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SIGGRAPH Web3d/Sandbox keynote

August 8th, 2008 (Visited 2435 times) Tags: game industry, metaverse, speaking

If you are attending SIGGRAPH in LA over the next few days, I am doing a “joint keynote” for the Sandbox games event and the Web3d Symposium tomorrow (I think that means you can get in regardless of which of those two you registered for). It was kind of challenging coming up with a topic that would fit both, until I realized that they’re kind of converging.

Putting the World in World Wide Web
It’s been predicted for a long time that the Web would go “3d.” But many of our predictions about the Internet have been wrong. As a class, the digerati predicted interactive libraries, not MySpace; 3d navigation of sites, not widgets. Users have a habit of taking the best-laid architectural plans and turning them inside out, developing different uses for our closely held technological dreams.
So what is actually happening? Games and social media are converging at a rapid rate, and our whole digital world is about to be reinvented via new technologies that are just now starting to be commercialized. Come take a glimpse into a possible future — one that is almost certainly wrong in many details, but is at least extrapolated from today’s events, rather than old dreams.

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len said on August 10th, 2008 at 11:41 am:

Many thanks for doing that appearance, Raph.

The plugfest where the vendors came and tested the interoperability aspects of their different X3D/VRML implementations was significant. How many vendors of 3D systems will do that in public?

We set it up so they would not be sandbagged, but otherwise, they stepped up to the potential. The benefits are a) they’ll come back together in a month and try it again b) the standard language will be improved. Eventually, we will see more interoperable content and the market for the artists and engineers will be better because we won’t see another implosion when/if the dominant vendor goes pooky on us.

All in all, the prize goes not to the fastest or the cleverest. It goes to the persistent.

Raph said on August 10th, 2008 at 4:54 pm:

Len, were you there? I would have expected you to come up and introduce yourself!

len said on August 11th, 2008 at 6:01 am:

Thanks Raph, and yes I would have. I could not attend. They don’t let me out of the cage to go anywhere fun. I was sitting here working and writing another score for the Christmas season.

Don Brutzman reported on your speech. It’s a big boost to hear one of the game gods cross the aisle so to speak and talk to the open IP virtual world party.

Raph said on August 11th, 2008 at 9:23 am:

I’d love to see the report… and also somewhat scared. I tried to be an equal-opportunity provocateur, attempting to piss off both sides of the aisle!

len said on August 11th, 2008 at 10:50 am:

It showed up on the X3D-public list. I’ll forward it from home. There wasn’t much detail. I think people were proud to see you there. Membership is increasing, the plug-in vendors seem to be solid, they are not all competing in the same market space, and some of the new projects such as the CAD WG are getting traction. IOW, the standard is working the way a standard should: not authority to crush but stabilize and create opportunities for different strata of cash and ambition. You had it dead on that what we think people should use it for and what actually happens are two different things. History is always smarter than prophecy.

OTOH, some aspects of the library thing are possible as I’ve noted elsewhere, eg, in response planning where a reusable model for coordinating the documents as well as running scenarios against the exposed properties of the model by plugging in different engines make sense. For these, a format with a long lifecycle is needed to make the initial and ongoing investments in the models palatable.

As any provocateur should. Welcome to the Wyle E. Coyote Society: Assassin League. Evil geniuses for a better tomorrow.

Raph said on August 11th, 2008 at 11:44 am:

I glanced here: http://www.web3d.org/x3d/publiclists/x3dpublic_list_archives/0808/ but didn’t see anything about it. Maybe the archives run behind?

len said on August 11th, 2008 at 1:55 pm:

That wouldn’t surprise me. I’ll look it up at home.

len said on August 11th, 2008 at 5:16 pm:

It wasn’t as much as I remembered. I’m getting old or tired or dumb (pick two), but let’s see what comes out later. There seems to be a lot of good buzz.

len

“sandbox game session plenary speaker Raph Koster claims the following project uses X3D:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/28/exitreality-launches-with-carls-jr-deal/“

SIGGRAPH Web3d/Sandbox keynote

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