[X3D-Public] XTranormal X3D

Wed Dec 8 10:19:02 PST 2010

I agree.

I have worked several contracts which span both coasts and the dead 
center of the country. With GoTo Meeting, it's just like being there. We 
email and phone as needed, and have extended GoTo meetings which are 
extremely productive and the creativity flows just fine. Screen sharing 
= Good!
Not to mention the virtual off-sites and virtual sales visits. We had 35 
people on one call, only 8 people were in one room. It was a big 
success. Also, Google Docs (or any other collaborative online docs you 
like) is just like leaning over someone's shoulder.

When I worked a 9-5 office job, under the same understanding that it was 
'necessary', a big part of the budget was rent, utilities, and all that 
goes with that, plus the hour and a half wasted commuting every day (and 
multiply that by everyone else in the same boat). I'd get there to 'be 
available' but that rarely, if even twice, ever taken advantage of. Most 
of my communication was via email or IM, even with people in the next 
cube over. Waste of time, waste of money.

With the 'virtual office' I have more time to work, get to the dentist, 
and get my laundry done too. Win-win.

Dave A

On 12/8/2010 5:43 AM, GLG wrote:
>
> Len,
>
> While what you said about working together in one location is true and necessary in many cases, I have come to the realization that working virtually may just become a necessity just as well for others. With the economy the way it is, and the fact that we must compete with cheaper labor in other countries, the expense of automobiles and the price of gas, real estate, taxes, insurance, moving costs, the down time getting to work everyday, traffic, etc. in the end productivity suffers and the balance sheet goes down real fast. The clock is ticking either way and time flies.
>
> Wouldn't you rather have more time, more money and have more productive (read less tired or stressed) people? I believe that a significant number of businesses will have no choice but to operate much leaner than with the traditional model, and thus virtually if they are to survive. Couple that with the inevitable crime rate increase associated with the severe economic downturn, and we can see that technologies such as X3D are poised to make a real difference in the way people play, live and work. Why not use it? We need to go through this paradigm change, the same way we did during the industrial revolution. I don't think "shared imagination" would suffer one bit. Did someone say Snow Crash?
>
> We can have different opinions. I just didn't want to let this sit as is.
>
> Cheers,
> Lauren
>
> ________________________________________
> From: x3d-public-bounces at web3d.org [mailto:x3d-public-bounces at web3d.org] On Behalf Of Len Bullard
> Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 7:54 PM
> To: 'Dave A'
> Cc: 'X3D Graphics public mailing list'
> Subject: Re: [X3D-Public] XTranormal X3D
>
> If I had twenty million, I would.   You need enough capital that everyone eats while you get momentum.   Say what you like about location independent teams, to get it done fast, imaginative and bug free, I want the team all in the same building 9 to 5x5.  Normal lives but intense at work.  Keeps the team healthy.   It’s expensive, but IME, 50 per cent of success is shared imagination and it’s good to be in the same room when conjuring that if you want your schedules to hold.
>
> With X3D, both the animation in native form and the mp4 run on the web.
>
> The chasm or opportunity uncrossed is for the cost of load time, an X3D real time animation is still richer in palette and interactivity.  And it hosts the same external media types.   The difference is in composition down to sequences where the sequences are zero-fault in rendering.   The mp4 may vary by board but in the practical case set, completely reliable.
>
> If I had to manage the evolution of that, I’d complete the path to the mp4 first; provide a we only guarantee it on this download plugin only later. and be sure everything is ready to go when 3D is native to the browser itself.   Compile Flash if you must.   MP4 format is a fixed format.   Save out to as many of these as you can most particularly, wmv.
>
> The problem of world building is attempting to create a social network centered in the world.   People won’t invest that much time in getting status updates, the essential FB message type.   They will consume each other’s media postings.  So before we dive back into the rabbit hole of X3D Being The Web, be fit in the status updates space.  As I said, a reader that consumes and renders status updates is easy.  All that will work.
>
> So then you’re left with the artist’s wing.  Some group builds a lot of compelling avatars and scenes.   Most of that exists out there for any company that wants to spec the licensing and technical package deliverables.  Here you don’t write standards; you spec/contract the parts you need.
>
> len
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dave A [mailto:dave at realmofconcepts.com]
> Sent: Sunday, December 05, 2010 9:47 PM
> To: Len Bullard
> Cc: 'John Carlson'; 'X3D Graphics public mailing list'
> Subject: Re: [X3D-Public] XTranormal X3D
>
> FWIW: Vivaty could have done this, the ideas were certainly on the table and technology available, but the company went in, well, a different direction. Too bad.
> Well, if you got about 10 million and want to get it done, maybe we can get the band back together.
>
> Dave A
>
> On 12/5/2010 4:44 PM, Len Bullard wrote:
> Not for us.   It isn’t product OR standard but product and standards because we can do more with both than just one.  The trade off here is business size by limiting access to the engine files (ie, hook them on an editor and don’t give them an export out) or use the fact of the standard to come up with companies that don’t compete by making all of the system but companies that make competing pieces, character editor vs character editor, audio editor vs audio editor.
>
> De facto, that is what exist now.  It’s parts polyglot.   In one way that enables quick evolution.   In another, it fragments the market.
>
> XTranormal goes around that.   It is a company providing not all of those parts, but the basic animation concepts in a library of content parts.   They sell scenes, characters, voices, behaviors.    They make them popular figures so you can put words in their mouths.  Oh the joy of modern stardom…. ☺
>
> The XTranormals are fun and quick to make, and are not more than ten percent harder than the average Facebook entry to make.  They only have to replace the avatar/photo with a character.   A default style set for initialization does the rest.
>
> The trick with the standard is the author shouldn’t see it.   The format and engine are built into the social network as savvy socially sensitive renderers.  How many namespaces do you want to exchange is the tough question here and how many would you have to exchange to exchange the full range of information in an XTranormal?   How many namespaces make up a scene?
>
> This really comes down to tool over text.    A script, a one two n actor scene (eg, one film), voices (the way to get complex here is filtering; that’s ok as long as the basic set that you give away JUST WORKS.  Drag and drop and type.
>
> The reason to use the standard is the bang by the n of sets you can exchange determines the utility of each component of a type.  Ie, it’s nice if the script runs in all implementations.   So the competition comes down to who writes the best composition system.   They win.  So far, XTranormal.  It kicks out mp4s.
>
> Some think about X3D files for real-time animation.   Very good but also good for sampling.
>
> In an animation, that is a set of real time or scheduled access to sequencers.   In a movie, those are mp4s.
>
> MP4s are very reusable.   It’s a very different editing space because it is audio, video, image, composites, effects for audio  and video and direct access to an audio editor.  All but the meshes and mesh engines,  IOW, an integrated movie mixing suite.  Once rendered down to AV, you can split, splice cut and otherwise harvest a lot of image sequences.   Once you have access to the temporal address, it’s a dimension above because that enables the slicing into even more finely reusable sequences to the n of the number of integratible components.  Remember, audio and video are separable parts.  Punch. Punch. Punch.
>
> Now… it’s all very neat but the cannot bottom line happen is this:  for any number more than one in ten should the editing system fail.   In XTranormal, some sounds such as the chime corrupt the file.  Since there is no backup past publication, the entire piece is lost.  Oopsie.
>
> You can’t do that.  Content lost is irretrievable even if it can be recreated from memory.  A Save without backup is a clusterPlucker waiting to happen.
>
> len
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: x3d-public-bounces at web3d.org [mailto:x3d-public-bounces at web3d.org] On Behalf Of John Carlson
> Sent: Sunday, December 05, 2010 6:03 PM
> To: X3D Graphics public mailing list
> Subject: Re: [X3D-Public] XTranormal X3D
>
> Isn't "The Sims" good enough for doing 3D Worlds?  Look at what "Spore" does for avatars.  The trick is that these are applications, not standards.
>
> Check this out this 3D authoring tool (Kinect based) for ideas: http://vimeo.com/16818988
>
> John
>
> On Dec 3, 2010, at 3:58 PM, Len Bullard wrote:
>
> When will someone do for X3D worlds what XTranormal does for videos?
>
> I worked on HumanML hoping someone would make that happen but it didn’t.  It became too many things to too many people.
>
> Is it really that hard?  XTranormal has approximately 1.6 million projects, series, all from a simple drag and drop text interface.
>
> It is said the power of HTML is view source, but really, it is text you CAN type.   XTranormal simplified to the basics and it works.
>
> len
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