Reflection: Flash or SVG?

• What is common to each?• What are the issues?• What’s going to happen in future?

• What about you?– Conform v. not conform?– Quiet life v. stretch targets?

Heterogeneity

• PC, MacOS, Unix and others• Personality types – do people start to look like

their dogs … operating systems?• Standardisation and market-led innovation• Example: Games Developer for Mobile Phone:

– 150 incompatible models to support in UK & US alone• 60-70 core models• UAProf and CC/PP

– 5 languages, 1000s of product variants– J2ME and BREW– Income from sales, licensing, per play?

At the end of this week you will be able to

• Use VRML/Web3D to implement a simple virtual world

• Use the history of VRML to understand trends and issues in multimedia standardization

• This in turn helps you achieve the following module learning outcomes:– Analyse trends in the architecture of WWW browsers

and plug-ins – Design, produce, test and evaluate a multimedia

educational application including 3D and audiovisual content and deliver it through a browser.

VRML

• What does it do?• How do we use it?• What’s the history and was it a failure?• What are the implications for standardisation v

innovation?

VRML

• Uses plain text to define objects and interactivity in a virtual world

• Instead of HTML-style tags <xx> …</xx>• It uses

– word { … }, with others within () brackets– and occasionally […]

• Involves grouping things together – think object-oriented

Grouping … to model the universe

• Sitting in a car…– Your clothes move with you– You don’t move much within car– Car moves at 120 km/h relative to earth– Earth’s surface spins at ~1700 km/h (?)– Earth moves through solar system at ??k km/h– Solar system moves etc

Typical VRML constructGroup {

children [ Transform {

translation x y zchildren [

Shape {geometry Sphere {radius 0.3}appearance Appearance {

material Material {…}}

}]

}]

}

… more shapes etc

… more transforms etc

Shape{} is a Node – defines “something” in

the VE

“geometry” and “appearance” are fields – attributes

of a Node

The field may have values or

it may have nodes

Fields (eg children[]) use

the square brackets for lists

of items

Typical VRML Concepts

• Movement: Walk, Fly, Pan, Track etc• Observation: Look, Zoom• Examiner/Walk: Mechanic's Dolly, Rotator Ball,

Pan Tool• Empowerment: Point, Light, Link, Touch

What is VRML? (from web3d.org)

• Short answer: VRML is an open format for 3D graphics on the Internet.

• Long answer: (from The Annotated VRML 2.0 Reference Manual by Rikk Carey and Gavin Bell): – “An acronym for the Virtual Reality Modeling

Language. Neither virtual reality nor a modeling language.

– Neither requires, nor precludes, immersion– A true modeling language would contain richer

geometric modeling primitives / mechanisms.”

VRML long answer from Carey & Bell (1 of 4)

• “Simply a 3D interchange format. • Defines most of the commonly used semantics:

– hierarchical transformations, – light sources, – viewpoints, geometry, – animation, fog, material properties, and texture

mapping.

• A primary goal was to ensure success as an effective 3D file interchange format.”

(from The Annotated VRML 2.0 Reference Manual by Rikk Carey and Gavin Bell):

VRML long answer from Carey & Bell (2 of 4)

• “3D analog to HTML simple, multiplatform language for publishing 3D Web pages.

• Some information best experienced 3D: – games, – engineering and scientific visualizations, – educational experiences– architecture.

• Typically these types of projects require– intensive interaction, animation, and user participation and

exploration – beyond page/text/image-based formats”

(from The Annotated VRML 2.0 Reference Manual by Rikk Carey and Gavin Bell):

VRML long answer from Carey & Bell (3 of 4)

• “Technology to integrate 3D, 2D, text, and multimedia into a coherent model.

• When combined with scripting languages and Internet capabilities, entirely new genre of interactive applications possible.

• 3D supports 2D desktop models, extends into broader contexts of space and place.

• 3D world model to supersede 2D desktop as primary user interface paradigm?

• Subject to 3D UI and navigation, user training, and ubiquitous 3D graphics performance. “

(from The Annotated VRML 2.0 Reference Manual by Rikk Carey and Gavin Bell):

VRML long answer from Carey & Bell (4 of 4)

• “A fourth answer, and the one most publicized and debated, is that VRML is the foundation for cyberspace and the on-line virtual communities that were painted and popularized by science fiction writers William Gibson in Neuromancer and Neal Stephenson in Snow Crash.

• Critics have accurately pointed out that VRML does not yet define the networking and database protocols necessary for true multiuser simulations.”

(from The Annotated VRML 2.0 Reference Manual by Rikk Carey and Gavin Bell):

In groups

• Discuss 3D on the web -– What are your actual experiences of it?– What have you heard of?– What do you think it will be useful for?– What is over-hyped and will soon fade away?

Break

A successful strategy?

• VRML strategy was: – Evolve the standard one step at a time – Keep it simple – Standardize only on problems that are completely

understood and reasonably solved – Encourage experimentation and extensions on the

frontiers – Don't reinvent technologies that can be solved outside

of VRML (e.g., HTTP)

• Several working, multiuser systems implemented on top of VRML as proof?

What VRML is not• Not a programming library for application developers. • Although VRML based on the Open Inventor file format,

it is only an extended subset and does not define an application programmer interface (API).

• Scripting language capabilities are predominantly intended for authors who need more power or integration.

• Conclusion: it’s a pile of wood and a toolkit, not an IKEA flatpack?

How do we use it?• Well…do we?

– Fun to play with– Lots of funded research and PhD theses– Commercial solutions?

• Yet it should have taken off!– 3D graphics performance is now ubiquitous

• The £100k graphics card of seven years ago is built into the £100 motherboard now

– Cosmoplayer had a very usable and understandable interface (Q. Does Cortona, or other VRML viewers?)

• Some case studies illustrate problems

Case Study: Archaeolink Changing Landscape (1997)

• 1996 – Digital OS maps become available in UK• Tools for building virtual landscapes, some VRML,

mainly proprietary• Playback engines – VRML too primitive for public use,

need proprietary technology• Sense8 Worldup (http://www.sense8.com/ - now defunct,

but £3000 per license at the time)• Navigation was wonderful without textures, bearable with

tinting, but disastrous with overlaid detail• Solution eventually pre-rendered to AVI• Successful at the time, old hat now?

Case Study: Ayrshire Virtual Food Park (1997)

• Local Scottish Enterprise company. – A series of discussions and prototypes to try and define an

online network of small food traders

• VRML prototype developed, data-linked to databases of products, ran in a browser on standard PC. – Fun to use, – Exciting to demonstrate, – Different shop-fronts, – Advertising opportunities, – Avatars and presence

• But … why use the power of technology to replicate the misery of shopping?

Case Study: John Menzies online music shop (1997)

• Uses 3D to allow customer to walk up and down Menzies-branded aisles

• A 3D robot with personality (!) to help you– “Punching robot in face” idea rejected

• Involved traversing multiple MPEG streams that would arrive through NTL set-top boxes (making use of about 16 channels of cable TV bandwidth)– Display of music and video products in racks– Offer samples of the tracks (cleared with PRS/MCPS– Back-end fulfilment through an Amazon-style operation

• Why repeat the misery of shopping…?

VRML History• Pesce & Parisi demo at WWW’94 with Berners-Lee and

Raggett (who calls it VRML)• Silicon Graphics wins v 1.0 spec proposal• Excitement grows though 1995• Netscape buys Paper Software -> Live3D• VRML Architecture Group (VAG) invites 2.0 proposals,

Moving Worlds (SGI, Sony, Mitra etc) win vote– Dec 97 – VRML 97 finalised– Dec 98 VRML consortium -> Web 3D– Aug 99 – Web3D license Blaxxun’s VRML browser– Feb 02 – Web3d’s X3D accepted as basis of MPEG-4 3D

Standardisation

• Standards fossilise progress?– MSX v Sinclair v Atari– VHS v Betamax

• Standards steady progress?– JPEG, MPEG, W3C.org– XML, SMIL, Web3D– Intel/Microsoft v Apple– Linux/Unix v MacOS

Consortia v Standards Bodies

• Consortium SDMI (Secure Digital Music Initiative)– Alliance of music producers, software developers, consumer

electronics companies• Prevent theft of music and theft of Software IP (Fraunhofer patents,

Musicmatch etc)• Avoid expensive and tedious litigation• Avoid killing the source

– Reactive, creating a climate, but no permanent solutions. Squeaky wheel syndrome

• Standards body: MPEG-21 – Work from humanity’s needs tempered with pragmatic commercial

reality? Contradictory objectives?!

So was VAG a standards body or a consortium?

• VAG: VRML Architecture Group• Self-appointed. Idealists?• Constrained by commercial interests and perhaps

naïve? (note that in 1994 many perceived Netscape to be the “evil empire”)

• After 5 (bruising?) years, eventually a mature standards body emerges and starts doing the “right” things?

The Gartner Curve!

Due to copyright we cannot reproduce this in the handouts. Go to

http://www.gartner.com/resources/130100/130115/gartners_hyp_f2.gif for the image itself, or to

http://www.gartner.com/resources/130100/130115/gartners_hype_c.pdf

for A PDF that describes the hype cycle in more detail

Gaines & Shaw (1986)• BRETAM (every 8 years)

– Breakthrough by innovator– Replication worldwide– Empirical design rules– Theories about success and failure– Automated manufacture– Mature Phase - cost reduction

• For each new MM technology is the loop is faster, or are we actually in several separate phases for different aspects of the technology?

Directed Study

• Work through the tutorials at– www.vruniverse.com