One of those is my submission. I posted it in response to all the buzz over figuring out VR markup.
It seems to me no one wants to actually use existing stuff. People are just having fun reinventing it.
It seems to me no one wants to actually use existing stuff. People are just having fun reinventing it.
You're right that people want to reinvent it.
i saw a lot of excitement around VRML at the university in the late 90s.
the problem was that average computers just didn't have the capacity for 3d rendering back then. at the university we had high end SGI workstations, and of course these were used for impressive demonstrations of what VRML could do. but i guess because noone outside had computers capable enough it didn't catch on.
the current generation is not aware of what we did back then and may not realize that lack of performance was the primary problem we were facing.
My opinion is that the key idea of the metaverse definitely requires a standard like HTML which people can just hack on with text files. X3D is the closest in my opinion of achieving that, and I argued we should make X3D a first class citizen to overcome performance challenges of the browser/device.
Even today, pick whatever web framework, and it just boils down to HTML. There really should be a common 3D substrate that is that easy.
Even today, literally every player in this space thinks it’s going to be a head mounted display/goggles/glasses. Until someone produces 3D/holo displays that don’t require gadgets affixed to your head and body in one way or another, I think AR/VR is going to be a failure for general consumer use no matter how slick the underlying rendering technology.
Edited to add: something like Tilt5 where it’s very inexpensive and you aren’t expected to wear the device forever might be an exception.
i expect the solution is going to be something like CAVE, which we already had working in the 90s. by today it is feasible to have a 4-sided projector mounted in a room so that you can project a 3d environment to multiple walls and give you the feeling of being inside. 3D glasses like those used in movies today are light enough to help with the 3D effects too.
but VRML wasn't just for VR. we are playing 3D games without VR for quite some time now, and there is no reason we couldn't use VRML or X3D today to create interesting experiences.
in the end it comes down to how easy it is to create and distribute the content.
what we need is another drive into browser support where we can embed a 3D object easily, and then maybe it will catch on.
Maybe with good reason: If it didn't take off last time maybe there are hidden stumbling block in the specification. Trying fresh might unconsciously bring the right ingredients this time. There is the faint possibility that specification and implementations were correct, just too far ahead of its time and infrastructure; it's usually worth taking this risk though. And of cause reinventing means owning and deeply understanding.
"3d in a browser" sounds like a fairly broad use case. Three.js is fairly popular I hear.
Starting fresh could easily be the reason it's failing again because much time is wasted in reinventing the wheel.
The problem is still the use case not the tooling.
You could see a future though where you go into one portal and you're in Minecraft, and you go into another and you're playing tennis with your buddy in Europe. Games would just be new portals -- the key here is that it's hosted by different companies, not Meta.
I came away with the distinct impression that people really don't want to admit that XML is good enough.
For complex object description it excels - as anyone who has used a complex UI description language knows, the 'lite' Json, yml, insert hipster conf file format here face a myriad of problems in description that they only somewhat make up for in simplicity.
It is the flaw of misattributation of Occams rule to everything - simplicity is indeed efficient but it cannot account for complexity, and the world ends up a complex place.
> If your 3d format can do NURBS it can do anything.
"If only WWW would have charged to make a link...."
But that won't stop developers and founders from doing gatekeeping management math.
We are literally talking about a kind of amnesia and generational gap in knowledge transfer here. I was there for VRML.
You could almost make a 2022 business model redoing already solved problems and pretending you are inventing new solutions.
Technology doesn’t always linearly progress, sometimes later solutions are technically worse than older ones due to “don’t care” optimization values or lost knowledge or purely social or political reasons. There are also trade offs like portability-performance etc, I’m not denying, but IMO much web “innovation” is useless generational churn and busywork… to say nothing of humans trends and groupthink.
HTML is fine for the browser because it is mostly delivering text and JS, which are both processed in a CPU. Text files are inherently GPU-hostile, and that makes them a weird choice for a graphical markup language.
The point of a standard is to be device agnostic. Tying it to present-day technical implementations would limit its adaptability to future tools, as well as creative misuse of the technology.
Also, GPUs and their architecture aren't a fad, they have been the same for the last 30 years. If you want your format to be truly device agnostic, text is a bad format because it precludes many types of devices (GPUs and hardware accelerators) from being able to use it.
USERNAME:dotancohen\0\0\0\0\0\0
FOOBAR\0\0:\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0
(*) It's funny because it's true that VRML is literally a reinvention of Inventor, and Open Inventor is a reinvention of VRML.
http://www.verycomputer.com/288_b61771df97de6635_1.htm