Re: True multi-user interactivity?

Dave Raggett ([email protected])
Thu, 04 May 95 18:41:00 BST

> But when you add the human factor - i.e.
> actual users (or avatars, of SnowCrash fame) - a simple static .WRL file
> doesn't cut it for interactivity. All of the sudden, you must have a
> sophisticated client/server setup to allow the passage of messages
> between clients in a net-friendly manner.

I am investigating using Java or similar technlogy to model scenes
with downloadable objects. This makes it easy to build in animation
as it becomes part of the application domain under control of the
authors program with the ensuing flexibility that brings. You can
also introduce streamed updator messages that objects receive from
servers without the need for a fixed protocol. A further advantage
is that the scene files can be dramatically reduced in size since you
can now generate the geometric details locally under program control
rather than being forced to make them explicit. Programs can do this
in a much more flexible way than simple iterators.

Downloadable objects shifts the emphasis to the API and away from
a common file format for scenes. The transition from VRML 1.0 would
be smoothed if this API was based on Inventor ...

-- Dave Raggett <[email protected]> url = http://www.hpl.hp.co.uk/people/dsr
Hewlett Packard Laboratories, Filton Road, | tel: +44 117 922 8046
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