[x3d-public] X3D and Occuli

[doug sanden]

Len,
Yes - if you can come up with some promotional campaign for us, that will get X3D back in the HMD dialog. 

On the other hand, I'm personally happy to let Oculus worry/fret about how they are going to scale up - and if they need DoD or Facebook that's fine with me. I think VR gurus are used to benefiting from the stereovision-hardware-de-jour. 
(I used to work in photogrammetry - an even smaller niche application of stereovision - and we rode the waves of whatever hardware the VR community was using, often we would be the first app to buy dozens of a new VR hardware)

In several months you may be able to add freeWRL to the oculus capable club. I know their developers -slow volunteers wading through tomes of spaghetti C- are working on it.

If you have a landline and no-ip capable^ router at home, you can host at home with a free no-ip account:
http://www.noip.com/remote-access
-Free Dynamic DNS account
Disadvantage: 
- you need to keep a computer running 24x7. Its better if its low power consuming.
- usually your upload speed on a home landline is throttled to be much slower than download, so those visiting your site will experience it as a slow server
But it can get you back in the self-hosting game and open up new worlds.

^no-ip capable router: it will have an option where you can enter no-ip provider and your no-ip url, and it will call the no-ip provider whenever it gets a new dynamic IP address.

I'm planning a 'content developers site' for web3ders, including hosting, tools, community forums, news: CRAB VR. However it needs to make 'pin money' to pay for good hosting server, I'm thinking of a monthly subscription via app-store.

-Doug

>
> A bit of googling returned links that are wildly scattered. The first
> was a forum where a fresh face asked about X3D and was told that they
> should not bother with it. Another pointed to the Instant Reality
> site which said it supports it and does go into some detail about the
> Rift (essentially, it is just another display device). I found the
> Bit Management site statements that it supports Rift with its stereo
> software. Admittedly I am way behind on this subject but from the
> surface this appears to be the case. Please correct me if I am wrong:
>
> 1. Once again, anything open or free such as X3D is being beaten down
> by the hardware vendors and new kids on the block in an attempt to
> capture market and make as much money as fast as possible. So once
> again the Silly Valley diseases are infecting the 3D marketplace and
> anyone who wants a long life cycle solution has to go out of the US to
> get it. Sad that.
>
> 2. For those of us who are sitting on X3D content we took some effort
> to develop and don't want to see it "abandoned", our reliable way
> forward is to stick with the dates that stuck with us at the party:
> Bit Management and Instant Reality. If there are others, I simply
> didn't see them in my quick survey.
>
> 3. There is a "No Bad VR!" meme out there. I don't know what that
> means but I suspect it is part of the market capture strategy (Wait
> for OUR Content! It will be the Real Deal RSN!). Meh.
>
> 4. This is a market that is pushed by the headset but the real deal
> is the desktop and the applications on it that can use the Rift or
> other headset APIs as display devices. IOW, we are looking at the
> same problems we have looked at since the 90s" multiple incompatible
> platforms for which content development is a bet and an expensive one.
> The camera capture devices seem to be getting the most attention a)
> instant applications b) cheap content.
>
> 5. VR still makes people queasy.
>
> 6. Finally, X3D has more and better functionality for VR creation
> than is actually necessary to get started. The focus on hardware and
> the usual hype/greed curve drowns out that message.
>
> I'm not convinced this is quite the leap being hyped. It is progress
> but not a revolution. It still comes down to the cost of developing
> and maintaining scripted content.
>
> I am afraid as far as jobs are concerned, Cecile is right. Here in
> the heart of darkness (DoD Big Sticks Land), it is all about sims
> using Unreal and Unity to sell weapons platforms and to train
> soldiers. 
>
> That this is very expensive for the taxpayers is of no
> consequence in an industry that invented the idea of market capture
> (you should see the S1000D pubs systems that are all MS Word and
> SharePoint until the ever deferrred final deliverable). I have to
> wonder how Don justifies his work to his paymasters these days. A
> topic for another time...
>
> Aside: the node tree in Instant Reality is amazing if half of them
> work. That's a lot of toys in the toy box for those of us who like to
> play with semi-autonomous VR objects. Cool!
>
> If any of that is wrong, please say so. I'd love to put The River Of
> Life up where it can be viewed on these new display devices, but since
> my ISP has given up on it's web hosting for the casual users, I had to
> pull all of my VR and other web content off the original site. This
> has become an expensive proposition for hobbyists and I get the
> distinct impression from what I am reading in the VR blurbs we aren't
> welcome in the brave new worlds.
>
> The tragedy is there is probably more original thinking, ideas and
> chops in this community for creating VR than in all of Facebook.
>
> len
>
>
> Quoting Cecile Muller <newsletter at wildpeaks.fr>:
>
>> Hi again,
>>
>>
>> 99% of Oculus apps use either Unity or Unreal, and that's the landscape
>> for the forseeable future; the headset doesn't need to care about the
>> formats
>> used in the apps, it only displays the resulting views rendered by the 3D
>> engine.
>>
>> If you were referencing Carmack's Vrscript, that's a toy language to
>> experiment with,
>> it's unlikely to go mainstream.
>>
>>
>> See you,
>> Cecile
>>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> x3d-public mailing list
> x3d-public at web3d.org
> http://web3d.org/mailman/listinfo/x3d-public_web3d.org