Where Does A 3D Standard Start?

Noting a news page at Wired quoting Sutor at IBM about the need for virtual world standards... sigh. Where to start.... The problems are not disimilar to OMG. Moving an object among different platforms worked pretty badly until the technical writers taught the programmers markup. Then the great AHA moment of 'it's the data, dummy' happened with XML.

But that's just a format.

Real-time objects aren't just data. They have the polarities of rendering and behavioral fidelity in a system where local real-time (what you see on the screen) is in its simplest form, frame rate. Drop below about 15fps and you might as well be watching a Powerpoint slide show. To solve that, X3D specifies an object-model in the standard. That makes interoperability of real-time 3D content nearly doable with some wrinkles being worked out where the standard is silent or ambiguous. This is not an easy kind of standard to write and those proposing ever more complex features based on experience to a single platform's capabilities are tredding water very naively.

The impact of all the marvelous AI and other bits Bob talks about have to be measured in terms of cost to FPS. The standards start there, not in Linden Labs or IBM. Otherwise, the people just entering this market amazed at their LL-hosted worlds will propose just another proprietary framework with a physics engine hosted on a server farm and replicated for a fee.

That's not an open standard. We already have those: see X3D, Collada, etc. For some reason, those who yell loud and long about Microsoft and OpenDoc don't seem to understand the same rules for open unencumbered standards have to apply to 3D as well. Why?

I have my suspicions, but the IBM standards reps will have to answer those questions. Bob?

Bob Sutor's Blog

http://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/

That is the URI for Bob Sutor's blog. Bob is a standards VP at IBM. Bob is very interested in virtual worlds and requirements for interoperable worlds. Following on the IBM strategy, Bob has been working with Second Life. On the other hand, Bob is aware of X3D and Collada. Historically, Bob has always valued open source and open standards and is a frequently quoted source on those topics particularly with regard to the Open Documents formats. Bob is, like me, of the second generation of SGMLers who contributed to XML, but don't let that sway you. ;-)

He is a good and reasonable man.

If you have a case to make regards those topics on virtual worlds, open standards, open source and 3D on the web, Bob is a good man to make them to on that blog which is his personal blog. Those interested should read his blogs on the topics of virtual worlds to get a sense of where he is in understanding the issues and what his interests and wishlist for the technology are. I suspect it is a reasoned view of many of IBM's positions although he naturally doesn't speak for his company.

After all of the hubbub over Open Documents, one might expect consistent reasoning about the need for open standards coupled with open source, and being an ambitious company, one would hope that IBM will also listen and learn.

Bob will. Take him on.