[X3D-Public] Vivaty use Flash for Vivaty Scenes Lite

[Len Bullard]

This seems fto be a commercial trade off.   Flash IS a plugin but it is the
clear winner in the download wars.  I base that on comments from experts
such as Raph Koster who after some period have become less critical of X3D
as a 3D content language but say its losses in the download wars are not
arguable.   Vivaty has been succeeding by a) smart positioning in the social
network space and b) implementing fewer X3D nodes to get the size and
complexity of the plugin down.   This move extends that strategy and it
should work.

 

Consider the compromise.   We've been fighting hard to keep a content
standard alive because experience informs us without it our content has a
very short lifecycle unless wed directly to a large server farm world such
as SL.    Without a content standard, content makers stay in the poverty
gulch.  So far, we have only a few downloads that can implement the entire
X3D standard and even then, incompatibly.

 

So we trade expressiveness for a better penetration of the content standard.
It is a camel's nose in a big tent where until very recently, the camel has
been declared DOA or on life support.   Regardless of how one argues it and
I've been arguing a long time, if the case for the content standard becomes
more widely accepted, a lot of benefits will follow.

 

So I think this is a good plan for Vivaty and not coincidentally as Tony has
been very public about his continuing support for X3D, a good development
for the standard.   Give him room; Tony is not just a pioneer, he is staying
the course as best as a small company can.   Having yet another option for
X3D content makers can only help us.

 

We are not in a One True Browser world.   We've never been.   We just did it
that way because we were increasing the complexity of the content.   Now we
have options at both ends of the spectrum and again, options are good.

 

When Raph Koster is congratulating anyone or company in the X3D and Web3D
world, that is respect we have waited for a long time.  It isn't trivial.

 

len

 

-----Original Message-----
From: x3d-public-bounces at web3d.org [mailto:x3d-public-bounces at web3d.org] On
Behalf Of Damon H
Sent: Tuesday, September 22, 2009 3:51 AM
To: Ben Francis
Cc: X3D Graphics public mailing list
Subject: Re: [X3D-Public] Vivaty use Flash for Vivaty Scenes Lite

 

Ben,
 I would only guess that the main reason for a Flash version is to lower the
barriers to entry for those that don't like downloading plug-ins. The
"download a plug-in" is a big killer for most virtual world companies.
Vivaty is going for tween and teen girls, dont know how many are mac users
in that demographic. Again I see it first as more a way to get people past
that barrier of getting a plug-in, second for the bonus of that small
audience of mac users and run the app cross platform. I give them mad props
for enticing people with a lite version. Hopefully the experience with their
platform will get users hooked for the X3D player download. We need more of
those out there.

IMHO

Damon

On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 1:29 AM, Ben Francis <mail at tola.me.uk> wrote:

I was very disappointed to read [1] that Vivaty has felt it necessary to
shoe-horn a stripped-down version of their Vivaty Scenes service into Flash
in order to achieve cross-platform support. I've made a blog post [2] and
comment on their blog asking what could have been achieved if the
engineering effort required to achieve this hack had instead been diverted
to supporting Unix/Linux based implementations of X3D.

Regards

Ben

1. http://blog.vivaty.com/2009/09/22/vivaty-lite-in-flash 
2. http://www.tola.me.uk/blog/2009/09/22/vivaty_lite

-- 
Ben Francis
http://tola.me.uk

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