Multiverse.....and GOOGLE???

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Thak   (Oct 30, 2007 at 06:23 GMT)

If done right google will turn the web fully 3d finally.

Seeing the direction this takes, I again think Instant Action could not have come at a better time.

Hail Intarweb3.0D! :p

Phil Carlisle   (Oct 30, 2007 at 07:58 GMT)

Well, saying that theyre teaming up is a bit of a stretch dont you think? Basically theyre allowing Multiverse to use sketchup based content. Not exactly a "team". I could write a similar peice about how Discreet are "teaming up" with me to use 3dsmax based content in my game (ok, if we had a formal relationship it might be closer, but you catch my drift).

Whats more interesting in that peice is the google making its own virtual world thing.

Frankly, I think it'd turn out to be quite quite dull. Google does search, not entertainment.

Sam Redfern   (Oct 30, 2007 at 11:04 GMT)

There's a good reason why the web hasn't gone 'fully 3D' before, and it's not a technical reason.

Tony Richards   (Oct 30, 2007 at 13:07 GMT)   Resource Rating: 5

There are a lot of big and small companies trying to get into this space that have never even created an MMO before... Multiverse, IBM, Google and Sun are the biggest one's.

My company, IndieZen is going to be fully throwing their hat into the ring during IMGDC. Some of these "big" guys are trying to make a buck the way Netscape, Microsoft, AOL, etc thought they could make money on making portals and controlling the web browsers a few years ago.

This next generation will go the same way, except we (IndieZen and partners) intend to make the MMO server software free and open source from the beginning with no strings attached.

If Multiverse gets their way, you'll be creating virtual worlds and you'll have signed a contract that states that you'll use their portal and you'll be giving away the bulk of your gross income. Startups rarely make more than 10% income, but they're spooning their 10% off the top and they'll be competing with you as well. They want to be the portal for every MMO game and virtual world.

Sun has a profit model that's even worse... "Here, use this development platform and we'll tell you how much we'll charge later when you finish your game / world."

IBM is entering the ring because they see dollar signs as well. Not that I fault them; hey they're in business too. If people would use Websphere and zOS to host their virtual worlds and use Rational to help create them then they're happy. I like this model better, but if and only if there are Apache / Eclipse equivalents, even if they're stripped down a little in functionality.

This is the approach IndieZen is taking. As soon as Version 1.0 of the IndieZen Virtual Worlds middleware is complete, we'll be approaching Apache to get it accepted as an Apache Incubator Project. We're already well on our way to completing this, plus our IndieZen Game Studio is based on Eclipse and portions of that will be open-sourced and hopefully all of those projects combined will be accepted into Eclipse as a top level project (GDF or Game Development Framework).

@John - Sorry for stealing your blog, but I just had to comment.

Trenton Shaffer   (Oct 31, 2007 at 05:35 GMT)   Resource Rating: 2

It seems like google wants to create a place where anyone on the Internet can create a virtual room and share their virtual junk with the world. Basically creating a 3D room for you to walk around in and see your photos, listen to your music, interact with your avatar, invite friends over, etc. Essentially it is Sims 2 in a earth-sized networked world. I've seen the myspace pages created by some people ... I can only imagine what their 3D space will look like. EEK! Don't get me wrong, I would tinker with this for at least an hour or two before I scrapped it and moved on to something more fun.

Henry Todd   (Oct 31, 2007 at 21:19 GMT)

Quote:

---

If done right google will turn the web fully 3d finally.

---

(Sam vaguely mentioned that there are reasons we don't go 3D, but I feel like being more explicit about it, because I hate web bloat and I like yelling).

Don't bet on it.. this kind of virtual world software has been around as long as people my age have been using computers. If I yell "VRML" in a room full of nerds, you won't be able to contain the laughter for some time.

Anyone recall Active Worlds (more commonly known as Alpha World when it was created almost 12 years ago)? That wasn't even one of the first of its kind, but it was the first to be fully user-editable that I know of. Actually was the only app I can think of that got something out of the VRML joke -- their object format is very similar to VRML code.

Second Life is a somewhat more modern story. While many companies have space there, they're not doing much business through them. Most of their 3D spaces just link back to their 2D website anyway. They're using in-world editable geometry, which is interesting (and slow), but apparently don't support externally-created model formats, making the whole thing useless to an actual dev.

The 3D web revolution ended up being about like the move to dynamic web content and flash: it's only useful for flashy sites with limited content.

Personally, I get irritated when I go to a site and find that, instead of giving me the information I wanted in plain text, they make me fish through "dynamic" content that's supposed to be impressive to me. If I wanted to view their flash marketing movie, I'd click the "shameless propaganda" link. I can't wait to go to some site to download drivers and have to wade through a swamp, kill a few zombies, and drive across the "Forbidden Zone," littered with the corpses of those who used lower quality drivers, to get to "Driver Central," where I can finally access the download link if I collected enough coins from the zombies (why do zombies have coins?).

Not that you can't use 3D for anything but advertising or games, it's just that it doesn't actually optimize information storage/access in any way. A well-organized collection of links is always going to be easier to access than even the most efficient 3D setup. Those old virtual reality concepts from movies just don't make sense in real life.. there's no way to arrange a set of documents or files in a 3D space that doesn't take longer (or at least the same time) to access than a 2D representation, and this is ignoring the fact that I need to waste more resources to run the 3D version. The last thing I want is to have to browse a 3D website while I'm already running 3dsMax, Photoshop, TGEA, Showtool, VC, N++, 20 Firefox windows, a handful of explorer windows, and a copy of MakeHuman (that's just what's running while I'm writing this).

Modified for stuff, and things.
Edited on Oct 31, 2007 21:21 GMT

Pesto126   (Nov 03, 2007 at 21:43 GMT)

I tend to agree.. I think at some point this whole dynamic content and flash/3D blah blabh blah will all backlash and we'll go back to plain html.... why the need for all this embedded stuff is beyond me... just look at ESPN.. I can't click a link fast enough because everything is flashing, scrolling and video that I don't want is autoloading all over the place.. and that site is well laid out! enough already ... I think this instaaction will be just another flashwannabe thing and will fade aawy..

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