Titanium? Forget that! Everyone knows that, with humanities' myopic nearsightedness, old-growth hardwood will be THE thing to own!
No, you can't build missile casings or Aurora spy plane skin with it, but thanks to aggressive deforestation of old growth lumber, in 2215 a coffee table might cost you $25,000! REAL wood furniture will be accessable to only the filthy rich.
"Vinyl Siding? What kind of LOSER are YOU? I have PAINTED WOOD SIDING on MY home. Get a REAL job!"
(Roll the Ren & Stimpy Log Song)
About a year and a half, not quite two years ago a friend of mine had been experimenting with the 3D Consortium's "Cosmoworlds" VRML creation package. As a mechanical engineer, he had ample experience with Autocad, and 3DStudio Max, and found the transition to creating 3d objects and landscapes within the VRML authoring software to be rather simple.
We (along with two other partners) formed a company to test the waters. Our staff included a web content designer (myself), a professional photographer/pre-press layout designer, a salesperson and our VR designer.
Our process, and mission statement was simple: Construct high quality building exterior/interior walkthroughs that could run in a standard Windows web browser; The target being real estate developers, construction companies, colleges wanting virtual tours, and any other application that fit. The actual construction process is simple:
1. Shoot room interiors with high quality digital or 35mm camera
2. Construct room and/or models in Autocad, 3DSMax, Canoma, or Cosmoworlds and import to VRML
3. Optimize texture pallette and quality for size; Trim VRML for same
4. Apply textures to VRML
5. Add scripting for camera flight through scene to create animated flight path; Add scripting for any moving objects in scene.
The resultant output is a photorealistic completely 3D flythrough, user controllable with mouse or keyboard through the scene you have created. The image quality, and viewer experience is substantially better than the "scrolling panoramic java applet" style "VR" that many national realtors are using today.
VRML scenes can have clickable links in them opening in any target window. You can stream audio content through them, in Real or other formats. You could drive an eCommerce site with VRML ("View the interior of your Ford Explorer, and click the seats to add Leather upgrade; etc.)
So what are the problems with VR?
1. The 3D Consortium wants a $15,000 membership fee. This is completely unrealistic for startups. Talent is where you find it, and sometimes that's in four man companies. There are other authoring packages than CosmoWorlds, but you have no feedback channel unless you are a member. The companies that ARE on their board are mentally constipated giants that seemingly haven't furthered VRML's cause in three years.
2. While the finshed animation sizes are small (200-500k for a two or three room walkthrough of near-television quality), the CosmoWorlds PLUGIN required to view it is 2 MEGS. Cross-platform support is non existant. It performs slowly on machines under 300 MHz. On 56k modems, the shaded walls for the scene pop up instantly, but the textures pop up as they stream in.
3. As with any new technology, clients have a built-in level of "FUD" just thinking about it. I could flop my laptop in front of ten company VP's and college presidents, and wow them with the quality and ease of use of the animations being built, but they just didn't "get it." Tell a University president that you'll charter a helicopter, and build a stunning birds' eye flythrough of their campus, including buildings, and all landscaping for $10k, and you hear "oh wow, we though it would cost five TIMES that much! This is great!" Then the waffling starts; and you lose the job. A three foot tall stack of printed brochures will cost that much; Apparently since the technology we proposed couldn't be touched it is tough to justify.
Granted, we DID have a few forward-thinking companies use the technology. We constructed some presentations for the world's largest maker of ATM machines and security products. The potential for the technology as a training aid, sales tool, kiosk display, or presentation medium is amazing. The only real obstacle is the public's subconcious belief that new technologies must be expensive, unwieldy, too complicated, or hardware-intensive to be viable for them.
If you belong to a forward thinking corporation, and would like more information, please email me and I will put you in touch with people who are already BUILDING amazing content with VRML; not just discussing it.;)
.. Then again, half of Bungie's development team can simply walk out while the project is only 3/4's complete; this course of action seeming to be popular in the game industry these days. When you get a group of eggheaded idealists and right-brained types together, what else can you expect?
Yes, an employee walkout twelve months from now; An announcement that they've created "Boing! Software", the new office is already leased - The foosball table arrives Monday, and the frozen juice machine is already stocked - Please send your resume's.
Microsoft's panties are in a bunch from the discovery that their newly acquired jewel, Bungie "Studios" is running Linux game servers?
The developers have spent considerable time building expertise in coding and supporting their game engine (server) for Linux, only to be told to use NT? I've always had the "right tool for the job" mentality - This is not unlike trying to use a small flat-blade screwdriver in a philips head screw because your boss, a technophobic idiot, insists the company's three-ring bound policy manual requires the use of Screwdriver #14, Small Flatblade in ALL SCREWS.
This is little more than an annotation in the infamous "Microsoft Hall of Innovation" joke file floating around the net. Let's see..
Will Loki Games be allowed to port Halo to Linux? No.
Will the Mac/PC versions of Halo ship within six months of the X-Box version? No.
Will Microsoft allow Bungie to release tools such as: limited source code for mod authors, or information on the engine technology used? No.
Will mod authors who manage to rip open the game's internals and release custom client/gameplay modifications receive C&D (cease and desist) letters to pull their websites? Yes.
"Bungie Studios." Fancy the wording - "Studio." Is this an artist colony? Perhaps employees sense their disposable nature in a revolving-door Microsoft world when they are part of an "ENSEMBLE" group, and not a "Software" company.
Why would the owners of a software company give up self-determination to such a soulless, malevolent entity? To borrow loosely from the words of Dennis Hopper, from the film "Speed".. : "Money, mainly money.. I wish I had a nobler purpose, Jack, but in the end I'm afraid it's just the money."
Sorry for the venom, but consider: Had Bungie not been acquired, the game would most likely have seen a Mac/PC simultaneous release, with a remarkably well done Loki linux client following two months later. The mod community most likely would have been encouraged. Odd how many game developers today, with the exception of Microsoft, seem to understand that a vibrant mod community can extend the life of your game, and contribute to it's ultimate success tenfold.
It's it funny how simply putting "Microsoft" in front of anything immediately polarizes the suject in to "them" and "us."
I suppose, since the US Military made their bed with the creation of TCP/IP, they now must lay in it! Get real, it's an ivory-tower protocol to begin with. Should the average user be able to traceroute machines; the little packets revealing the IP's of every system they swim past along the way?
Aren't "system security" websites creating more problems than they solve? Does a hard-working system administrator have as much time to read "rootshell.org" as a mischievous twenty year old college kid? If said college kid finds an exploit, compiles and uses it while you're out of the office, before you're even aware of it, does it mean you're a bad administrator?
Considering the level of knowledge distribution on the internet, particularly in the areas of networking, OS fuction, and security exploits/patches, can the "good guys" truly *ever* be that much ahead of the "bad guys" ?
To compound the problem, owners of ISP's don't need to demonstrate any level of competancy to purchase IP's; only supply the necessary funds. So basically any idiot with just enough smarts to get online creates a wonderful opportunity for the hacking elite. Spoof an IP here or there, root the Acme ISP, wipe their log files, and hop out from there - Exploit away!
Perhaps if the federal government applied the same type of licencing to the purchasing of IP addresses as they do FM & AM radio frequencies, and held the OWNERS of said IP's responsible for the usage of same, AND required some sort of certification process to even QUALIFY, 75% of the "computer security problem" would go away IMMEDIATELY?
Haven't we conclusively proven already that one lawyer can cloud legal judgement, and a committee can completely kill the publicly accepted standard of common sense?
You most likely allow your employees to use their break time to telephone a loved one from work; If they are instead using their lunch time to call their ex, whom in this scenario has a restraining order against them, are you laterally responsible for providing the telephone at your workplace?!
If an employee puts THEIR stamp on a piece of personal mail, and drops in in the company's outgoing mail chute to save a trip to the post office, are you responsible for it's content?
I could only hope that if an employee were using your company email to send or recieve objectionable material, the parties involved in any subsequent legal action would be.. the sender, and the receiver. You are running a company, employing adults, not running a day-care center.
If your IS manager came to you and suggested that SOMEONE on the network was sending/receiving an inordinate amount of email, it would warrant a short conversation regarding the limitations of personal usage.
What is being discussed here, in abstract, is the problem with the US legal system and society as a whole, that being the Death of Responsibility. It's always someone else's problem, isn't it?
Excellent! After spending millions to buy, steal, or develop software only to DUMP it on the market at no cost for the singular purpose of killing their rivals (Netscape, RealNetworks, the list is infinite) or stealing market share - Microsoft can port their office suite to Linux only to compete against excellent FREE office suites (ala StarOffice) or WordPerfect for linux (already established, if not free.)
Given StarOffice's ability to read/write MS Office's various file types, along with it's already respectable list of features, I hope MicroSoft finally receives a dose of it's own medicine - That is, they spend millions of dollars developing and packaging Linux Office only to have it CRUSHED BY FREE APPLICATIONS.
How embarassing for Blizzard - For the last two weeks of the Stress Test, there were routinely 35-45,000 persons online playing with very few crashes, and lag was negligable. Now, the game servers take a snooze with 1.5 million paid customers and a weekend looming ahead? Ouch! Someone's beeper is going off!
Messr. Lucas has demonstrated repeatedly his ability as a first-class wordsmith of childrens' fables. Why all the disbelief at the unabashed cheesyness of Episode I? We know what depth perception is, let's use chrono-perception here. I'm 31 - Then how old was I when "Star Wars" was first released? Ahh- I suppose you were a child too. And your parents didn't "get it" much in the same way today's audience is flaming Lucas for remaking the Muppet Show w/Blasters. Well, except for the children, your children, who have lost more than a few fast-food Jar Jar toys under the rear seat of your Caravan. Does an all-digital internet distributed film mean less work for movie pirates? Will these persons worry less about smuggling their MiniCam into Cinemark, and more about cracking their FTP server ? It would be in the interest of the distributors to produce an electronic hardware lock for their digital projectors. Should all-digital entertainment still be referred to as "film"? Scot
Slashdot Mirror
Titanium? Forget that! Everyone knows that, with humanities' myopic nearsightedness, old-growth hardwood will be THE thing to own! No, you can't build missile casings or Aurora spy plane skin with it, but thanks to aggressive deforestation of old growth lumber, in 2215 a coffee table might cost you $25,000! REAL wood furniture will be accessable to only the filthy rich. "Vinyl Siding? What kind of LOSER are YOU? I have PAINTED WOOD SIDING on MY home. Get a REAL job!" (Roll the Ren & Stimpy Log Song)
Perhaps I can lend some perspective:
;)
About a year and a half, not quite two years ago a friend of mine had been experimenting with the 3D Consortium's "Cosmoworlds" VRML creation package. As a mechanical engineer, he had ample experience with Autocad, and 3DStudio Max, and found the transition to creating 3d objects and landscapes within the VRML authoring software to be rather simple.
We (along with two other partners) formed a company to test the waters. Our staff included a web content designer (myself), a professional photographer/pre-press layout designer, a salesperson and our VR designer.
Our process, and mission statement was simple: Construct high quality building exterior/interior walkthroughs that could run in a standard Windows web browser; The target being real estate developers, construction companies, colleges wanting virtual tours, and any other application that fit. The actual construction process is simple:
1. Shoot room interiors with high quality digital or 35mm camera
2. Construct room and/or models in Autocad, 3DSMax, Canoma, or Cosmoworlds and import to VRML
3. Optimize texture pallette and quality for size; Trim VRML for same
4. Apply textures to VRML
5. Add scripting for camera flight through scene to create animated flight path; Add scripting for any moving objects in scene.
The resultant output is a photorealistic completely 3D flythrough, user controllable with mouse or keyboard through the scene you have created. The image quality, and viewer experience is substantially better than the "scrolling panoramic java applet" style "VR" that many national realtors are using today.
VRML scenes can have clickable links in them opening in any target window. You can stream audio content through them, in Real or other formats. You could drive an eCommerce site with VRML ("View the interior of your Ford Explorer, and click the seats to add Leather upgrade; etc.)
So what are the problems with VR?
1. The 3D Consortium wants a $15,000 membership fee. This is completely unrealistic for startups. Talent is where you find it, and sometimes that's in four man companies. There are other authoring packages than CosmoWorlds, but you have no feedback channel unless you are a member. The companies that ARE on their board are mentally constipated giants that seemingly haven't furthered VRML's cause in three years.
2. While the finshed animation sizes are small (200-500k for a two or three room walkthrough of near-television quality), the CosmoWorlds PLUGIN required to view it is 2 MEGS. Cross-platform support is non existant. It performs slowly on machines under 300 MHz. On 56k modems, the shaded walls for the scene pop up instantly, but the textures pop up as they stream in.
3. As with any new technology, clients have a built-in level of "FUD" just thinking about it. I could flop my laptop in front of ten company VP's and college presidents, and wow them with the quality and ease of use of the animations being built, but they just didn't "get it." Tell a University president that you'll charter a helicopter, and build a stunning birds' eye flythrough of their campus, including buildings, and all landscaping for $10k, and you hear "oh wow, we though it would cost five TIMES that much! This is great!" Then the waffling starts; and you lose the job. A three foot tall stack of printed brochures will cost that much; Apparently since the technology we proposed couldn't be touched it is tough to justify.
Granted, we DID have a few forward-thinking companies use the technology. We constructed some presentations for the world's largest maker of ATM machines and security products. The potential for the technology as a training aid, sales tool, kiosk display, or presentation medium is amazing. The only real obstacle is the public's subconcious belief that new technologies must be expensive, unwieldy, too complicated, or hardware-intensive to be viable for them.
If you belong to a forward thinking corporation, and would like more information, please email me and I will put you in touch with people who are already BUILDING amazing content with VRML; not just discussing it.
Yes, an employee walkout twelve months from now; An announcement that they've created "Boing! Software", the new office is already leased - The foosball table arrives Monday, and the frozen juice machine is already stocked - Please send your resume's.
Microsoft's panties are in a bunch from the discovery that their newly acquired jewel, Bungie "Studios" is running Linux game servers?
The developers have spent considerable time building expertise in coding and supporting their game engine (server) for Linux, only to be told to use NT? I've always had the "right tool for the job" mentality - This is not unlike trying to use a small flat-blade screwdriver in a philips head screw because your boss, a technophobic idiot, insists the company's three-ring bound policy manual requires the use of Screwdriver #14, Small Flatblade in ALL SCREWS.
This is little more than an annotation in the infamous "Microsoft Hall of Innovation" joke file floating around the net. Let's see..
Will Loki Games be allowed to port Halo to Linux? No.
Will the Mac/PC versions of Halo ship within six months of the X-Box version? No.
Will Microsoft allow Bungie to release tools such as: limited source code for mod authors, or information on the engine technology used? No.
Will mod authors who manage to rip open the game's internals and release custom client/gameplay modifications receive C&D (cease and desist) letters to pull their websites? Yes.
"Bungie Studios." Fancy the wording - "Studio." Is this an artist colony? Perhaps employees sense their disposable nature in a revolving-door Microsoft world when they are part of an "ENSEMBLE" group, and not a "Software" company.
Why would the owners of a software company give up self-determination to such a soulless, malevolent entity? To borrow loosely from the words of Dennis Hopper, from the film "Speed".. : "Money, mainly money.. I wish I had a nobler purpose, Jack, but in the end I'm afraid it's just the money."
Sorry for the venom, but consider: Had Bungie not been acquired, the game would most likely have seen a Mac/PC simultaneous release, with a remarkably well done Loki linux client following two months later. The mod community most likely would have been encouraged. Odd how many game developers today, with the exception of Microsoft, seem to understand that a vibrant mod community can extend the life of your game, and contribute to it's ultimate success tenfold.
It's it funny how simply putting "Microsoft" in front of anything immediately polarizes the suject in to "them" and "us."
(sorry for the multiple post, but..)
I suppose, since the US Military made their bed with the creation of TCP/IP, they now must lay in it! Get real, it's an ivory-tower protocol to begin with. Should the average user be able to traceroute machines; the little packets revealing the IP's of every system they swim past along the way?
Aren't "system security" websites creating more problems than they solve? Does a hard-working system administrator have as much time to read "rootshell.org" as a mischievous twenty year old college kid? If said college kid finds an exploit, compiles and uses it while you're out of the office, before you're even aware of it, does it mean you're a bad administrator?
Considering the level of knowledge distribution on the internet, particularly in the areas of networking, OS fuction, and security exploits/patches, can the "good guys" truly *ever* be that much ahead of the "bad guys" ?
To compound the problem, owners of ISP's don't need to demonstrate any level of competancy to purchase IP's; only supply the necessary funds. So basically any idiot with just enough smarts to get online creates a wonderful opportunity for the hacking elite. Spoof an IP here or there, root the Acme ISP, wipe their log files, and hop out from there - Exploit away!
Perhaps if the federal government applied the same type of licencing to the purchasing of IP addresses as they do FM & AM radio frequencies, and held the OWNERS of said IP's responsible for the usage of same, AND required some sort of certification process to even QUALIFY, 75% of the "computer security problem" would go away IMMEDIATELY?
Haven't we conclusively proven already that one lawyer can cloud legal judgement, and a committee can completely kill the publicly accepted standard of common sense? You most likely allow your employees to use their break time to telephone a loved one from work; If they are instead using their lunch time to call their ex, whom in this scenario has a restraining order against them, are you laterally responsible for providing the telephone at your workplace?! If an employee puts THEIR stamp on a piece of personal mail, and drops in in the company's outgoing mail chute to save a trip to the post office, are you responsible for it's content? I could only hope that if an employee were using your company email to send or recieve objectionable material, the parties involved in any subsequent legal action would be.. the sender, and the receiver. You are running a company, employing adults, not running a day-care center. If your IS manager came to you and suggested that SOMEONE on the network was sending/receiving an inordinate amount of email, it would warrant a short conversation regarding the limitations of personal usage. What is being discussed here, in abstract, is the problem with the US legal system and society as a whole, that being the Death of Responsibility. It's always someone else's problem, isn't it?
Excellent! After spending millions to buy, steal, or develop software only to DUMP it on the market at no cost for the singular purpose of killing their rivals (Netscape, RealNetworks, the list is infinite) or stealing market share - Microsoft can port their office suite to Linux only to compete against excellent FREE office suites (ala StarOffice) or WordPerfect for linux (already established, if not free.) Given StarOffice's ability to read/write MS Office's various file types, along with it's already respectable list of features, I hope MicroSoft finally receives a dose of it's own medicine - That is, they spend millions of dollars developing and packaging Linux Office only to have it CRUSHED BY FREE APPLICATIONS.
How embarassing for Blizzard - For the last two weeks of the Stress Test, there were routinely 35-45,000 persons online playing with very few crashes, and lag was negligable. Now, the game servers take a snooze with 1.5 million paid customers and a weekend looming ahead? Ouch! Someone's beeper is going off!
Messr. Lucas has demonstrated repeatedly his ability as a first-class wordsmith of childrens' fables. Why all the disbelief at the unabashed cheesyness of Episode I? We know what depth perception is, let's use chrono-perception here. I'm 31 - Then how old was I when "Star Wars" was first released? Ahh- I suppose you were a child too. And your parents didn't "get it" much in the same way today's audience is flaming Lucas for remaking the Muppet Show w/Blasters. Well, except for the children, your children, who have lost more than a few fast-food Jar Jar toys under the rear seat of your Caravan. Does an all-digital internet distributed film mean less work for movie pirates? Will these persons worry less about smuggling their MiniCam into Cinemark, and more about cracking their FTP server ? It would be in the interest of the distributors to produce an electronic hardware lock for their digital projectors. Should all-digital entertainment still be referred to as "film"? Scot