A word about the third
Summary Description Does anybody still care
about virtual reality, wonders Simon Vandore.
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Roullas Top10 Simon Vandore
Newswire
No
Editorial InformationArticle Location
Article Topic Vandore
Story Order
Story Group 000820
Post Date 18/08/2000 08:28 AM Status Posted Entered by Simon
Vandore on 16/08/2000 02:12 PM
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Content
Introduction
Virtual reality is conspicuous by its absence.
Body
Sure, I've read a lot of bullshit about the topic, but I still
have time for it. That the Web has developed in two dimensions
and forgotten its third puzzles me.
Whatever happened to Virtual Reality Modelling Language (VRML,
pronounced 'vermal')? Inventor Marc Pesce was said to be mapping
the Earth in 3D, while others made home pages that you could
actually 'walk' into rather than browse. Early efforts gave
sluggish performance on the 486s and Pentiums of 1995, but here
we are in the days of 3D graphics cards and processors with
whiz-bang multimedia extensions, and we're still performing most
tasks on what amounts to a virtual representation of paper.
I think there is greater merit in the idea of a graphical 3D
shopping mall than a Web shopfront. It's all in the
implementation. Would you rather click on 'site map' and try to
find the page where they sell size 10 workboots, or warp your
avatar over to what is visibly the shoe section of a virtual
department store and click on the representation of a boot?
Would you rather load an HTML page with pictures of various types
of boots, wait for the third-party ads to load and try to match
the product code with the order form, or just load a couple of
extra kilobytes into your 3D space by clicking on the appropriate
3D boot shape, then clicking on the checkout?
For a while, VRML plug-ins became important to Netscape and
Microsoft. This capability was even part of an early version of
Netscape Communicator, at a time when Ziff-Davis trialled a 3D
version of its Web site. Another company came out with a 3D file
manager for Windows where a user could shift actual blocks of
data around on his or her hard disk. A company called Virtuality
made VR videogames and when they appeared at a leagues club in
Sydney the queues stretched around the block.
None of these exist today -- we have the technology, but we
appear to have given up.
Let's take a look at the state of play. The VRML newsgroup FAQ
was last updated in 1998. A search for VRML info primarily
reveals sites from 1995, while most early VRML-rendered sites
have been taken offline. Browse for opinions and you find the
language is regarded as having failed due to its lack of
interactivity between site users. The kind of 3D interactivity
that people crave once they experience it in computer games.
On the upside, the Web3D consortium is gradually moving to bring
3D spaces back into browsers. Its next-generation technology is
known as X3D (Extensible 3D) and places emphasis on
interactivity. The consortium even had a hand in the development
of XML and X3D is designed to complement it. Meanwhile, a small
group of European researchers has come up with GEL (Graph
Evaluation Language) which can be used to create a true sense of
'cyberspace', a 3D environment where all users can see each other
and exchange data.
Like I said, it's all in the implementation -- it should be about
simplifying the user interface and reducing the learning curve,
not simply using 3D for the sake of it. Ultimately I believe 3D
is more intuitive and can help to harness the power of computers
for those without the expertise of your average Linux freak.
So what about it? My avatar and your avatar, Kidman's Data Disco,
2pm GMT. We'll talk travel plans and swap story ideas. Cheers.
Vandore is published every Friday on Newswire.
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