First-hand, nth
space
We hadn’t been to Paderborn since 1999’s Symposium when the news
of Platinum’s layoff of the Cosmo team was the buzz.At that time,
despite all the great work being shown and the exciting technologies
being demo-d, the community’s optimism was seriously deflated
by the news that one of the seminal VRML product lines (Cosmo
Worlds, Cosmo FX, Cosmo Player which was born out of SGI) was
axed. A lot has happened since then: other VRML players have appeared
and improved, other proprietary Web3D formats have proliferated,
and the dot-com bubble of over-valuation and over-expenditure
has burst. So it was with great curiousity that the VirtuWorlds’
team arrived at this year’s Symposium to check out the scene-
the survivors and the success stories...
Hosted by c-lab, Sponsored by ACM,
Siggraph, and the Web3D
Consortium, the conference was again held at the Heinz-Nixsdorf
Museum: a futuristic complex boasting the world’s largest
computer museum.This, combined with the history of the town, makes
pastoral Paderborn a place of paradox.As a walled city with 5
springs in a fertile valley 1.5 hours East of Cologne, Paderborn
was a strategic center for King Charlemagne’s European campaign
- he met here with the Pope to christen the Holy Roman Empire
in the late 8th century. The architecture of the inner
town is typical old-German, and the Cathedral and Rathaus can
easily bring one’s mind back to centuries of old.
As with any conference, some of the highlights are getting to
meet your colleagues from Working Groups and Mailing lists face
to face.We have found that both formal and informal events gave
us time to discuss and envision our future work and collaboration.
The gathering was already looking pretty good on Sunday evening
when we met some other Web3Ders at the Youth Hostel and then at
the Ibis Hotel and kicked off the week with a hearty sampling
of the local beers…
Workshops
Structured Design of Virtual Environments
and 3D Components
This was a very interesting workshop from our point of view as
a number of companies who build Web3D applications discussed and
presented their production workflows and philosophies. The bottom
line was that pre-meditated, modular design is worth the time
outlay in the beginning since built components (models, interactive
behaviours) can be re-used and re-configured for custom or later
projects.Through this process, companies can build Intellectual
Property and company value through their work by producing libraries
of Web3D interactivity and content… praise PROTOs! more
here!
Educational Applications
The tag team workshop bringing together 6 groups who are pushing
the frontiers of learning with their software and applications:
See the workshop
page for more details and links!
VRML200x Node Proposals
This workshop brought together international experts in realtime
3D to formalize suggestions and initiate dialog on some of the
new capabilities that could become part of VRML200x (VRML200x
is the in-house name for the next version of the VRML ISO standard):
nodes concerning complex Appearance, Shadows, camera behaviors,
herds & flocks, and database programming access were presented.
These proposals will be reviewed and integrated by the Web3D Consortium
Specification team.
Presenters: Bryan Housel of OpenWorlds, Don Brutzman
of NPS, Thomas Volk of Blaxxun, Krzysztof
Walczak of Poznan University of Economics, Paul Isaacs
of Eyematic Interfaces Inc. more
here!
RM3D
See the
Rich Media Synopsis!
The Participant's
Press Release is here!
Tutorials
Java3D
1.5 Mg pdf file of the course notes is available from here!
High-Quality 3D Models
Informatics and graphics scientists
from the Max Plank Institute and others showed their process for
acquiring geometry and appearance information a controlled and
efficient manner. Algorithms and techniques of laser scanning,
point cloud form fitting, negative space continuity in geometry,
lighting and optics, texture acquisition and registration, reflectance
properties, mesh processing and smoothing were shown. more here!
DIS-Java-VRML
Networked Multi-user 3D protocol: new
build available
here!
X3D
An exciting
full day mix with hands-on demonstrations and discussions of X3D
Tagsets, DTDs, Schema, content, authoring tools, XSLT translations,
Scene Authoring Interface (SAI), profiles, componentization, conformance
suite, and the XJ3D open-source browser. Development has been fast and furious with
all deliverables over 90% completed.
A new beta Software Development Kit (SDK) chock-full-o-tools,
content, and source was released and is available at http://sdk.web3d.org.
Presenters: Don Brutzman, Naval Postgraduate School, X3D
Chair; Joe Williams, HyperMultiMedia.com; Alan Hudson,
Yumetech, Source Group Chair; Justin Couch, Author
and Java Hacker; Rick Goldberg, Sun Microsystems Java3D;
Paul Diefenbach and Bryan Housel, OpenWorlds.
more
here!
Advanced Features of Cortona
VRML client
Covered Advanced Appearance nodes for texturing techniques, combining ParallelGraphics 3D technologies with HTML,
JavaScript and large databases, and VRML automation and external
app control. We look forward
to this coursework being published online soon!
Presenter: Gavin Divilly, Parallel Graphics
Simulation: MATLAB and VRML
Connecting virtual worlds to a technical computing
/ simulation environment (MATLAB and Simulink).
Excellent Application!!!
See their presentation
here. Presenters:
Jan Danek, and Jiri
Dluhos
Exhibition
The Trade Show / Exhibition ran from Tuesday through Thursday
and a good variety of international companies participated. We
will publish a complete listing soon, but some notable booths
included OpenWorlds showing the power of their open system:
really nice quality bump-maps, shadows, reflection maps, smoke
and flame nodes, Shout3D showing their hardware accellerated
applets now version 2.0, GOMID who has built a new cross-platform
browser -iconnector -that runs HTML, VRML, and H-Anim, Humusoft
who integrated the powerful engineering softwares of MATLAB and
SIMULINK with VRML visualization, GeoNova who had some
very compelling continuous level-of-detail terrain visualizations,
SGDL Systems whose light, volumetric 3D description format
looked amazing, and of course VirtuWorlds’ 3DeZine who
showed their new site design, 3D navigation interface, and held
‘Fireside Chats’ with notable companies’ representatives.
In the relaxed atmosphere of our booth, we held ‘Fireside
Chats’ next to the warming heat of a simulated fireplace (Christmas
lights in a box), we got some time to chat with the likes of Eric
Anschutz & Paul Isaacs (Eyematic Interfaces & shout
interactive), Neil Trevett (3Dlabs & Web3D Consortium),
Sara Larsson (Cycore), and Paul Diefenbach (OpenWorlds).
We will publish these interesting interviews with more detail
and include our other virtual guests Holger Grahn & Marc Kaufmann
(blaxxun) and Connell Gallagher (ParallelGraphics)!
e-Commerce Tracks
Web3D Consortium Commercial Track
This track highlighted commercial applications of Web3D
by giving companies a half hour to present and pitch their products
and/or services. Some big names presented here including Sun
and SONY. At SONY’s presentation, we got see some video
footage showing the capabilities of their Blendo project: the
layered integration of 3D and rich media for broadband entertainment
applications. Presenters: Sun Microsystems, SONY, Parallel
Graphics, SGDL Systems Inc., Open Worlds, VirtuWorlds, Geometrek
Inc., GOMID.
VirtuWorlds showed the continued development of The
3DeZine and announced their upcoming web destination: The
Web3D Exchange. The mission of the Web3DExchange is to
collect and connect the Web3D industry and community into one
comprehensive and easy-to-use resource network. At the Web3DExchange,
graphics designers, developers, project managers, and IT professionals
will find the right combination of products, prices, and information
needed to get the job done.
The
Web3D Exchange aggregates and facilitates transactions
between the buyers and sellers of Web3D media assets, Web3D software,
hardware, and Web3D application service companies who develop Web3D
projects using that specialized media and software. This vertical
integration presents new and significant business opportunities
for current and future players in this space. In order to leverage
the current grassroots user base, this marketplace will also include
individual 3D professionals, artists, and hobbyists united by their
passion for real-time 3D graphics. Companies and individuals interested
should
contact: Timothy Martin, CEO VirtuWorlds LLC
timartin@virtuworlds.com
German e-Commerce Day
Kicked off with an address from the German Minister of Finance,
this day-long session hosted a series of interesting German companies
and firms involved in the Web3D Industry.Illuminating presentations
and pitches!
Presenters: 2000cities, Cycore, Interactive Software Solutions
GmbH, iTEConsult GmbH, Janet GmbH, myview technologies, VirtualArt,
GeoNova, Lunatic, T-Nova, Virtools more
here
Web3D RoundUp
See Claudia Kool's report here!
Panels
The Role of Java in 3D eCommerce: Marc
Kaufmann; blaxxun, Eric Anschutz; shout interactive,
Michael Kaufman; Sun Microsystems, Gavin Divilly; ParallelGraphics
Alternative gaming paradigms: redefining the
design, theory, and gaming in online games: Linda Vigdor;
Whoola, Inc., Kathleen Ruiz; Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute, Margarete Jahrmann; Austria
Papers
Published in the Proceedings
of the Web3D 2001 Symposium by ACM.
See the Titles
and Authors here!
Epi-Linguist
Back stateside with the internal clocks reset,
we are invigorated and innervated for the adventures of the coming
months. Seeing everyone
face to face is a real synergy, and we packed it all in, making
progress ‘on’ and ‘off’ the clock!
Thanks everyone!
Striking about the Symposium this year was a
dedicated, talented, and optimistic attendance concerned with
substance rather than hype: the frontier of Deep Media applications
and technology is expanding as more stable and capable real-time
3D environments are developed… when the market reaches critical
mass, its going to find a new universe of robust visualization
solutions.
See
our collection of Photos!
See
Tim's Letter from the Editor for more
from Paderborn!
Subscribe and we’ll alert
you
when our upcoming features are out!
So we’ll see you here for continued online news
and coverage and then at SIGGRAPH in LA this summer.
Web3D 2002 will be held in Pheonix, Arizona… ahhh, the
dream of reasonable weather in February!
all the best
und vielen dank!
n_polys
