From: "James Blom"
To: kriz@wave.esm.ut.edu
Subject: FW: Internet Strategy
Dear Ron,
As promised, here is our Internet Strategy. Please read and forward to any
appropriate parties.
Thanks Again for all of your assistance.
Sincerely,
James F. Blom
P.S I look forward to speaking with you soon.
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From: Tom Coull
Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 1996 4:41 PM
To: jblom@sense8.com
Cc: tom@sense8.com; john@sense8.com
Subject: Internet Strategy
Overview
---------------
At Sense8 we have been providing the leading cross-platform tools
for professional VR application developers since 1990. Our
mission is to be the world leader in enabling "commercially viable"
virtual reality that is virtual reality applications that either make
money; save money, or manifest a competitive edge.
We enable our customers to integrate leading-edge virtual reality
technology into their mainstream businesses, thereby allowing
them to deriving tangible value from this technology in terms of
reduced costs (such as Chevrons Oil Platform Simulator), quicker
time to market (such as NTT'sInnerspace application) or
enhanced usability for their customers (such as Computer
Associate's Unicenter-The Next Generation).
It is our vision to make our customers more effective, competitive
and successful through what we call experiential computing.
The Internet is a necessary component to this strategy. It is a
platform through which "commercially viable virtual reality
content (i.e. on line marketing, on line training, social interaction,
etc.) can be dramatically delivered to an increasing market. It is a
highly visual medium where involvement and interaction are
among its distinguishing characteristics, making it a natural fit fo
virtual reality application. In sum, the Internet is and will be a
major part of our product strategy.
Current Product Status
---------------------------------
Building a useful VR application is a complex task. We
differentiate a useful application here from a trivial one (many
products build a trivial VR walkthrough (see Footnote 1). Our tools
simplify this process. WorldToolKit Release 6 (WTK) drastically
shortens the programmers code and test cycle. This equates to
efficiency. World Up Release 2 enables developers to interactively
build their application in an easy-to-use, tools-rich environment.
This equates to productivity and accessibility of the technology.
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Footnote (1) A Distinction Building a VR Application vs. Building a
Walkthrough
Is building a walkthrough the same as building a VR application?
Not at all. A VR application is much richer and much broader. It
includes elements such as interfaces with other programs, the
requirement to support rich data types (video, 2D and 3D audio,
2D and 3D graphics from a wide variety of sources ), user-interface
elements, the interaction (control) of a real-time simulation system,
specifying behavior for the objects in the experience, plus
development of the visual and audio database.
However, both do share a common goal - both are experiential in
nature and have the goal of providing the most compelling
experience possible to the user.
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Both products as priced according to the value that they provide to
the professional. They are not targeted at the low-end, consumer
market. Todays professionals understand the leverage that a good
tool can provide them in their endeavors, and they will pay for this.
Our products are cross-platform and cross-API. This means that
our customers are able to immediately leverage new developments
in hardware and software technology as they become available, as
well as move to different API's and computer platforms as their
application delivery needs require. This protects them from the
risks of rapid (6 month time frame) changes in 3D graphics
technologies.
Technology
----------------
WTK is a high-level C/C++ toolkit that has basically all of the
functionality necessary for a professional programmer to build a
commercial application. Because of its technical depth and roots in
performance graphics (scene graph, SGI heritage), WTK meets the
needs of the most demanding real-time graphics power user, yet its
original, object-oriented design ensures ease-of-use.
WTK uses the powerful concept of a scene graph. The scene graph
presents a learning curve to some developers, but its usefulness
outweighs any potential hurdles. The scene graph provides value
such as:
- frame of reference: this lets you associate the position of
an object relative to another. For example, you can
position a moon relative to a planet. When you move the
planet, the moon follows along, maintaining its relative
position
- management: you can group and turn of (not draw) a
part of the scene graph that represents the objects outside
of a room if your application knows that you are in the
room (a trivial task).
- automated tasks: the scene graph has built in smart
nodes that do useful things for you. For example, the
LOD node knows to switch betwviewpoint and the object.
een objects of differing
complexity (or even between a picture of the object and
the object with verticies and 3D form) based on the
distance (range) between your
World Up is a powerful authoring system that enables a developer
to rapidly build and deliver a VR application. Its object-
management system layers an object layer with a fast
interpretive scripting system on top of intuitivethe simulation power of
WTK. This object layer provides more object-orientedness than
C++. It is somewhere between C++ and Smalltalk.
What does this mean to a developer? Say you are building your
application (remember that in World Up the application is running
while you build it) and you have a car object. But you now need a
speed property in one of your car scripts. In World Up (and in
Smalltalk) you can add the property after the car object has been
added to your application. When you add speed to the car class,
it is automatically added to the cars in your application. This is
called dynamic property inheritence and is essential for efficient
(and non-frustrating) application development in an interpreted
environment.
How Our Products Leverage the Internet
----------------------------------------------------------
Our World Up product is consummate development environment
for delivering virtual reality or 3D real-time interactive content
over the Internet, and it is continually improving in this regard. It
has been described by many of our customers as already delivering
what VRML 2.0 may eventually deliver that is, behavior-rich,
collaborative, real-time 3D. World Up currently gives developers
this capability in a highly accessable, efficient, productive, and
interactive environment.
However our dedication to standards means that we will also read
and write VRML 2.0 on a delivery schedule dictated by customers
(World Up currently reads and writes VRML 1.0). Because of the
pending proliferation of VRML 2.0 clients by Netscape and
Microsoft, we will make sure that World Up will soon enable
developers to author applications for a VRML 2.0 client.
Because World Up is such a powerful authoring system that (with
such unique features as Dynamic Property Inheritance and
Interactive Application Development) it enables developers to
rapidly build and deliver a VR application. I is ideally suited for
the short development time cycles required by the Internet while
still enabling a complex, robust application.
Our open architecture approach also allows for wide variety of
distribution choices including a Netscape Navigator plug-in, an
ActiveX control for Microsofts Internet Explorer, or through our
downloadable native World Up Player
Internet Strategy/Future Plans
-------------------------------------------
We will be releasing our Netscape plug-in and our Active X
control (downloadable from our Website) in October of 1996. We
will be incorporating the ability to write and read parts of VRML
2.0 into World Up sometime in early 1997. We are also planning
support of the appropriate Internet scripting languages, namely
Java Script and Visual Basic Script, likewise available in early
1997.
Our future product plans (now under development and
demonstrated at Siggraph 1996) include the World Server. World
Server is due to be released by the end of 1996 and will enable VR
application developers to author multi-user virtual worlds in the
same power paradigm as World Up.
The Internet is an important vehicle for accessing virtual worlds--
either by downloading a distributed world for users to navigate,
manipulate and interact with, or as a backbone on which shared
virtual worlds can be interacted with across heterogeneous
platforms. World Server will have a scaleable architecture,
capable of supporting from two users on a LAN to thousands of
simultaneous users globally across the WWW.
World Server will be the worlds first implementation of a
commercially viable distributed simulation system that will be both
flexible and easy to implement.
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