Commenting on: Web3D Executive Director’s Summer and Siggraph 2007 Update
With August here already, the one thing on everyone’s minds (and monitors and keyboards...) around here is Siggraph, starting on August 5th in San Diego.
See us, meet us, visit with us at SIGGRAPH 2007 - booth number 029 - on the exhibition floor. Don’t forget to ask for our newest 2007 SDK, debuting at Siggraph!
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Comments
I trust some detailed reports will be forthcoming.
There are tremors in the 3D market. X3D and Collada appear to be making progress in serious 3D web applications. These are not the immediately press-worthy applications but the ones that spawn profitable businesses in stable niches.
Meanwhile there are signs that the SecondLife phenomenon achieved a local peak and is now entering a trough. The problems of the banking scandals, regulation of behavior, even recognition by Gartner of the problems I mentioned earlier about using SL (really any server-farm-for-rent) for hosting virtual business. It isn’t that LL is doing anything wrong other than not making customers aware of the inherent risks earlier world efforts had noticed or not recognizing them. Virtual world business is in the second generation although it is difficult to spot any progress as it scales up in lessons learned. It will probably take a press-worthy catastrophe for that although the internal banking failures may get some attention as lost money usually does.
While it is still worth making efforts for X3D in virtual world technologies, it may be time for the consortium to investigate the other issues and delineate technology-infrastructure from social infrastructure issues. Meanwhile, the progress in the non-virtual world applications of 3D on the Web is excellent given these do not have the scale of challenges to application sustainability.
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