In article <u9Ukh.30282$Rj.15756@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
Lawson English <LawsonE@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> ZnU wrote:
> > In article <VsCkh.30059$Rj.10342@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
> > Lawson English <LawsonE@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> >
> [...]
> >> For some stuff, keyboards are essential. But for other stuff,
> >> console-level controllers (which are getting more sophisticated all
the
> >> time--look at the wii wand controllers), will be quite adequate.
> >
> > For anything involving interacting with other humans at a level beyond
> > shooting at them, keyboards are necessary. At least until voice chat
is
> > pervasive in interactive environments.
>
> iChat conferencing apparently already uses H.264 compression. It should
> be possible to limit which voices are sent to which person in a
> conferencing chat based on how far away someone is within the VR world
> so bandwidth issues and whatever else might look like a potential issue
> here isn't really.
Probably for WoW-type games where most of the content is stored locally
this is true. For Second Life type environments, where geometry and
textures get streamed, bandwidth is going to still be an issue for a
while.
Are there headsets for consoles?
> [...]
> >>> (You'd need a centralized system to keep track of geography, I
suppose,
> >>> but, then, mapping between coordinates in virtual space and specific
> >>> servers is not conceptually very different from what DNS does.)
> >>>
> >> I see no reason why such content couldn't be displayed via MPEG-4.
Did
> >> you ever play the original Marathon game from Bungie? The game
playback
> >> was a QuickTIme file that basically recorded the player's moves, even
> >> over a network. The codec itself was the actual game engine of
Marathon.
> >> You could switch camera-views and even switch player-views while the
> >> game was playing back and change the playback speed as well.
> >>
> >> It seems plausible that a Second Life-like codec could leverage
MPEG-4
> >> features from inside MPEG-4 itself and allow for the creation and
> >> interaction of all sorts of distributed worlds.
> >
> > My reading of the do***ent you linked does not suggest the format is
> > anywhere near flexible enough for this. Anyway, it's basically a
> > container format -- how much sense does it make for live interactive
> > environments (rather than static content) to be contained?
> >
>
> The BBC probably wasn't analyzing MPEG-4 from the point of view of
> implementing some kind of EverQuest-like game or SL world.
>
> Hmmmm... googling MPEG-4 game...
>
> http://graphics.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~firebird/download/2001gtc.pdf
>
> http://www-artemis.int-evry.fr/Publications/library/Tran-ICME2003.pdf
I'm really not seeing anything particularly compelling there. Maybe
MPEG-4 might gain some traction for the sort of simple little games
people presently implement in Flash. This isn't exactly going to be a
major shakeup.
> >> I can see an obvious interaction between Google Earth and Second Life
or
> >> a meta-Second Life: The ability to travel quickly to foreign "lands"
or
> >> worlds or universes or dimensions or whatevers. GE allows you to see
> >> progressively more details of the local terrain as you zoom in and
this
> >> would be quite useful for traveling from one virtual world/land to
the
> >> next. Web-surfing via geometric interface. Apple's old Project X
tried
> >> this, but the available graphics and bandwidth only allowed for
clouds
> >> of URLs. An extended version of Google Earth could allow you to
navigate
> >> a terrain of the VR equivalent of URLs in a more entertaining, or
even
> >> more comprehensible way.
> >
> > It would be a gimmick, and people would play around with it for a few
> > minutes and then never bother again. Seriously. We've seen all this
> > before.
>
> Maybe. However, the Second Life players are actually discussing this
> kind of thing (using Google Earth or something like it with SL) in their
> forums.
Sure. Just don't expect people to use this kind of thing as a substitute
for web browsing.
> >>>>> What do you mean by 3D movies? You mean stereoscopic stuff? That's
> >>>>> another gimmick that has never caught on, and if it ever did,
you'd
> >>>>> probably be better off with pre-rendered buttons anyway.
> >>>> I was referring to the 3D space that MPEG-4 movies can (does?)
render
> >>>> into. Current MPEG-4 video uses MPEG-4 capabilities in much the
same way
> >>>> Quartz uses OpenGL textures to draw windows.
> >>> OK, but why are you going to use this?
> >>>
> >>> [snip]
> >>>
> >> Who knows? Usable distributed 3D media is still a chicken and egg
issue
> >> because of the steep learning curve for the tools. And even when the
> >> chickens are hatched, they're more like puffer fish: extremely tasty
(at
> >> least for some) when cooked precisely the right way, but only a
handful
> >> of cooks have the talent and training to use them.
> >
> > I remember playing around with VRML 11 or 12 years ago. I can think of
> > several significant web standards (Flash, CSS, RSS, etc.) that didn't
> > even exist back then and are pervasive now, yet VRML has been almost
> > completely stagnant.
> >
> > The tools are primitive because there's no good use case for the
format,
> > not the other way around.
> >
>
> VRML has given way to X3D which is the new basis for MPEG-4 3D scenes.
> There's even an Ajax3D based on Ajax + X3D. I think that the situation
> you describe is about to change. The current generation of low-end video
> cards (even the built-in graphics of the Mac Mini!) are more than
> capable of handling Second Life type graphics. X3D is an XML-based
> language. I don't know that there is a binary version, but likely one
> will be devised if the text version proves too slow for Virtual Worlds
use.
Because, you know, when a technology stagnates for a decade, coming up
with a buzzword-compliant replacement with a new name always turns
things around.
--
"Those who enter the country illegally violate the law."
-- George W. Bush in Tucson, Ariz., Nov. 28, 2005
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