RealityPrime

Google Earth Blog

Looks like Frank Taylor is first to post the news that Google Earth will now run in a browser. That’s huge. However, don’t expect the full GE UI or feature set, according to his sources. This is meant to be driven by Javascript in the surrounding web page. Better to think of it as Google Maps goes 3D, albeit at real-time interactive frame rates.

For mashups, this will be an amazing enabler. Expect to see it anywhere you might see Maps today, assuming it’s popular, and why not? And I’m sure this is meant to be a swift kick in the pants to Microsoft’s VE, which already runs in browser and does similar mashups.

[Read more →]

1 Comment »

So today was my official last day working for Big Stage. I’d given notice about a month ago, but had some loose ends to tie up to make sure stuff I’d been directing was working well for the upcoming launch.

I’m not going to get into any details publicly. But things are as amicable as they can be. I enjoyed working with the folks there, had a lot of fun, and wish them all the greatest success in this product and in all future endeavors.

As for me, I’m planning on starting some interesting short-term consulting work this week, which could lead to more. I’ll continue to consult while I diligently research a number of interesting full-time and startup possibilities. I’m hoping to get into something very cutting edge, as always, and to play a foundational and/or leadership role.

I’ll let you all know when the time comes, but it could take a while to find the right opportunity this time around.

In the meantime, I might have some interesting and unrelated news to blog about soon.

Add Comment »

I did an interview for the very respectable journal Cartographica with Jeremy Crampton last fall and it’s just come out. Seems to cost $12 to view, alas Jeremy has kindly provided a direct link to the PDF for free. Enjoy.

It covers some history with Keyhole my thoughts about GIS (even Net Neutrality, though I don’t know how that came up).

2 Comments »

Adobe Drops Licensing Fees, Gives Away Flash For Devices | Compiler from Wired.com

Well, maybe Queen was overstating it a bit. It’s not even Savior of the Web3D just yet. But Adobe is making some very important moves this month. First was the news that Flash — the format — will be opened to anyone, royalty free. Adobe will make its money off the development tools, not servers and license fees. The code may or may not be opened as well. There was some talk of donating the JIT compiler code to the Mozilla foundation.

Second, they’ve put out a pre-release version of Flash 10, which contains native 3D rendering. Download and try out the demos.

What this means is that companies who already put their eggs in the Flash basket for delivering 3D to the web have been fairly well vindicated, vs. the ones that painfully went with their own proprietary ActiveX controls and whatnot.

Will Flash 10 be as fast as compiled C++ code? Not a chance. But for pushing lots of polygons, it won’t matter as much anymore, as long as we can send big vertex arrays in one call (let’s not ask about physics and simulation though) — the card does all the work. I’ll be curious to see if they allow shaders and therefore GPGPU code, but that’s a side point right now.

The key thing is, if you want to deliver a 3D app to the most number of customers without a new download and install, Flash is certainly an attractive option, especially compared to Java and Silverlight. If it becomes part of the browser, as I expect in the next few years, even more so.

2 Comments »

Google diving into 3D mapping of oceans | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

Back in 1997, I left a fun job at Disney R&D making VR rides and interfaces to move back to Seattle at the behest of an old friend of mine. He had a "hot internet startup." Frankly, I wasn’t too keen on internet startups, even at that point — I figured the bubble would burst "any second" (it took three and a half more years) — but the promise was to use the "proceeds" from their "revolutionary" internet "load balancing" "product" to "spin-off" a "VR company," of which I’d be a "co-founder."

The quotes in that last sentence were all discovered after I’d made the move, which gives you an idea of how it turned out.

However, if things had actually turned out as planned, the first thing I was to do was to write the "Sea floor Visualizer," based on a demo that friend had written on the old Kubota 3D workstation, which I was going to greatly expand for the PC and the first real crop of 3D video cards. The idea was to let you virtually fly over underwater terrain, at least for a very small swath of sea floor, given lidar and other reconstructed "elevation" data. Cool stuff, and very cutting edge for 1997.

[Read more →]

Add Comment »

So my friend Cory Ondrejka (co-creator of Second Life) started an interesting thread last week that I didn’t see covered as widely as it should. Here are his slides — alas I didn’t get to hear the narration that went with it, but I can guess.

| View | Upload your own

What he seems to be describing is apparently not too far from what I’ve been writing about for a while. The part I’m still skeptical about is the life-logging, and probably because of my own preference for privacy. You’ll notice I don’t twitter. I have a hard time believing anyone would even care to follow what I do from moment to moment. And I think careful editing is the secret to any compelling narrative. I just don’t want to put gigabytes of sub-standard, often mundane, prose out there into the digital firmament.

But putting that aside, the germ (and/or gem) of what he’s saying, and the part I totally agree with, is this notion of a pervasive synthesis of augmented, mirror, and alternate realities — no need to distinguish between those arbitrary categories. Turns out, there’s an old word for this which I think we can now safely revive to summarize the intent:

magic

[Read more →]

4 Comments »

So I haven’t had much time over the last six months to blog, in case you hadn’t noticed. That’s going to change in the near future, I’m happy to say. I should have plenty of time once I’ve finished up my last bits of work on this Big Stage launch, a few weeks from now. And, in fact, I’d be interested in hearing from any of you about new and interesting things going on. Feel free to drop me a line and say hi. It’s about time I come up for air and survey the landscape.

2 Comments »

Virtual Worlds News: Feature: Industry Reacts to Linden Lab CEO Shuffle with Cautious Optimism

So Philip Rosedale is stepping down as CEO, and my prediction following Cory’s "resignation" was at least half-right. I figured that pushing Cory out was a move designed to make the company more attractive to Wall St. I’d guessed that Philip would step down as CEO (correct) and take over the CTO role (thus far, incorrect — he wants to be Chief Vision Officer, or some such).

The reasoning was simple, and apparently other industry insiders agree — a new CEO and/or CTO would be more focused on profitability and growth than on chasing cool ideas or open sourcing key elements — not that either is necessarily bad, but Wall St. likes one slightly more than the other — guess which…

But now it makes much less business sense that he canned Cory first, since the new CEO might have loved Cory and even welcomed the added continuity. It seems to me that the real reason for canning Cory first might be just that — Phillip knew he was soon giving up substantial day-to-day power — a strong CTO with developers on his side can trump a Chief Vision Officer with a portfolio of, um, grand ideas (and a dwindling majority of stock — proxy fights suck). Basic board-room politics, or preparation thereof. I predict the new CTO will be someone with good management skills, strong loyalty, and not much of a technical visionary.

Or, maybe it’s all just part of the same house-cleaning some investment bankers might have urged him to do.

It’s all speculation on my part. But despite my continuing respect for Phillip and everyone at Linden for all they’ve done, I’m quite glad I didn’t actually wind up working there again. I found out at GDC that with all the stock dilution and prolonged wait for a "liquidity event," the company had to issue another round of stock options to the key employees, with another apparently four year vest. Eight plus years of waiting to fully vest is pretty out there. Talk about dedicated employees.

Well, I’m looking forward to seeing what Cory does next. Alas, Linden is now more of a morbid curiosity.

1 Comment »

Sometimes, when I work on a project, there’s nothing we can publicly show until the product launches. And sometimes, by the time the product gets attention, I’m off working on the next big thing and can’t enjoy the show, except by proxy.

In this case, Big Stage has partnered with SonyBMG & YouTube to bring you a free sneak preview of our technology. Needless to say, we’re all very excited to see how it goes.

The process is pretty simple from your point of view: you take and upload three slightly different digital photos of your face to MichaelJackson.com (account registration required), wait an hour or so while our big iron servers do some really heavy math, and then you receive an email telling you the YouTube URL of your finished personalized Thriller video, which you can share as you wish.

That’s it.

The result will be something like this — though imagine your own face in place of my 7 month old son’s — and note: it’s not really designed for kids’ faces:

[Read more →]

5 Comments »

From the blog of Roman Ormandy (CEO of Caligari) :

Dear Caligari community members,

I am pleased to announce that Caligari Corp has become a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation. Specifically we will be working with the Virtual Earth team which is in the process of building out an immersive 3D Web experience. If you haven’t seen it yet check it out using the 3D mode at http://maps.live.com

I am deeply convinced that union of Caligari technologies and the scope of Virtual Earth project and vision behind it creates the perfect home for us and new opportunities for each one of you as part of the Virtual Earth community.

You know me and my ambitions for trueSpace and web-based 3D collaboration. Let me tell you right away that there were no compromises I had to make to accommodate our vision within the Virtual Earth platform, in fact I was challenged to increase the scope of our vision. I talked to many people at Virtual Earth group and I am convinced that the technical team behind Virtual Earth has a significant, long-term commitment to the 3D Web.

At the same time you will be pleased to hear that our development team and tightly knit community of Beta testers will stay the same as before, only now we will have more resources to rely on, larger market to consider and I hope more fun doing that.

The future is bright for all of us!

Roman

This is a pretty big deal, and congrats to Caligari for the new lease on life. 3D Modeling companies generally don’t make money (which is why I haven’t gone that route, despite my strong interest). They ultimately get sold to Autodesk, or Multigen-Paradigm, or Microsoft after some cash flow problems. I’m not saying Caligari was in that state — I have no idea. But this much is clear: the world doesn’t need is yet another 3D polygonal modeler, no matter how good it might be or how loyal its customer base is.

What it needs is one that everyone can use.

Well, Google has done its best with the SketchUp acquisition, going for the simple-n-easy approach. Caligari isn’t as simple, but it is richer in terms of output, which perhaps matches Microsoft’s apparent goal of more detail for the 3D world at any price.

I personally wouldn’t go with either. If only there was money in 3D modelers, you’d see something totally new. But for now, I’m content to see what will happen with Google and Microsoft racing to build mirror worlds of unprecedented quality and richness. Even if the content they’re rushing to roll out lacks all the key semantic information to make it really useful.

It’s as if we were seeing the construction of the world’s largest movie set, where the big players expect us to just step in and live there and not notice the doors don’t work and the walls are propped up by 2×4s.

Well, at least when the real 3D world comes, we won’t have to re-model all of the polygons and textures.

1 Comment »