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Mapping a Path For the 3D Web
An anonymous reader writes to mention C|Net coverage of the Metaverse Roadmap Summit, an event designed to look at the future of 3D Web environments. From the article: "While many took issue with the basic premise that an overriding 3D Web will be in place within 10 years, it was clear that most in attendance relished mixing it up as part of an august group that included Microsoft's Robert Scoble, former Sony Online Entertainment chief creative officer Raph Koster, PARC researcher Bob Moore, online game pioneer Randy Farmer, There.com founder and currently IMVU CEO Will Harvey, and CNET Networks editor at large Esther Dyson."
Hard to fathom. How, exactly, can a 3D Web be useful in any way? What benefits will it offer that we don't have currently? Sounds like more hype regarding a useless technology (read: VR).
and controllers.
Immersive VR is doomed to failure until the interface to it improves and gets cheaper. HMDs are nice and all, but without a more efficient way to move through the scene, 2D will continue to be a more productive way to interact with data and 3D will continue to be eye candy.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
I believe a huge reason why we don't see 3D web pages today is that nobody wants to see a 3D page on a 2D display. I'm pretty certain that a great majority of people out there want things as simple as possible, thus why 3D games have such a small following when compared to the number of people that browse the web. Its also possible that we just aren't ready to get this kind of information in 3 dimensions, we're still used to paper!
It was 3D because you could interact in 3D. You could walk into/around/through the scene. In 1997. That's the point.
You will never have perfect (or good, even) pop-out-of-the-screen 3D with a 2D screen. Polarization is faking it. Red-Blue glasses are faking it. (These two are also noted for not working on some people with depth/color perception issues, and causing migraine headaches in a good portion of the population with extended use) HUD's are good but an expensive piece of hardware.
One thing that is missing is you have a very limited ability to introduce your own 3D content in to these worlds, being mostly confined to picking wardrobe and hair styles from a predefined set. If I recall the world in Snowcrash was a lot more dynamic, complex and interesting.
Two words: Second Life.
The problem, as I see it, is that these are all proprietary technologies. We are seeing some incredible things, and have seen some incredible things, emerge on the WWW precisely because even though it is horrible, badly-designed, and poorly-conceived, it's open. And that allows people to extend it and interact with it in ways its designers never imagined. Which is why its now such an integral part of life. The problem with WoW, SimsOnline, and to a much lesser extent SecondLife, is that its all proprietary, so although it'll be a good toy, its usefulness may not take off like the WWW. LindenLabs say they are reworking the internals of SL to use open technologies (Jabber for IM, for example) and will release SL's source code in 2010. Then, it should be awesome.