RE: [xml-dev] Too much power? was RE: [xml-dev] 2007 Predictions

["Len Bullard" <cbullard@hiwaay.net>]

Much success then.  3D is fun stuff and it is an emergent market.  The hype
machines are cranking it out, but the facts are more prosaic.  There
certainly are good open standards to choose from and a mix of genre these
can be applied to.   As when talking to investors, best to pick one.

XML and 3D are mixed.  Have been for years.  I wrote the first DTD for VRML
although that DTD is long dead.  That's the easy part as long as you don't
get too wrapped around the XML frameworks near the renderer.  Pre or post is
fine.  It's a bit like cinema that way.   XML messaging is already
implemented by ABNet and most of the AJAX aficionados.   I like the
standalone apps myself.  The web is still a anemic when it comes to mixing
sound in real time.  If you look at the serious training applications, a lot
of them are delivered on CDs even with the broadband available.   

The protocol side of things is where there is still some very interesting
opportunities for XML as always and still open for standards initiatives
apart from X3D.   Of course, X3D is ISO and mature enough for the markets
where it's positioned today.   The deal is simply you have to accept the
same IP restrictions that the W3C places on its specifications.  That is a
condition of the liaison between the W3C and the W3DC.

That gripes the new guys.  They want that IP for their investors.  If that
requires a major campaign to invent a new 3D On The Web history, que bueno
for them.  It won't be the first time or the last.

The quiet giant in all of this is Microsoft.   They have to decide if they
intend to adopt and exploit the ISO standards for 3D as they have for HTML,
CSS, etc., or become another contender in the IP wars for 3D technologies.
In one sense, to the X3D vendors, it doesn't matter in that they already
have their own solutions, markets and standards with clean IP.   Scene graph
technology really is the sweet spot for the markets, complexity and cost of
production wise, so the X3D guys can keep going regardless.   They don't
have to prove a market will buy their stuff because it already is.

For the authors, it is the best deal going.  Unlike the closed server sites,
content made in X3D you get to keep recycling, and as the market grows, that
is a key to profitable production scales.   One offs cost too much to own
and by that, I mean for the content customer to own.  You can buy that as a
service and that's IBM's plan as I read it from here.   For that to work,
the server farms have to be privately owned and controlled by some customers
because Second Life has shown the risks of hosting these as rental property.
So the private company 3D sites are a big deal for the IBMs, and now one
asks if that is to also be a piece of the Microsoft ecosystem as well.  If
you see it as an enterprise platform, that's what they do well.  If it
blends into the entertainment content and entertainment software markets,
they do that too.

So right now, the big money question is, what is Microsoft going to offer
for distributed real-time 3D markets?

len


From: david.lyon@preisshare.net [mailto:david.lyon@preisshare.net] 
Sent: Monday, January 22, 2007 6:46 PM

> 3D is a much bigger business than you know and it is heating up fast.

That's why we're venturing in.. of course I've some other client  
projects on the go that are commercial apps with a 3d spin.

Don't know if you've seen it but the movie "Happy Feet" has been a  
fairly big success. It has a lot of that 3D stuff that was done here  
in Sydney - so even locally there is a bit of 3D stuff happening.

Now, how to mix the 3D and the XML... that is the question..

Regards

David



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