Open Standards for Real-Time 3D Communication

GDC was a success for us on several levels and I’m so glad we made the decision to attend at the invitation of the Khronos Group!  It appears that 2007 is poised to be the year of the metaverse, MMOs, and gaming on many levels, from casual to serious games. Consider this blog my post card from GDC.

We took one pod space in the large Khronos booth and even before the show started, we were drawn in by some of their members into fascinating conversations on the direction and potential today for 3D on the web. Whether it was 3D and networking, casual hand held internet based games, serious games - think medical emergency training using 3D avatar “doctors” or remote education and training for or in 3D, we talked about it! If you’ve been involved in industry or public sector scientific visualization projects, some now call this “serious games.” Same with 3D medical imaging. The internet and web is slated to play host to all these gaming related venues. We met many influential people, made some great contacts, made new friends,… well, I may be gushing a bit here, but I think you get the picture. I wish you could have been there!

So now, where will Web3D be in the coming on-line games decade? We had some great conversations with web browser companies, with GPU and OpenGL developers, 3D tools makers, community colleges, universities in the thick of all this, game creation companies (aka content developers), talented researchers and even a strong sprinkling of 3D end-users from various verticals such as medical, the building information model (BIM) and OGC market, wireless and education markets—all at GDC to learn how the hot 3D gaming market can either help them solve their problems or open up new revenue streams. I also made my way over to both the job fair where many companies large and small were looking for help and then across the street to Moscone North, where I found the Nordic Games cotillion and the German games association. I have brochures from both I’ll be bringing to Web3D 2007 in Perugia next month. I have many of my own contacts still to go thru (that need to be entered into our contacts database) and Khronos promised us theirs as well.

Mostly however, I walked the show, checked out the many exhibits, talked to lots of people, both attending and exhibiting, went to some “information gathering” meetings and gave some demos in our booth. Tony Parisi from Media Machines spent most of his time there explaining and demo-ing the power of Flux, Flux Studio and Ajax3D along with two or three others from Media Machines. All went very well for both Web3D and Media Machines and we feel that not only was it worth our time, money and effort, but that you should think about going next year!

Many thanks to the Khronos Group for sharing their space with us!

A couple points worth noting about what the Web 2.0 3D Internet needs to provide:
- We need to see 3D become a “first class citizen”; plug-ins - maybe - but not full blown separate browser downloads.
- common Web 2.0 services and features: Use of Ajax, real-time streaming LOD that works, full linking in the 3D context and, accessibility.
- small scale visualization is a good first use of 3D in browsers.

I’m using the term Web 2.0 3D Internet for lack of a better label. Yesterday’s San Jose Mercury News had an article on virtual reality online villages and how social networking may turn the gaming world on it’s head. We’ll see.

Posted by Rita Turkowski on 2007-03-15 | Permalink | (1) Comments