RE: [x3d-public] Shaders and Triangles: was dedicated working-group focus on X3D interoperability

["Len Bullard" <cbullard@hiwaay.net>]

And that works for you.  On the other hand, for those who paid your
commissions and might not understand the risks they are taking, the story
isn't so good.  On the same hand, they might have to come back to you to
rehost it and that is a good economy.

You are off the mark on one point: online building tools and MU are only
important for certain applications or genre of real-time 3D, mainly virtual
reality because that is where the art is being performed.   The main
advantage is not the software technology but the server farm:  in music
terms, the Room.  It has traffic and electron hoses. 

If protocols begin to shift back toward peer-to-peer as they certainly will
for other applications of real-time 3D, then the server farm, or built in
audience, isn't as important as the portability of the data and the
interoperability of the systems.  SL gets to surf on the waves created by
the early pioneers in MU and that's fine.  That's how it should be, but the
momentum under that is not your art or the art of your peers; you are riding
the wave of millions in venture capital and if that gasoline burns out
before someone can add wood to the fire, the server farms go away.  Other
pressures such as the rapid rises in energy costs and potential green
policies coming from the Federal government are also to be considered.

I am an artist too, one who watched the 'it must be free' ethic collapse the
market for his art, but that's ok because at the same time, smart artists
adopt new media and this is one of them as you know.  But I am also someone
who knows precisely what it does to a customer and the band when a club
burns down with our equipment inside it.  That is where inhouse hosted
toolkits are a blessing and a curse unless you have your own PA and a policy
of taking your axes home at night.  If the club furnishes all of that, que
bueno.  I only have to tell the customers where our NEXT gig will be.   The
artists who relied on the club owner exclusively will be serving lattes at
Starbucks.

I'm happy to see the Mac supported.  IMO, it is a boutique machine for
boutique buyers and sellers, but that is fine.  Like any other niche, it's
value is relative to what customers will pay and how often they return to
buy again.  Otherwise, it's just a platform.  Cool but so is a Peavey PA
from Mississippi compared to the best from Europe: audiences can't tell the
difference.

So those of us hewing to the goal of royalty-free open standards for both
server and client side real time 3D anywhere and not just the web, will be
the ones responsible for making sure if those rooms do burn, you have a
place to go.  Just say thank you to the volunteer doorman on your way in,
and tip the waitresses.  They work hard for the money. 
 
len


From: Adam Nash [mailto:adam@yamanakanash.net] 
 
Naturally, there's always the consideration of portability, but I  
don't see SL as any less portable than VRML/X3D. It's all about the  
ideas, so as long as I keep those ideas (and, unless I suffer some  
kind of trauma to the brain, that's not going to be a problem) I can  
easily recreate them in any environment. Most scripting languages are  
pretty similar, so it would be quite easy to to modify the SL scripts  
and assets (I keep copies of all my scripts naturally, the geometry  
is just geometry, the textures and sounds are my own) to the 'next'  
suitable environment.

But the point for me (as you correctly say Len) is what works now. I  
could port all my old stuff from VRML into SL, just as I could port  
the SL stuff into whatever comes next, but I'd rather just move on.  
I've archived/documented what I need to as a professional artist  
(mainly using video dumps).

I can't stress enough, though, my main point which is that artist/ 
content creators need two things in realtime net-based 3D: inworld  
tools and multi-user capability. Without those two things the artists  
will not come.

This is illustrated by the other projects I'm currently collaborating  
on, one that uses the Torque engine to create educational worlds,  
another that uses Unreal, and another that uses a feedback cycle  
between Pure Data and Torque. They all have inworld tools and multi- 
user capability. Also, all of these tools run well on Mac.

Adam




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