Its Academic
Interesting note to pass along about NSF investing some cash in open virtual worlds technology, at least academically. The "geometric" protocols described sound like things that have been kicked around for a while but not really implemented in any big way. And the parametric modeling (of trees so far) is music to my ears.
It seems one of the biggest problems in virtual worlds, going back 15-20 years, is that so few people are able to tell bullshit from gold, even in their own efforts. They start massive projects, only to crumble to the forces of scalability, usability, or consumer choice.
It turns out that Pat Hanrahan et al have serious clout at saying "this is the right way to do this." His students often go on to become architects at various Silicon Valley companies, like NVidia, AMD, etc.. So chances are, this collaboration will come up with some new buzz-worthy concept, like they did for Stream Computing and a bunch of other graphics technologies we now use, that will make people sit up and notice. It doesn’t have to be new — just credible — for it to be adopted by big companies. However, that process usually takes 2-3 years for full trickle-through effect.
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