I wouldn't call it "streaming," I'd call it "burping" or "crawling." :-)
A number of people have focused on how to do distributed 3d walkthroughs on
the Internet in real time. VRML just ain't it, and you can buy better
proprietary packages. I agree that the 3d Internet will be a big thing and
I think you will be pleased with it. But its ultimate form is not going to
be VRML, it is going to be a de facto standard that arrives from some
quarter.
> There are many things to come in vrml. It's a bit like the PC. Every few
> months I help a friend buy a new computer and am amazed how much easier
> and better these machines get. Not that the PC as a concept will last
> more than about three years, and itself will be obsolete in about
> five(?). (Apple made a fatal error buying Next, they would have been
> better to align themselves with Nintendo.) In about three years the
> current pcs will be useless in the next technological leap, given the
> choice of buying a $2000 general purpose computer or a $200, faster,
> special purpose machine, most people will opt for the later. At that
> point, given the smooth capitalist transformation of the planet (not
> assured), a huge percentage of the planet will be able to buy such a
> device. In this context, vrml good or bad is irrelevant. Current
> conversations about networked environments might look quaint.
It's not going to be "quaint." Herein I think you make a mistake that a
lot of people do. We see basic computers and CPU's moving at an amazing
rate, doubling their speed every 18 months. From this, we assume that
everything else is moving at the same speed. It's not true! I remember
the days of the Information SuperHypeway in 1993, when the wiring of the
entire USA with fiber optic cables was imminent. Cable modems were also
imminent. Well, broadband network technology has managed to be a
technology that's "just over the horizon" for 4 years now. And people are
still saying the same things now that they said in 1994 after people wised
up a bit: "it'll be 5 years before we get the fiber optics." Much like
HDTV, which has been "any day now" for a decade. Or the widespread market
acceptance of VR Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs), which first existed in 1969.
So when I see what VRML has taken 4 years to do, and I consider what
people were up to in 1991, I am very disappointed with the technology. I
am painfully aware of how the business/economic cycles affect the speed of
technological adoption, and it is only because VRML is a good placeholder
that I'm thankful for its existence. I would rather have seen us all using
massively distributed 3d Internet spatial databases by now.
> What the computer does
> is make the architect's office an irrelevance. A new design team could
> be composed of many people of different disciplines. Which theorist has
> addressed this yet?
No theorist, but have I got a company for ya! Check out the Danish company
Oticon, http://www.oticon.com, or read their writeup in the "New Rules To
Business" supplement to the June/July 1997 issue of "Fast Company"
magazine. They design hearing aids. Well it's not architecture but I'm
sure they use CAD somehow. The neat thing about the company is that they
have no offices, no hierarchies of management, no fixed departments to
handle specialized activities, nada! Rather, everyone has a standard issue
portable desk, that they can freely wheel around the building. Project
forms, everyone wheels their desks to a common location. People work for
awhile. Something changes mid-project. People wheel their desks to some
other spatial location, according to the changing demands of the project.
If the project teams get too solidified and begin to approach fixed notions
of departments, the company CEO's intervene and force everyone to
reshuffle. Great stuff!
Cheers,
Brandon J. Van Every <vanevery@blarg.net> DEC Commodity Graphics
http://www.blarg.net/~vanevery Windows NT Alpha OpenGL
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