. But whatever
What about programs like Maya, which have the capacity to store the entire creation history of an object? In Maya keeping at least some of an object's construction history is important.
Especially since Maya's file format is basically just a listing of the MEL commands that were used to create the object in the first place (in Maya, every action, tool, etc., generates a MEL (Maya Embedded Language) command, and it's the MEL command that actually performs the action).
Really, this is bound to fail. They'd have to create a very large feature set in order to accomodate every need of every program, and that means the only to routes they can go are thus:
1)Have a small, core set of required features and a larger set of optional features.
or
2)Have a large set of required features
Obviously, #2 won't work. It just doesn't make sense for a program that only uses polygons to have to worry about things like NURBS, subdivision surfaces, etc.
However, #1 isn't that great either. This is because there will inevitably be some programs that don't implement some of the optional features that other programs do implement, rendering this new format useless as a "universal" format.
What's more, somebody will inevitably implement some of the features in a nonstandard way. Do you really think Microsoft wants to play nice and for once doesn't have any ulterior motives?
As the old adage goes, "You can please some of the people all of the time, or all of the people some of the time, but you cannot please all of the people all of the time." The same goes for file formats.
You know, I have mod points right now, but there is no modifier for invoking godwins law....
Sigs? We don't need no stinking sigs!
Minor nitpick, but Iraq has the 3rd largest reserve of oil. Not exactly 3rd world (despite the despot's keeping many of civilian living that poor or worse).
Saddam had already proven he had no qualms about attacking neighboring countries or useing chemical weapons on his own people let alone others.
He was not obeying the U.N. resolutions, the cease fire agreement (you know the one that says we'll stop pounding on you as long as you do x,y, and z).
Also a good portion of the world believed he had large amounts of proscribed weapons(instead of the tiny amounts found so-far), and his behouviour right up to the end only lent credibility to that perception.
The main reason several countries didn't want to follow through on removing him when it became clear he would never do what he agreed to do is because of thier significant financial investments in Iraq. And quite possibly thier bypassing the embargo illeagly.
Still though setting a precedent for pre-emtive war is not somthing I care for. Fortunately this was not a pre-emtive war, it was a resumption of a previous conflict when one party failed to live up to the cease fire treaty.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
They mentioned JPEGs because they're one of the two most popular image formats, with GIF being the other. BMPs are Windows-specific, PNGs are not very common and few mainstream people know of them, etc. MP3 are by far the most popular music format. WAVs are huge in size and Windows-specific and no one knows of Ogg Vorbis. So the two examples chosen were perfectly fine. Plus, can you name a popular lossless sound format? No. They're so large in size that they're not popular. Anyway, this is a really good idea; I'm excited to see what happens. Since filesize is never an issue with models, the format should be designed for simple reading and writing. Perhaps it can even be slightly redundant, with a list of unique vertex positions and another list of vertices, where multiple vertices can be at the same position if their texture data differs.
~CGameProgrammer( );
Hasn't anybody ever heard of the OpenFlight format?
What have you been smoking?
What you are saying here makes no sense. I even don't know where to begin to debunk you bullshit.
Obviously you don't know how MPEG works. You don't know know that a 3D format is raadically different from a 2D format. What you a are suggesting would make HOM seem like a trivial issue.
A 3D file format descirbes something dynamic. You are comparing it to something static.
Random noise should be slightly smaller as a .bmp in most cases.
What I think would be bandwith, and space friendly would be procedural graphics (1) (in keeping with moore's law). There would be more work on the client, and server sides of the link, but inbetween it would work best. It would also be more flexible in what could be done with the results.
(1) Remember that contest awhile back, that was about the smallest amount of code you could use to generate a scene? Procedural. Now all we need is scene compilers.
VRML files are huge. VRML was designed to be human readable (a laudable goal) but this meant that a VRML of any complexity made an enormous file. I used to use VRML files out of ProEngineer in a 3D simulation package and the smallest files were usually about 20 megabytes and it went up to 200 at times.
VRML files are designed to be human readable because VRML isn't just a mere 3D description language, but also a programming language.
The very big advantage of VRML/X3D for designing virtual worlds is that you can not only design objects with VRML, but also define the interactions between them directly in the VRML source.
Moreover, the concept of scene graph (the 3D scene is a tree, if you affect an object its children are affected) which was by popularized by VRML has proven to be quite effective for developping virual worlds, and has been for example adopted in newer technologies like Java 3D.
Why not use POV-RAY's scene description language? Verbose, yes, but compressed it'll still make it through. All it needs is a time-based element for animation.
I can parse because I know the punctuation and that nouns start with capitals, but I still can't understand it all :)
And by "Uncommon Knowledge" would History up to year 9 be good enough? I knew about the Treaty at that point (at 13/14) and its effects and (lack of) success.
However, if we hadn't been gentle at that point, then being strict later would probably have put down Hitler. The problem being that we ourselves barely had the arms to fight Hitler, even with his crippled army. Showing some spine, though, or having help from the US, could've convinced Hitler that we were going to crush him before he started - barely need for fighting.
im in ur
How can you have a monopoly when there are "very viable alternatives"? Mono - single, one, i.e. no alternatives.
Sorry, but legally, a monopoly does not necessarily mean having 100% of the market. Of course, having 100% control of the market is a monopoly, but a company can be found to be a monopoly with less than 100% control of a market -- without abusing the letter and spirit and intent of the law.
Just because the common meaning of the word means 100% doesn't mean that the Sherman Antitrust Act requires 100% for a company to be declared a monopoly.
Also, you can have a monopoly despite there being "very viable alternatives" if the monopoly has a large enough market fraction and if there are sufficient barriers to entry. If you had read anything about antitrust law, you would know that many successful antitrust cases of the last 100 years are against companies that do not have 100% of the market.
This is NOT off topic.
I'm a stickler for your mom's sweet, sweet ass.
What is it today? The whole front page of Slashdot is taken from *yesterday's* Register front page. Pathetic.
You should remember the sordid sage of VRML when the topic of universally accepted formats come up.
VRML was a project started by Marc Pesce who, inspired by William Gibson's cyberpunk books, wanted to create virtual reality for the people. Gibson (and later Stephenson) was hot and many companies saw VRML as the future and wanted to be ahead on the issue, to avoid getting behind as Microsoft did for a while with HTML up to HTML 3.2 (aka Netscape extensions).
So politics ensued. All energy went in there but the tools, well, those are not so hot. Ever wondered why VRML viewers are sluggish when a 486 can show a fast Castle Wolfenstein (limited 3D) and a Pentium can show Doom in glorious 3D?
In the end Marc Pesce was kicked out and he wrote The Great Leap Downward (article offline tese days) where he told the sorry saga that VRML had turned into.
The concortium took revenge by sanitising their documents from his name. And there it stands. Occationally you wil see people claiming VRML is alive (shouting movie at 11) but then again the CP/M newsgroup is active too.
Don' they own SoftImage or some other high end renderer?
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
- Any implementations MUST NOT use any "reserved" fields until AFTER such usage is clearly spelled out at <insert_some_website_here> and cached at Google (or successor or other caching site); at least two independent unrelated web sites. Furthermore, any "intellectual property claims" are abandoned at submission (disclosure lands in the public domain).
- Any violation MUST result in said implementation being unable to use the trademark.
Wouldn't that help Kerberos?I'd prefer universal 36DD models...
First of all, anyone who's ever sat around waiting to connect to a TFC server because they need to download new models will tell you that size does in fact matter; in games with dynamic content, sitting around and waiting for models to download is an issue. Next, though this idea is incompatible with the concept of "lossy" a la MP3 or JPEG, modern 3D graphics engines use level of detail (LOD) to reduce the number of polygons on screen. Basically, at a certain distance from the camera, it switches to a version of the model with fewer polys in it. The reason this is incompatible with the issue of lossiness, however, is that this usually isn't about file size... though in dynamic games, sending the low-LOD models first allows a rough prototype of the scene to be displayed and then have the polish sent off afterwards.
the concept of scene graph (the 3D scene is a tree, if you affect an object its children are affected) which was by popularized by VRML has proven to be quite effective for developping virual worlds, and has been for example adopted in newer technologies like Java 3D.
Not to mention older ones, like POVRay.
Oh, wait.
This proprietary language developed by Graphisoft (makers of ArchiCAD) would be a good place to start. As a 3D format, it would be great. It already has a web plugin architecture. From the website:
The Geometric Description Language (GDL) is the foundation for intelligent building objects. Continuously developed since 1982, GDL represents mature object technology, with tens of thousands of highly parametric objects available and in use around the world. Intelligent building objects are important to architects because they accelerate work, make project management easier and allow them to design instead of draft.
GDL contains all of the information necessary to completely describe building elements as 2D CAD symbols, text specifications, and 3D models for calculations and presentations. GDL distinguishes itself from other electronic object descriptions in that it requires very little programming experience - it was designed to be used by architects, after all - it is compact, and library parts are easy to customize.
Intelligent building objects behave parametrically. Parameters simply are rules embedded in the object that govern its appearance and behavior. A window might have parameters that allow the architect to define its height, width, number of panes, material and frame style. A wall might contain parameters to define its composition, surface, finish, height, and construction to other walls, columns, floors and ceilings. Parameters can be changed at any time and the complete project will be updated.
Who is the master of foxhounds, and who says the hunt has begun? -Pink Floyd
By "spine", I assume you mean strictness or aggression. But actually, for optimal results, the Allies (US+UK+France) should've been more gentle earlier. Then WWII never would've happened. (I wouldn't expect you to understand what I mean without an uncommon knowledge of history)
That's a very good argument, and I respect it. Had WWI been ended differently, German animosity towards everyone else may not have existed, and Hitler might not have been able to tap that hatred and desperation to fuel the nationalism that led to WWII.
However, I could make the counter-argument that had the Allies had a more pre-emptive policy towards pre-WWI German aggression, WWI might not have happened. That would invalidate your position. This is supposition, of course, but history shows that strong nations who mean business are rarely challenged by intelligent opponents. It it better to be feared or to be loved? Given human nature, I'd rather be feared since you can rarely count on being universally loved.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Flat-out wrong. The ability to parse a file doesn't imply that you can understand it!
parse ( P ) Pronunciation Key (pärs)
v. parsed, parsing, parses
v. tr.
1. To break down into its component parts with an explanation of the form, function, and syntactical relationship of each part.
So, tell me, if parsing isn't understanding the file, exactly what is your definition of parsing?
Sorry, you're wrong.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Softimage is not a renderer, it's a company, their flagship product, Softimage XSI is not a renderer, it's a full 3d production environment and its renderer is called MentalRay and it's prodused by a company called mental images. And yes, Microsoft owned Softimage some years ago, but now they are owned by Avid. And you should thank Microsoft for bringing profesional 3d apps to the "masses" - aka Windows NT, moving them from SGI workstations and the like.
:)
BTW, I'm not a Microsoft lover, just speaking the truth
I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
Ability to parse is not the same as ability to use. I'm able to parse French. I know all the letters. But I'm unable to use it. I could use it if I get a dictionary. However there is no dictionary for Microsoft XML available.
.doc is not) accessible but they are not open - you can't contribute.
You misunderstand the use of the term "parse." If you were a developer thinking in developer terms, your ability to parse an XML file would mean you can read the file and logically understand the contents of it (tags, data, etc.). Since the tags are documented, you have no reason to be unable to understand the file. Unless, of course, you're just not trying very hard.
XML is not Microsoft format.
And I'll give you the DUH! Awards of the Century for that comment. The W3C may define how XML works, but the contents of the file can be anything you want. This is one of the great flexibility advantages of XML, that it can hold pretty much any kind of data.
MS documents are sometimes (e.g. format of
SOOO????? How does this prevent you from being able to open and use an XML-saved Word document on a FOSS platform? The answer: it doesn't. You're never satisfied, are you? People complained about Microsoft having closed document formats, so Microsoft opened them and made them interchangeable with other packages. Now you're complaining because you can't tell Microsoft what tags to put in their format. At what point does this diverge from being a way to get documents on more platforms and instead become a jihad to castigate Microsoft for anything and everything, at all times, no matter what? For crying out loud, give them some credit for doing something interchangeable!
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Problem is, Hussein was never going to be "strong, bold, and have the initiative." He was the dictator of a small, poverty-ridden, country in which there were (at least) three very opposed different populations.
I suppose it would be ridiculous for me to point out that, when Hitler came into power, Germany was a small, poverty-ridden country in which there were many different political factions (Democrats, Fascists, and Communists at the very least, as well as a religious party) vying for power.
The argument you're presenting is strikingly similar to the arguments I hear from clients about buying a UPS or tape backup system. If you buy the UPS, it may prevent a multimillion dollar computer outage at some point in the future. But if you prevent it, it never happens, and the beancounters will scream "but we spent $100,000 on this UPS and nothing happened!" If Saddam Hussein were destined to produce nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, then use them to blackmail the rest of the world on his terms, a pre-emptive invasion may have saved the world much hardship and bloodshed years from now. Instead, everyone's complaining he wasn't a threat. I'm just glad he got taken out before he was an imminent threat. We let Hitler germinate and it cost 100 million lives.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I deleted my flash plugins for that very reason.
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
I mean, I see the point you're trying to make, Unix workstations were expensive, but then so was/is CAD and 3D software.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
War is indeed a bad thing, but not the worst of things.
Living under tyrants who kill/rape/plunder at will is much worse.
Just like Saddam, Hitler ignored the concessions Germany made when it lost WWI.
We didnt hold them accountable, with Saddam the US held him accountable.
Pre-emptive? At that word you lose credibility. 12 years is pre-emption? HAHA.
HE DIDNT COMPLY WITH THE CEASE FIRE. None of the other bullshit matters.
Go read about all the corruption involving the countries 'opposed' to Iraqs liberation, mostly around the oil-for-tyrants program. There you will see why the UN opposed it.
Don' they own SoftImage...
No, MS bought Softimage to port to NT so they could pressure Alias/Wavefront to port Maya to NT and SGI to run NT (and Intel). Softimage, Maya, and SGI were the big power players in the highend 3d market at the time. Once Maya and SGI gave in they quickly sold SoftImage (to Avid). Not a bad investment to ensure OS domination. They only held back Softimage development for a few years allowing Maya to take the lead and made SGI dump a bunch of time and cash creating a lousy box that's no longer sold on their site (if at all). Bad faith investment? Never with MS...
++MSisEvilDailyQuota;
While we knew about WWII atrocities long before we did anything and just discounted them (stupidly) out of hand, much as we had some idea pearl harbor was going to get bombed like sorority girls at a frat party, it doesn't change the fact that hindsight is 20/20.
These days such a thing could not trivially occur due to the level of international oversight which exists thanks to the global espionage community.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
VRML/2 is non-propriatory, with standard binary encoding can be a working data file format, is a data interchange format, supports streaming and animation, and is extensible.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
If Micro$oft acquires the patents they have applied for then storing word processing documents in XML WILL be a Micro$oft format.
Germany was in a depression, that Hitler brought it out of. Iraq was (and is) a third world country, and nothing that Hussein could have done would have brought it up from that, to say nothing of the fact that he acted like he didn't even want to. Also, as evidenced by the amount of popular support that Hitler had inside Germany, the internal splits in Germany were very shallow compared to the ones in Iraq.
Obviously, we haven't found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We haven't found any WMD programs. Right now, we're trying, and failing to find "WMD program related activities." Hussein didn't have any WMDs, and he probably wan't going to anytime soon. It's like spending $200 billion to make sure the moon doesn't slip out of its orbit and hit us.
Again, Iraq had no WMDs, and showed no indication at all of wanting to attack us. The probability of it happening would have been minimal. If we hadn't gone there, about 0 lives would have been lost. Instead, by going there, several thousands of people were killed or permanently injured. Ask yourself: which is worse, a 1/1 millionth chance of 1 million people dying, or a certain chance of a thousand people dying?
There are 11 types of people in the world: those who can count in binary, and those who can't.
Intel claims that there is "no standard" out there that does what U3D does. Not true. There *is* an ISO standard called X3D that does everything the U3D group is claiming. And it's out there now. Someone asked whatever happened to VRML? Over the last 4 years it got an upgrade, was renamed X3D, is coded in XML, is totally scalable and *doesn't* bog down in CPU like ahem some companies would like. It accelerates very well and already supports hardware programmable shaders through new extensions. For more information, go to http://www.web3d.org/ Tony Parisi X3D Working Group Co-Chair
According to the CIA world factbook, Iraq's GDP in 2002 was $58 billion. According to this page (first on a google search for gdp germany hitler) Germany's GDP during the war averaged at about $400 billion in 1990 dollars, or >700 billion in 2002 dollars.
AFAIK, while a good part of the world believed that Saddam had WMDs because of the propoganda and fabricated/faulty intelligence (some of which was known to be so), a better part of the world didn't, even when presented with said propoganda and f* intelligence.
A war is pre-emptive if the reasoning given for it is that it's pre-emptive. Look back at the news from before and at the beginning of the war--everyone then said that it was because it was pre-emptive.
There are 11 types of people in the world: those who can count in binary, and those who can't.
And similarly, living under a chaotic, violent anarchy is even worse. Since war tends if not perfectly planned to lead to chaotic, violent anarchy, by itself war is not worse, but viewed as a whole, war and what it leads to is worse than malevolent dictatorship. (And I would debate that war is worse anyway--your chances of dying during a war are much higher than during peacetime, be it democracy OR dictatorship.)
And just like Hitler, Saddam was trying to conquer the world, right? Just because two people do similar things doesn't mean they're for the same reason.
Nearly the entire reason given for the war by the government was that Iraq was a threat to the US, and therefore we should get rid of the threat. That is pre-emption.
There are 11 types of people in the world: those who can count in binary, and those who can't.
VRML's been an international standard since 1997, it's part of the MPEG-4 spec (which would have gone somewhere, but for those...ahem...minor licensing issues) and it's been out there being *improved* for the last ten years while every other file format has come and gone, gone, gone.
Could you imagine putting models of the earth online with anything other than VRML? At least with VRML people have some chance of viewing it.
So let them try to float another "universal" 3D format. BRING IT ON! Because, in another year's time, when someone is talking about another universal 3D format, VRML will still be chugging along.
Disclaimer: I'm biased, because, working with Tony Parisi, I invented VRML.
I define "parse" the same way your dictionary does- which does not call it equivalent to "understanding". In computer science, as in linguisticts, parsing is one specific stage of coming to understand.
The following sentence is parsable according to the same rules as the English language; but can you understand it?
It's parsable, but not comprehensible. You can identify each noun, verb, adverb, and adjective. The relationship between each is clear. But you still can't tell what it means! (Another good example)
To go back to the more specific topic of Microsoft file formats: if they used XML, you could probably parse out their data. You'd know what each of the variables in the file was set to. You might even know what each variable was called, if the XML or DTD is verbose enough. But you still don't know what they do.
You can guess, but that'll never be good enough, since "correct" behavior is defined as "whatever Microsoft Word does when given the file". Only exhaustive reverse-engineering of the actual program can produce true bug-for-bug compatibility.
Minor nitpick, but Iraq has the 3rd largest reserve of oil. Not exactly 3rd world
Actually, that oil is part of what keeps Iraq (and many Middle Eastern nations) from developing "first world" status. If a nation possesses over-abundant salable natural resources, it has no incentive to develop the industrial economy required to support modern warfare is actually reduced.
This is an oversimplification, but to a first approximation, the citizens of an oil-rich nation don't actually have to work for a living. Taxes work backwards- every year the government pays you just for living there. (Alaska in the USA has a minor version of this system)
Compared to Iraq, places like Germany and especially Japan had negligble supplies of natural resources, which is why their people became (occasionally) such hard workers, and why they had the ambition to attempt global empire.
Fortunately this was not a pre-emtive war, it was a resumption of a previous conflict when one party failed to live up to the cease fire treaty.
With that claim, you are accusing the President of treason-level lying, because pre-emption was exactly the reason he gave for going to war.
Besides, the US was not a party to that agreement, It was been Iraq and the UN (of which US is just one member)! If the US had gone to the UN and properly demanded that either (a) sanctions against Iraq be dropped as ineffective, or (b) Iraq be forcibly put into compliance, then all indications are that UN approval would've come through by around February, 2004.
But that didn't mesh with Bush's schedule... he just couldn't wait. (The especially funny part is: if he did wait, then the war would be ongoing during the US Presidential elections, and voters prefer not to change the Commander-In-Chief during wartime)
You misunderstand the use of the term "parse."
No, you do. You think "parse" is a more powerful term than it really is. Although ratsos1 didn't explain his "French" analogy quite right: to parse French, you need to understand not just the letters, but also verb-conjugation suffixes and structural words (la, le, de...)
That's sufficient for you to diagram a French sentence. And that's all parsing can do for you.
Since the tags are documented, you have no reason to be unable to understand the file.
That's another invalid assumption. XML does nothing (and can do nothing) to guarantee that the attached documentation is correct or complete, or if it even exists at all.
It would be valid XML, for example, for each tag to be documented with a page number in a trade-secret book accessible only to Microsoft employees. And in fact, for some of their past experiments with XML storage, that's exactly what they've done! There have been data-blocks whose only documentation has been a reference to a Microsoft OLE type id.
Obviously, we haven't found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We haven't found any WMD programs. Right now, we're trying, and failing to find "WMD program related activities."
I'll point out that a bioweapons lab large capable of producing enough anthrax to annihilate a small city would be no larger than a truck trailer. We're still finding MiG's buried in the desert. Iraq is nearly 200,000 sq. miles in area. How hard would it be to hide something like that? If I told you there was a buried trailer somewhere in California with $1 million in it for you, and that's all you had to go on, how long would it take you to find it? Would you be so quick to say it doesn't exist?
Further, there is documented proof Hussein had WMD's at some point. The pictures of dead women and children in northern Iraq are irrefutable. Hussein had a lot of those weapons. Now we can't find them. Where did they go? If they were destroyed, why did Hussein refuse to provide proof of such? And they weren't beamed up by the starship Enterprise. The question you should be asking is "where did they go?" not "why did we invade in the first place?"
Again, Iraq had no WMDs, and showed no indication at all of wanting to attack us.
I point to my previous statement. Iraq did have the weapons as late as the early 90's. We know this from chemical residues found in bombed-out weapons bunkers. But there weren't enough bunkers found to account for all the stuff he had acquired during the Iran-Iraq war...and we know how much he had because we gave some of it to him. Again, where did it go? It didn't get used up in the war. It didn't get poured down the drain. Where did it go? You can't answer that question, so you just jump to the nearest, most naive conclusion: they never existed. Too bad there's ample proof to prove you wrong. The WMD's may not be in Iraq anymore, but they're somewhere.
As for Saddam's intentions to attack us, I would hope you wouldn't be so shallow as to assume Hussein could only affect the U.S. by engaging in direct warfare. If the 1990 invasion of Kuwait had been backed up by nuclear weapons, it would've been far more dangerous to kick Saddam out of Kuwait...perhaps so dangerous that we wouldn't have done it. Then he could've moved on to Saudi Arabia and other major oil-producing nations. After gaining control of 4/5th's of the world's oil supply, he could dictate whatever terms he desired to the rest of the world. The resemblance to Hitler nibbling away at Czechoslovakia peacefully before forcibly conquering Poland is uncanny. And Hussein was known to be an admirer of Hitler. I'm sure the lesson wasn't lost on him, which is why he bullied his neighbors when he could and attacked them when he thought he could get away with it. You seem to keep forgetting that, but I'll keep reminding you of it. But thanks to Bush's actions, we don't have to live through another WWII with another maniacal dictator causing millions of deaths. It may never have come to happen if we hadn't done anything, but now we know for sure it won't.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
There is something called ethics. It is unethical to attack someone unless there is a direct threat to yourself. I consider myself better off dead than alive without morality.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
No, you do.
.DOC, .XLS, etc. files, you can't do that very well. Since any third party can get the XML format documentation from Microsoft, anyone can write an import filter for it. This includes OpenOffice, StarOffice, or whatever else. Oops! You're wrong!
No, you are either purposefully misunderstanding the definition of "parse" or you're just too ignorant to understand. My usage of "parse" means to read and understand the contents of the file. If you save a Microsoft Word document in XML format (remembering you need the Pro version in order to do that), you can open and understand that XML document with any application that understands the tags and structure of the file. Again, the specifications for Office documents saved in XML format are open to everyone. Microsoft's reason for doing this is to allow third-party document management applications to seamlessly integrate with Office documents. With the standard
That's another invalid assumption. XML does nothing (and can do nothing) to guarantee that the attached documentation is correct or complete, or if it even exists at all.
Your ignorance of this matter is so astounding I'm shocked you felt the need to comment on the thread. Get it through your head: the document is saved as a collection of tags and data, where the tags are formatted in accordance with the standard specs for XML. If you have such an XML document, and you have the specifications for what each tag means and how the data is arranged, you can correctly interpret the file. Oops! I did it again! You're wrong! My heart bleeds for you!
It would be valid XML, for example, for each tag to be documented with a page number in a trade-secret book accessible only to Microsoft employees.
Indeed it would be. What you're missing here is this "trade-secret book" is, in fact, available to anyone. Oops! Three strikes! You're wrong! Thanks for playing, but you don't win any prize.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
To go back to the more specific topic of Microsoft file formats: if they used XML, you could probably parse out their data. You'd know what each of the variables in the file was set to. You might even know what each variable was called, if the XML or DTD is verbose enough. But you still don't know what they do.
Ah, yes, but if you had the documentation from Microsoft explaining what each tag meant, your entire house of cards comes crashing down. And it just so happens that this format is documented and is freely available to third-party developers. This was done with the intention of allowing document management applications better insight into the content and formatting of Office documents, as well as integration into databases and anything else you might imagine.
So, we have the XML standard itself which is well known. We have the file consisting of tags and data. And we have the specs telling you what each tag means and how to interpret the data within. Forgive my bluntness, but this kind of blows your whole thread to smithereens.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The thing is, though, we're not just looking at random in the desert; we have access to pretty much all his records, and we haven't found anything that even suggests that he had or wanted to get WMDs. It's not just a matter of hiding the actual weapons, it's that if there were any, they're hidden so well that we haven't found any traces of them even with all our people over there and all our intelligence (which is usually pretty good when it isn't fabricated) and all our access to nearly all his records.
If you'll remember, Iraq was becomming increasinly more compliant with letting weapons inspectors in. Perhaps we could have answered that if we'd let them continue instead of taking over and bombing the place into oblivion.
No. I jump to the conclusion that they don't exist anymore. And there is evidence to back me up. (And much more so, a lack of evidence to anything contrary.)
What, we would have just sat there and let him take over large swaths of earth? You must think Bush Sr. was stupider than I do. (Actually, I give him a moderate-low rating, much higher than the current Bush.) If someone is demonstrating a clear and obvious threat to the US, and is starting to put their threat into action, we do something about it (one of the reasons I'm ambivelant about the first Gulf War.) We don't just sit there and let them get more power. If Saddam had had nukes and had attacked multiple places in the middle east, we would have done our best to stop him from using them, not watched as he conquered those places and got more.
In any rate, that's irrelevant--what matters is whether he was showing any want to gain significantly more power now, which he wasn't.
Again, you have to look at probabilities and relative losses when you compute the final costs. Hussein was showing no indication of major attempts to gain more power--if we'd left things how they were, with our current spending on Iraq, he most likely would have never again done anything significant outside of Iraq. Instead, we spent several hundreds of billions of dollars, and several thousands of US lives (not to mention all the Iraqi lives) to make absolutely sure of it. (I won't go into the fact that Iraq now is much worse for us than it was before, especially in terms of anti-american sentiment and terrorists.)
The Iraq war was a bad idea from the outset, especially since it wasn't planned well. We would have been much better off if we had never invaded.
p.s.: Can someone mod up the parent poster, please? It's really not fair that I'm getting insightfuls to balance out my offtopics, but he's not.
There are 11 types of people in the world: those who can count in binary, and those who can't.
First off, you are misreading most of what I've said. My attacks are primarily against the claim that XML is an open file format, which is not necessarily the case.
Yes, it is possible for an XML format to be opened, if specifications for the data is published. But that's no different from how the author of any pure binary format could choose to publish a spec. Ergo, XML does nothing to either increase or decrease the openness of the format- it all hinges on the availability of external documentation.
PNG: binary and open.
SVG: XML and open.
DOC: binary and closed
MS XML DOC: XML and closed until the spec is finally published.
No, you are either purposefully misunderstanding the definition of "parse" or you're just too ignorant to understand.
I don't obsessively follow Microsoft's every little move, so I could potentially be ignorant of one of their actions. However one place where I can't POSSIBLY be wrong is the definition of "parse". It has a specific meaning that many other posters have supported me on. Since you didn't believe the definition printed in your own dictionary, I doubt I can convince you of the truth. The best I can suggest is to hunt down a linguist or Computer Science professor and ask for an explanation. A textbook on XML might also help you: try looking up "DOM Parser" in the index.
Again, the specifications for Office documents saved in XML format are open to everyone.
This brings us back to an error in your original post, which I didn't point out at that time. (So everything you said since then comes crashing down, house-of-cards la-de-da)
Microsoft did adopt an open file format: XML. However, it is not available in any Office suite except the uber-expensive Professional version.
They "adopted" it, but only in some special versions? If it's just a nonstandard option, it means they didn't really adopt it at all, any more than StarOffice has adopted the Microsoft Word 95 format.
Microsoft's reason for doing this is to allow third-party document management applications to seamlessly integrate with Office documents.
That's completely impossible if the average version of MS Office can't even use the XML formats.
If you have such an XML document, and you have the specifications for what each tag means and how the data is arranged, you can correctly interpret the file
Ok, you got me. I don't re-read Microsoft.com each week, so I was unaware that those specifications had been published FOUR DAYS AGO. And yet, that still doesn't damage my central point: that XML is not an open format.
Microsoft could've just as easily published the specifications for their binary files. Whether or not they're using XML is technically irrelevant to openness.
What you're missing here is this "trade-secret book" is, in fact, available to anyone.
The book isn't a trade-secret. Instead, it's a patent. So although anyone might be able to read it, you can only make use of that information with Microsoft's permission (which they can withdraw at will). To do otherwise is to break the law.
Ok, you got me. I don't re-read Microsoft.com each week, so I was unaware that those specifications had been published FOUR DAYS AGO. And yet, that still doesn't damage my central point: that XML is not an open format.
I never once said it was open, you fool, I said it was available for everyone, with the end result being you can get your documents to open in anything that will read and parse the XML Office document.
So, all your prattling up to this point is finally shot down, and what do you say? "It's not open! Microsoft could take away my toys! Waaaaaah!" You move from one indefensible point to another one with amazing ease. Nothing satisfies you. Even if Microsoft makes some baby steps towards opening things up, it's not good enough for you, you won't give them credit for it at all. Instead you whine and moan about how it's not open. There are plenty of binary-only pieces of software for Linux that are anything but open, but do I hear you castigating these vendors? Nope, you single out Microsoft for your ire. Typical.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The thing is, though, we're not just looking at random in the desert; we have access to pretty much all his records, and we haven't found anything that even suggests that he had or wanted to get WMDs.
But you still haven't answered the basic question: if we can't find them, where did they go? What we have here is a very simple solution set: either Iraq possessed WMD's at some point in the last 25 years or they didn't. Pictures of gassed Kurds and records from the Iran-Iraq war pretty much rule out the latter, so the former must be true. He had the weapons. And not all of them were used up in the Iran-Iraq war, and not all of them were destroyed in the Gulf War. The U.N. itself indicated Saddam retained significant quantities of liquid anthrax as well as the potential to produce more, hence the 12 resolutions demanding he either (a) turn over the weapons or (b) provide evidence they were destroyed. He chose to do neither and, despite all the prattling by liberals and appeasers throughout the world, that refusal alone was all that was needed to execute the "or else" clause of the U.N. resolution. Understand that it was not our burden to prove these weapons existed, it was Saddam's burden to prove they didn't exist. Go read the U.N. resolution. There is no equivocation. That's how it's written.
If you'll remember, Iraq was becomming increasinly more compliant with letting weapons inspectors in. Perhaps we could have answered that if we'd let them continue instead of taking over and bombing the place into oblivion.
If I felt the U.N.'s true aim was to find these weapons instead of prolonging the corruption-ridden Oil-For-Food program (of which France, Germany, Russia, and even Kofi Annan's own son have been implicated in receiving multimillion-dollar bribes) I might agree with you. However, I'll point out again that Saddam was requird to come clean on where all his weapons were within 90 days of the 1991 cease-fire agreement. The U.N. gave him twelve years instead, and showed no sign whatsoever towards actually enforcing the resolutions it passed. The U.K., France, and the rest of the Allies came up with really convenient excuses to not do anything when Hitler marched into the Rhineland. They did nothing when he took over Austria. They did nothing when he took over Czechoslovakia. Finally, when Germany had been sufficiently emboldened by the lassitude of the Allies, Hitler invaded Poland and kicked off the bloodiest war in the history of humanity. Saddam's defiance of the U.N., and the U.N.'s unwillingness to do anything about it, was getting worse, not better.
No. I jump to the conclusion that they don't exist anymore. And there is evidence to back me up.
Where is your evidence, then? Lack of proof is not proof of lack. I will remind you again of the language of U.N. resolution 1441. It contains no provisions requiring the U.N. to prove anything. It does, however, contain provisions requiring Saddam to prove his lack of said weapons. He refuse to do so. The consequence was invasion. There is no equivocation here. That's how it's written.
What, we would have just sat there and let him take over large swaths of earth?
The world sat by while Hitler started nibbling at Europe, but eventually they did do something...about five years too late. The consequences of waiting until Hitler had re-armed, rebuilt, and re-energized the nationalistic base of his supporters were catastrophic for the entire world. Had the Allies stepped in and stopped Hitler back when he first violated the Versailles treaty, much bloodshed might've been spared. But, having been spared, we wouldn't have the historical perspective we have today. I would hope the human race could learn from such an example, but it seems clear it cannot.
Either way, let's suppose we did intervene after Saddam had nukes, biological, and chemical weapons. At a st
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Sorry, that was more my take on it than a statement as to why GWB chose to goto war, I Really should have said somthing like:
This conflict could also be seen not as a pre-emptive war but,a resumption of a previous conflict when one party failed to live up to the cease fire treaty.
Mea Culpa on the phrasing, but it doese seem accurate to say he (Saddam) wasn't going to go by the rules.
Most likely it would have been a., if eigther, as countries with veto power had to much money invested in Iraq to really want to force the trade sanctions.
As far as the Weapons and intelligence issue goes it's quite clear that even though he kept saying he didn't have any, he wanted the world to believe he had them. Why else would he not simply demonstrate he didn't. The inspectors were NOT there to play detective, they were there to VERIFY thier destruction and other elements of compliance. Saddam was require to give pro-active help to them in thier job. That's not what he did.
I can't really comment to much on the natural resources argument (though I can see how somthing like that could apply. but in EVERY case? on both sides of 'the coin'). Still significant resource like that can't be just wrote off as 'oh it's make them to lazy to be any trouble to anyone', especially when Saddams track record was just the opposite.
Still what worries me is with so many so certain he still had such weapons is the chance he shuffled them offstage into the hands eigther another unsavory government or equally bad group of individuals.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
> With them in on the ground floor on this one, I think it's doomed to be proprietary.
This really goes without saying. Let's face it, MS has always been an adopter of closed technology, even when they have been tinkering with open standards. They consistently over-complicate things, to try and keep things in the family. Their overcomplicating is what has lead to so many security leaks, IMHO. They write XML as if it was some kind of machine language... it doesn't have to be that difficult, at all.
What the hell is with that little campaign against my puny UID in your sig? Are you some kind of nut? Don't you think it's wise to get to know someone before making them a foe?
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.