Hi Len,<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 2:00 PM, Len Bullard <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:cbullard@hiwaay.net">cbullard@hiwaay.net</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
1. Google is well-aware of X3D and VRML. They declined to participate.</blockquote><div><br>I didn't know that. Who within Google declined to participate and when? Perhaps that could change?<br> <br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<br>
2. No one has made any case for the shininess of the teapot and you don’t<br>
seem to be answering the technical question, what is better about the O3D<br>
scene graph.</blockquote><div><br>I don't think I have the experience to make judgements on what is or isn't better about the O3D scene graph, I was hoping that interested members of the consortium with more experience than me could objectively look at Google's work and make judgements on its technical merits.<br>
</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
You were<br>
recruited into a secret project to launch a Google product before it is<br>
ready for launch.</blockquote><div><br>Apologies for any confusion I may have caused you, but I have never worked on the O3D project. I simply heard about it during my internship with the company. When I heard about the project, I contacted the team working on it to ask them why it was they'd chosen not to adopt X3D. The team kindly agreed to arrange a videoconference where they told me more about the project and I gave a little pitch for X3D. I then signed up to the trusted testers programme which allowed me access an early demo. Since then, I have chosen to use X3D to implement my final year university project, a paper on which I am presenting at the Web3D Symposium.<br>
<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
You are beginning from the positions that a) something is wrong with X3D b)<br>
something is right about the Google API </blockquote><div>... <br></div><blockquote style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;" class="gmail_quote"><div>and you offer no technical arguments to support said claims. <br>
</div></blockquote><div><br>Not at all. I am beginning from the point of view of a student who has seen both approaches and is interested in discussions about their relative merits. I am interested in more than just technical arguments, I'm also interested in what causes one technology to get adopted over another.<br>
<br>On the one hand I see a mature ISO standard which I perceive to have quite low adoption among end users, and on the other hand I see immature projects which may get wide distribution purely because they are part of already popular software packages. At some point I expect a particular technology will reach critical mass, I'm just asking (perhaps awkward) questions so that I can do my bit to attempt to encourage the best breed of technology to get the widest adoption in the long run.<br>
<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
The business of creating standards is serious and requires both scrutiny and<br>
open policies with participation agreed in advance. Otherwise, it devolves<br>
into the kinds of shenanigans the 3D web community has been watching from<br>
IBM, Second Life, Forterra, Google and others in the last few years of<br>
failed initiatives.</blockquote><div><br>Are you saying that unless Google signs up as a member of the consortium then you are not interested in talking to them? Does this also apply to browser vendors? I, perhaps naively, thought that it could do no harm to approach these organisations to attempt to start a public dialogue on a public mailing list about common aims. That is what I understand as "openness". Now that you've said this, I feel slightly embarrassed about inviting someone at Google to participate in the discussion. I can't help but feel that if other people are made to feel this way, what results is an insular, inward looking forum for discussion.<br>
<br>Regards<br><br>Ben<br></div></div><br>-- <br>Ben Francis<br><a href="http://tola.me.uk">http://tola.me.uk</a><br>