In article <OrWkh.162$_44.119@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
Lawson English <LawsonE@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> ZnU wrote:
> > In article <u9Ukh.30282$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.
> >
>
> So no content is stored on the client side?
There's a local cache, but it never contains more than a tiny fraction
of the world at any given time.
This can be entertaining on slow connections... you tele****t into
something that looks like an empty field, and then watch as buildings
and people start popping into existence one by one.
> > Are there headsets for consoles?
>
> I would think so, especially for the latest ones like Xbox 360 and wii
>
> >
> >> [...]
> >>>>> (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.
>
> Eh. SOmeone created a demo of one of the 1st person shooters using X3D
> that is supposed to be pretty snappy. Uses DirectX/3D so I can't test it
> (the concept of an open source "cross platform" project that requires a
> proprietary library is a tad odd, IMHO.
And being able to embed first-person shooters in web pages is useful
how, again?
> >>>> 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.
>
> For some kinds of browsing, it might be more efficient.
For browsing based on *actual* geography, e.g. finding content related
to specific real-world locations, it's useful.
That's about it.
> >>> 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.
> >
>
> VRML was XML based also.
VRML predates XML by 3 or 4 years.
> My point was about the binary format. And there ARE uses for VRML,
> even.
Not widespread ones.
--
"Those who enter the country illegally violate the law."
-- George W. Bush in Tucson, Ariz., Nov. 28, 2005
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