 | More on MetacrasherJuly 6th, 2007 |
A helpful interview has been posted at Virtual Worlds News. It sounds like basically Metacrasher is trying to create glue between worlds — intermediary formats and tools that can export data to differing worlds.
This is only needed because of all these silly proprietary formats, of course. 
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
Trackbacks & Pingbacks
Reader Comments
Proprietary formats aren’t silly if you want a unique rendering-engine…
Raph wrote: “This is only needed because of all these silly proprietary formats, of course.”
The future of world bridging begins to look a little dire when you tack on the avoidance of web APIs by most virtual worlds, the commercial urge to lock in account data, and the habit of the dev community to value things like polygon count over wide accessibility and usability.
Once we’ve addressed those minor social issues it’s just a simple matter of programming. 
Ola,
Even then, these days unique rendering is mostly done via shaders and the like…
You know, I know that I am just a web guy who’s been just sort of blindly pointed at this virtual world thing by his company, but I think Raph is right here. I am very confused about the bewildering array of virtual world tech out there right now, and companies are actually making more new proprietary tech to release in the near future. For our clients we said “to hell with it…” We are just going to use COLLADA files on apache servers, with xmpp servers to connect everyone. We made a SIMPLE JoGL based COLLADA viewer applet and everything works fine. I am still DESPERATELY trying to figure out why all of these game industry people think they need so much more? Are we web people just idiots? Is there something we are overlooking? Because to me and a lot of my counterparts this whole “world making” thing is starting to look stupidly simple.
I would really like some feedback on this, because I really must be missing something.
Yes, I realize that most developers stick to what their tools support today, developing good tools is expensive. That doesn’t make formats that target a custom renderer silly if you can benefit from it, just more expensive to develop for. E.g. no standard format can capture the modelling needs for a custom procedural landscape-renderer.
>Once we’ve addressed those minor social issues it’s just a simple matter of programming.
The real social issue we need to tackle is the unseemly grab for power by open sourcerers who overthrow proprietary systems in favour of what they claim is open but is really a closed society of elite coders plotting coups like this.
“open source” is quite the opposite of “closed society”… Try again.
Ola, Catherine A. Fitzpatrick (who, according to the New York Times, uses the pen name Prokofy Neva) is a writer for the Second Life Herald, where she maintains an audience by provoking heated dialog. Regardless of whether you agree with her you should google her, look at her previous forum comments (and subsequent bannings), and then decide whether it is worth your time to respond.
Regardless of whether you agree with her you should google her, look at her previous forum comments (and subsequent bannings), and then decide whether it is worth your time to respond.
I suppose your point is that it’s not?
I’ve been thinking about this for some time, now. I realize that what it boils down to is that creative programmers and non-programmers view the “pipeline” differently. Business-people, designers, artists and metaverse-users desire a standard production pipeline because they primarily think in terms of what technologies they know and how they can control it to their own creative ends. Creative programmers desire new types of expression, new rendering engines, non-photorealistic rendering, real time raytracing, projecting higher dimensional spaces into 3D etc… Breaking the limits of what exists algorithmically.
To me a standard format feels like creative death. I totally empathise with those who want that kind of interoperability. I understand why they want it, I think? I just don’t think people realize how constraining coding an engine to a pre-conceived format is. E.g. How creative can you be in CSS + HTML? Very! But it’s like painting with your hands tied…
E.g. How creative can you be in CSS + HTML? Very! But it’s like painting with your hands tied…
Then again, OpenGL and DirectX are even more constrained. Let alone the constraints they place of the OS applications made in it need to be ran on.
And images… So constrained, since not everyone has 5-digit resolution, and less than 60″ monitors. The art feels so cramped.
Or perhaps the good old MUD is the answer? Perhaps for text, but even text doesn’t want to be constrained to 80 or 120 character wide lines.
And some would argue, that rather than spending 2 years developing the format, the engine and the platform, then adding content for 2 weeks before release is much worse, than spending 1 day downloading the SDK, and then spending 2 years developing nothing but content.
Is artist really more free when using a self-made brush out of cat’s whiskers (catching the cats and all), or simply buying them. Most of today’s greatest artworks are made out of standard oil or water colors. Few famous artists painted with their own blood or even more exotic liquids.
If anything, most of the game developers are way too busy developing their game engines to escape from harsh reality of developing games that are fun to play.
No gamer has ever cared about what engine the game runs. No software user for that matter. Or tool user. It’s the function and form that matters. How it’s made is just irrelevant.
Ola, I wish that it were so. But why is it that open-source extremists get to call for everything to be open-sourced as a mandatory feature, and proprietary companies are supposed to roll over? Why?
And I think disclosing someone’s RL name, which they don’t wish to use on posts, is really an unethical tactic in debate.
Open-sourcerers are indeed a closed club. Not everybody can be a coder, let alone an open-source fan. Some aren’t coders at all. Some are coders but work for proprietary companies that pay for their labour and development. It’s a reasonable question to ask.
Ola, you’re the one who wrote, as an expert, that proprietary systems aren’t silly if you want a unique rendering engine.
Now extend out that logic a bit. Why should proprietary systems be overthrown just to satisfy the ideological zeal of open-source extermists? To satisfy their desire to have everything for themselves for free?
Who pays? Including even for their own work?
>I am still DESPERATELY trying to figure out why all of these game industry people think they need so much more? Are we web people just idiots? Is there something we are overlooking? Because to me and a lot of my counterparts this whole “world making” thing is starting to look stupidly simple.
Maybe because they need to find a way to pay for the servers and the continued development and maintenance of the worlds?
>Is artist really more free when using a self-made brush out of cat’s whiskers (catching the cats and all), or simply buying them. Most of today’s greatest artworks are made out of standard oil or water colors. Few famous artists painted with their own blood or even more exotic liquids.
Gosh, for saying that, not only should your real-life name be disclosed against your will, you should be googled and witch-hunted and anything you’ve written should be served up here *and* you should be the subject of mob incitement to the board owner to have you banned.
Just saying. I mean, if we’re going to be consistent here and all.
To me a standard format feels like creative death
It’s useful to think of such formats as a foundation, even when pursuing proprietary solutions. You might want to render everything using real-time volumetric ray-tracing but you’ll still need to represent all those shiny baubles somehow: triangles are triangles and your users will welcome being able to provide them in some common format rather than having to jump through unnecessary hoops.
Prokofy, I don’t think it’s fair to tar everyone in the open source movement with the same brush.
I’m sure you know the canonical example: the vast majority of the web runs on Apache web servers running on Linux. If anything, it’s made hundreds of small businesses possible: hosting services, web design companies and so on. Second Life itself is based on a number of Open Source technologies.
You clearly have a particular group in mind–talk about THEM, not the majority of innocent hackers.
(And I agree: disclosing real names when someone is clearly using a pseudonym is incredibly rude, however much you dislike someone. It doesn’t forward the discussion one iota.)
>Prokofy, I don’t think it’s fair to tar everyone in the open source movement with the same brush.
If the open source movement people didn’t characterize themselves as representing all of the open source movement, and didn’t make such blanket and extremist demands to take over everything themselves, that might be possible as an exercise, parsing this or that one through the tar brush. But they don’t…so I do.
I’ve heard the argument a million times that SL itself runs on OS stuff. My God, could we get beyond that? Because that’s not the point — whether OS is useful, whether it is wholesome and helps build strong bodies 12 ways, or whether it is a part of everything.
What’s at issue is the demand, by open-source extremists, that EVERYTHING related to virtual worlds and social networks and such be opensourced for them to build as they please. A built-in assumption that this is not only better, but mandatory. And that proprietary software is somehow hobbling progress, or actually counterproductive. None of these claims are demonstrably true whatsoever.
I just want to know who or what got it in their mind to open source electricity and create that standard. I mean, there are kids in Africa making their own wind power generators fer cryin’ out loud!
I find the coder envy thing incredibly amusing, given that in real life, coders, on large projects anyway, are often ruled by non-technical SMEs – analysts and designers. We spend time wondering why these people make more money than us but can’t figure out, for example, how to determine what version of a component they are running and switch to the correct one.
Did you all know Microsoft’s first attempt at IE was not based on HTML, but a proprietary format? We Set The Standard, remember that? There is a whole technocracy of coders who are anti-open source. But open system is different from open source. And it is just easier to open source something than to build a comprehensive engine with a complete set of tools.
LSL is a proprietary language, and there is absolutely no reason to learn it or use it beyond SL.
There are better reasons for doing that – you own it, you control it, you can fix it. And you can build only what you absolutely need, thereby reducing what you have to fix.
If the open source movement people didn’t characterize themselves as representing all of the open source movement, and didn’t make such blanket and extremist demands to take over everything themselves, that might be possible as an exercise, parsing this or that one through the tar brush. But they don’t…so I do.
In defending a broad generalization, you’ve used a broad generalization?
What’s at issue is the demand, by open-source extremists, that EVERYTHING related to virtual worlds and social networks and such be opensourced for them to build as they please. A built-in assumption that this is not only better, but mandatory. And that proprietary software is somehow hobbling progress, or actually counterproductive. None of these claims are demonstrably true whatsoever.
Congratulations, you’ve succeeded in the classic straw-man argument. You applied an over-exaggerated extreme version of an argument to an entire community. Then you went on to dismiss it with a mere opinion stated as if a fact. You even threw in the extra ‘whatsoever’ for emphasis, which (as we all know) prevents other points of view.
Can we just skip forward about 3 or 4 steps and get to the part where both sides yell ‘yuh-huh’ and ‘nuh-uh’ back and forth?
Some proprietary offerings are great, some are mediocre, some fail miserably. Some open source offerings are great, some are mediocre, some fail miserably. Vision, direction, implementation, testing, all the usual steps and models apply to them equally. Proprietary systems have the backing of a great deal of capital and other resources, open source benefits from a wide pool of knowledge and feedback. Proprietary systems are limited by existing corporate culture, open source projects can lack support if the knowledge pool is (for whatever reason) simply not interested.
Sheesh, its like I’m reading a casuals vs. hardcores thread on the WoW boards, everyone wants to represent only the best of their side and the worst of the others’. Neither side are the bringers of all holiness and purity from the great code in the sky.
Chocorisu wrote: “And I agree: disclosing real names when someone is clearly using a pseudonym is incredibly rude, however much you dislike someone. It doesn’t forward the discussion one iota.”
Catherine’s name is in several public articles (NYT, LA Times, her own blog…) so that cat is out of the bag. If she wants to protect her identity with a pen name then using one which has been repeatedly linked to her legal name is worse than useless.
On the other hand, knowing her well publicized legal name gives people more keywords for the google search which I believe they should do before deciding whether there is the slightest chance that she’ll forward the conversation. I obviously have a negative opinion, but I still suggest that you gather enough context to form your own.
Chocorisu: triangles are triangles and your users will welcome being able to provide them in some common format rather than having to jump through unnecessary hoops.
But I don’t want to use triangles for modelling! It is quite unfortunate that Computer Graphics as a field has been driven by photo-realism and that non-photorealistic rendering is treated like a step-child. Triangles are so pervasive that they have become the equivalent of pixels, but you wouldn’t want to force all 2D engine designers to model everything as premade images.
(Of course, you have patches as an alternative to triangles as a basic primitive, but I am not happy with that either. 
Page optimized by WP Minify WordPress Plugin
Art (13)
Game talk (1764)
Gamemaking (69)
Mailbag (16)
Misc (212)
Music (116)
Open thread (22)
Reading (115)
The Sunday Poem (129)
Watching (50)
Writing (113)
All contents of this site are ©Copyright 1998- 2012 by Raphael Koster. All rights reserved.
The views expressed here are my own, and not necessarily endorsed by any former or current employer.
A Theory of Fun
for Game Design
Available as MP3 download
$14.99
ORPG Rorschach Test
Organic Cotton T-Shirt
$18.99
"The world the way they thought it was..."