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That’s an excellent answer, Adam: collaboration (very important where one isn’t a polymath or the scale and schedule of a project requires a team, or as in band work, collaboration gets a better tastier work) and productivity. We’ve been having that discussion for a while here. The vertex economy is too slow given a schedule. I hope the next generation of builder tools about to be released face that one squarely.
Clay questions everything 3D. He’s a web luddite. That article I referenced at XML.Com starts with a quote from Clay. He can be useful because his articles create opportunities to reply and refute so a bully pulpit. Otherwise, I don’t think too many people pay that much attention to it. 3D is very much now a ‘you got worlds; you get cred’ market. So we keep repeating: build build build.
The level of difficulty in VRML doesn’t bother me much. I’m used to this language and I am a solo builder, so this is fine for me. What is of concern are the interoperability issues and the differences of implementation where bugs in the syntax are passed by one browser and refused in another. The difference in SL and VRML as you know is multiple clients and multiple servers, that is multiple companies and individuals implementing the same language. There is no free lunch. To have options in the software space, we live with the incongruities in the content space. I admit it’s a problem but some go at it with sniiffers and a broad knowledge of the differences, and others live with the ‘best played on’ which isn’t too different from sticking with SL. Meanwhile, we figure these differences out here online so the vendors and authors see them more or less at the same time.
You are right: in VRML/X3D one has to build the room. I like that personally, but that’s just me. My work is also about audio, but my background includes theatre, music recording and story writing, so the ability to build the scene is quite important to me. I think it is a differentiator for VRML/X3D that I can do that and I accept the long term projects this entails. I also understand where if a world exists and someone wants a building, an avatar, a singing begonia, etc., for that that world, one accepts a different set of requirements and constraints. If I had a team of builders working for me in a company, I would be accepting all of those kinds of projects and simultaneously seeking to extent the reach of the content to new kinds of genre. I understand the security of the niche, but in a rapidly changing and emerging market, the niche is a bitch. Over the decades of being a working musician, I’ve seen hot rooms come and go, styles cycle, and some songs become standards that make my fingers rebel (imaging having to play Sweet Home Alabama every time you step out the door and you get my point: it is the ball and chain of the Southern rock musician just as Country Roads was when I was a solo folk artist in the 70s). So to reduce the load in the long term, I want flexible adaptive tools and as many convertors into and out of the proprietary formats as necessary. The combination of VRML/X3D and Collada might be quite potent in that regard.
So yes, I see your point. I don’t agree that they limit VRML/X3D but they are a challenge to the VRML/X3D market to build worlds that contain such collaborative productivity tools. This isn’t just an art requirement. Agencies acquiring regional systems (eg, public safety, homeland security) need these to keep their peer to peer sites consistent. Simple map updates are orders of magnitudes more expensive if the cross-jurisdictional requirements are met . (Yes, I’ve been to the IJIS meetings and have that plaque on my mantle.)
In world building it is possible. Understandably, it is the next level of implementation above the world itself and since VRML/X3D is a language for building worlds, it has to be built a level above them. One might expect that the proto libraries kick in here with names suitable for the non-geek builder, plus the usual array of Boolean carving tools. ISB currently comes closest to that. Parallel Graphics has always done a good job of simplifying the building chore with VRML and I continue to use their ISB demo; on the other hand, they are not very conscientious about the standard and at some point, the author has to move on.
I appreciate your response. That gives the vendors here something to think about and the rest of us something to learn.
len
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On 28/12/2006, at 12:34 AM, Len Bullard wrote:
So I think this topic is useful and would like to hear your opinions. Why are in-world tools required?
Collaboration. Something that artists love and need (like most people). In SL, I just finished a lovely piece with another artist that involves 256 different audio files each embedded in a column responding to collisions with avatars to trigger the sound and perform physics on the column. We worked on the piece together, quite literally, in real time, right there in the space. Without the inworld building tools it would be a matter of either working on bits of it individually, then uploading and collating, then uploading to the world. Or, we could physically attend the same location in the real world to work on it together. Both these options have obvious and significant barriers to smooth collaboration.
On the other hand, if it is a single artist working on something, then it becomes more an issue of *presence*, ie, it "feels" better to an artist when you are building in the medium it will be consumed in. Second best is what used to be called WYSIWYG editors, which game engines like Unreal and Torque and (I'm yet to try it, but I guess) Flux Studio use, where your authoring environment looks and feels like the end product, but you still have to go through the "compile and upload" process. That's okay, and certainly workable for single artist work, and doable for collaborations, but that "one step removed from live" is very noticeable.
Another consideration is one that I think somewhat accounts for the popularity of Second Life (I know people like Clay Shirky are questioning the figures, but it SL *is* popular). Realtime 3D environments are not something that people easily adapt to in my experience - they need analogies to cling on to. The easiest one to grasp is the "it's like the real world" analogy. People appear to be attracted to that. So, in the real world, if you want to build something you just start - you don't have to "leave" the real world and go into another dimension to build something that you then transfer back into the real world. Same in SL - if you want to build something you just start. Want to change your avatar appearance? Fine, just do it. Want to build yourself a house? Just start. And so on. I genuinely think this is one of the chief attractors of SL to the non-technical non-gamer.
On this list, everyone's been saying for over a decade "the era of net-based 3D is coming", and it's true, people are finally really starting to adopt the idea, thanks to the preparatory work of all the people on this list as well as 3D games and seemingly unrelated things like Web2.0 and mobile "you" (as in "me") culture. I think that one of the defining properties will be inworld content creation tools.
Kind Regards, Adam Nash |