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X3D Community Blog
April 01, 2007
Len Bullard says: There is a discontinuity between investors and consortia standards?
I like to read where people are integrating content across the viewers. The more of that kind of thing people do, the faster we get a real web 3D universe with options apart from the narrow if necessary concerns of investors. There is a bit of a discontinuity in situations where the investors are asking for barriers to competition while the standards folks and the consortia are trying to eliminate them. It becomes very confusing with one group preaching POTS and the other preaching open source. Straight down the middle is better.
I was reading a book on Dreamweaver yesterday and in a chapter on a topic where it was a complete surprise was yet another slag on VRML. I was surprised but that is the power of a bad meme that keeps being repeated so it becomes lore and not data (no ST-NG jokes). I counter with what I’ve said here: to understand the investment value of VRML/X3D content, note that worlds built with new tools ten years ago still work with tools being released this year and with the exception of the syntax variants and new nodes, new content is working with the old tools. That is precisely what a standard should achieve. The counter argument is that VRML was designed before the web really understood what is needed for 3D On the Web.
Len goes on to say, “The existence proof says that is false, that what is needed is never known except for a given application and that if you standardize that, you have exactly one application. All tradeoffs considered, VRML has done quite well.”
And X3D is now poised for the next generation of long term 3D content. Standards are not always exciting, but the bashing they get in the press is, well, unpredented and if you’re not careful, you can get sucked into thinking every new kid on the block has the new “standard.” It just ain’t true. What you have made should “just work” with the old tools as well as the new tools. Or at least be translatable from one format to a newer one w/o much hassle.
Comments
I continue this thought for the content company new entries at my personal blog:
http://lamammals.blogspot.com/2007/04/its-network-stupid.html
The investors will say content is a risky business. That’s true, and VCs don’t like those kinds of risks. But it isn’t an impossible market. One needs to look at content differently from software and definitely differently from trying to obtain quick returns from lock-in and patents.
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