Convergence for iTunes/iPod/iLife/iTV: MPEG-4

In article <OrWkh.162$_44.119@newsfe23.lga>,
Lawson English <LawsonE.RemoveThis@nowhere.none> wrote:

> ZnU wrote:
> > In article <u9Ukh.30282$Rj.15756@newsfe19.lga>,
> > Lawson English <LawsonE.RemoveThis@nowhere.none> wrote:
> >
> >> ZnU wrote:
> >>> In article <VsCkh.30059$Rj.10342@newsfe19.lga>,
> >>> Lawson English <LawsonE.RemoveThis@nowhere.none> wrote:
> >>>
> >> [...]
> >>>> For some stuff, keyboards are essential. But for other stuff,
> >>>> console-level controllers (which are getting more sophisticated all the
> >>>> time--look at the wii wand controllers), will be quite adequate.
> >>> For anything involving interacting with other humans at a level beyond
> >>> shooting at them, keyboards are necessary. At least until voice chat is
> >>> pervasive in interactive environments.
> >> iChat conferencing apparently already uses H.264 compression. It should
> >> be possible to limit which voices are sent to which person in a
> >> conferencing chat based on how far away someone is within the VR world
> >> so bandwidth issues and whatever else might look like a potential issue
> >> here isn't really.
> >
> > Probably for WoW-type games where most of the content is stored locally
> > this is true. For Second Life type environments, where geometry and
> > textures get streamed, bandwidth is going to still be an issue for a
> > while.
> >
>
> So no content is stored on the client side?

There's a local cache, but it never contains more than a tiny fraction
of the world at any given time.

This can be entertaining on slow connections... you teleport into
something that looks like an empty field, and then watch as buildings
and people start popping into existence one by one.

> > Are there headsets for consoles?
>
> I would think so, especially for the latest ones like Xbox 360 and wii
>
> >
> >> [...]
> >>>>> (You'd need a centralized system to keep track of geography, I suppose,
> >>>>> but, then, mapping between coordinates in virtual space and specific
> >>>>> servers is not conceptually very different from what DNS does.)
> >>>>>
> >>>> I see no reason why such content couldn't be displayed via MPEG-4. Did
> >>>> you ever play the original Marathon game from Bungie? The game playback
> >>>> was a QuickTIme file that basically recorded the player's moves, even
> >>>> over a network. The codec itself was the actual game engine of Marathon.
> >>>> You could switch camera-views and even switch player-views while the
> >>>> game was playing back and change the playback speed as well.
> >>>>
> >>>> It seems plausible that a Second Life-like codec could leverage MPEG-4
> >>>> features from inside MPEG-4 itself and allow for the creation and
> >>>> interaction of all sorts of distributed worlds.
> >>> My reading of the document you linked does not suggest the format is
> >>> anywhere near flexible enough for this. Anyway, it's basically a
> >>> container format -- how much sense does it make for live interactive
> >>> environments (rather than static content) to be contained?
> >>>
> >> The BBC probably wasn't analyzing MPEG-4 from the point of view of
> >> implementing some kind of EverQuest-like game or SL world.
> >>
> >> Hmmmm... googling MPEG-4 game...
> >>
> >> http://graphics.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~firebird/download/2001gtc.pdf
> >>
> >> http://www-artemis.int-evry.fr/Publications/library/Tran-ICME2003.pdf
> >
> > I'm really not seeing anything particularly compelling there. Maybe
> > MPEG-4 might gain some traction for the sort of simple little games
> > people presently implement in Flash. This isn't exactly going to be a
> > major shakeup.
>
> Eh. SOmeone created a demo of one of the 1st person shooters using X3D
> that is supposed to be pretty snappy. Uses DirectX/3D so I can't test it
> (the concept of an open source "cross platform" project that requires a
> proprietary library is a tad odd, IMHO.

And being able to embed first-person shooters in web pages is useful
how, again?

> >>>> I can see an obvious interaction between Google Earth and Second Life or
> >>>> a meta-Second Life: The ability to travel quickly to foreign "lands" or
> >>>> worlds or universes or dimensions or whatevers. GE allows you to see
> >>>> progressively more details of the local terrain as you zoom in and this
> >>>> would be quite useful for traveling from one virtual world/land to the
> >>>> next. Web-surfing via geometric interface. Apple's old Project X tried
> >>>> this, but the available graphics and bandwidth only allowed for clouds
> >>>> of URLs. An extended version of Google Earth could allow you to navigate
> >>>> a terrain of the VR equivalent of URLs in a more entertaining, or even
> >>>> more comprehensible way.
> >>> It would be a gimmick, and people would play around with it for a few
> >>> minutes and then never bother again. Seriously. We've seen all this
> >>> before.
> >> Maybe. However, the Second Life players are actually discussing this
> >> kind of thing (using Google Earth or something like it with SL) in their
> >> forums.
> >
> > Sure. Just don't expect people to use this kind of thing as a substitute
> > for web browsing.
>
> For some kinds of browsing, it might be more efficient.

For browsing based on *actual* geography, e.g. finding content related
to specific real-world locations, it's useful.

That's about it.

> >>> The tools are primitive because there's no good use case for the format,
> >>> not the other way around.
> >>>
> >> VRML has given way to X3D which is the new basis for MPEG-4 3D scenes.
> >> There's even an Ajax3D based on Ajax + X3D. I think that the situation
> >> you describe is about to change. The current generation of low-end video
> >> cards (even the built-in graphics of the Mac Mini!) are more than
> >> capable of handling Second Life type graphics. X3D is an XML-based
> >> language. I don't know that there is a binary version, but likely one
> >> will be devised if the text version proves too slow for Virtual Worlds use.
> >
> > Because, you know, when a technology stagnates for a decade, coming up
> > with a buzzword-compliant replacement with a new name always turns
> > things around.
> >
>
> VRML was XML based also.

VRML predates XML by 3 or 4 years.

> My point was about the binary format. And there ARE uses for VRML,
> even.

Not widespread ones.

--
"Those who enter the country illegally violate the law."
-- George W. Bush in Tucson, Ariz., Nov. 28, 2005

ZnU wrote:
> In article <OrWkh.162$_44.119@newsfe23.lga>,
> Lawson English <LawsonE DeleteThis @nowhere.none> wrote:
>
>> ZnU wrote:
>>> In article <u9Ukh.30282$Rj.15756@newsfe19.lga>,
>>> Lawson English <LawsonE DeleteThis @nowhere.none> wrote:
>>>
>>>> ZnU wrote:
>>>>> In article <VsCkh.30059$Rj.10342@newsfe19.lga>,
>>>>> Lawson English <LawsonE DeleteThis @nowhere.none> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>> [...]
>>>>>> For some stuff, keyboards are essential. But for other stuff,
>>>>>> console-level controllers (which are getting more sophisticated all the
>>>>>> time--look at the wii wand controllers), will be quite adequate.
>>>>> For anything involving interacting with other humans at a level beyond
>>>>> shooting at them, keyboards are necessary. At least until voice chat is
>>>>> pervasive in interactive environments.
>>>> iChat conferencing apparently already uses H.264 compression. It should
>>>> be possible to limit which voices are sent to which person in a
>>>> conferencing chat based on how far away someone is within the VR world
>>>> so bandwidth issues and whatever else might look like a potential issue
>>>> here isn't really.
>>> Probably for WoW-type games where most of the content is stored locally
>>> this is true. For Second Life type environments, where geometry and
>>> textures get streamed, bandwidth is going to still be an issue for a
>>> while.
>>>
>> So no content is stored on the client side?
>
> There's a local cache, but it never contains more than a tiny fraction
> of the world at any given time.

That actually seems inefficient. Unless a "default" world is built into
the graphics engine...

>
> This can be entertaining on slow connections... you teleport into
> something that looks like an empty field, and then watch as buildings
> and people start popping into existence one by one.

Sounds like there IS a default world built-in: empty field.

[...]

>> Eh. SOmeone created a demo of one of the 1st person shooters using X3D
>> that is supposed to be pretty snappy. Uses DirectX/3D so I can't test it
>> (the concept of an open source "cross platform" project that requires a
>> proprietary library is a tad odd, IMHO.
>
> And being able to embed first-person shooters in web pages is useful
> how, again?


Shows that x3d is capable of rendering 3D virtual worlds of that type
(afterlife?) in realtime using streaming media, which is what x3d within
MPEG-4 would use. From what I've seen of the screenshots of Second Life,
the world isn't so complex as to preclude being embedded in an MPEG-4
stream. And there might be reasons to do that (or embed MPEG-4 in the
Second LIfe stream, but that would be less useable on a set-top box
unless it had the Second LIfe codec isntalled.

>
>>>>>> I can see an obvious interaction between Google Earth and Second Life or
>>>>>> a meta-Second Life: The ability to travel quickly to foreign "lands" or
>>>>>> worlds or universes or dimensions or whatevers. GE allows you to see
>>>>>> progressively more details of the local terrain as you zoom in and this
>>>>>> would be quite useful for traveling from one virtual world/land to the
>>>>>> next. Web-surfing via geometric interface. Apple's old Project X tried
>>>>>> this, but the available graphics and bandwidth only allowed for clouds
>>>>>> of URLs. An extended version of Google Earth could allow you to navigate
>>>>>> a terrain of the VR equivalent of URLs in a more entertaining, or even
>>>>>> more comprehensible way.
>>>>> It would be a gimmick, and people would play around with it for a few
>>>>> minutes and then never bother again. Seriously. We've seen all this
>>>>> before.
>>>> Maybe. However, the Second Life players are actually discussing this
>>>> kind of thing (using Google Earth or something like it with SL) in their
>>>> forums.
>>> Sure. Just don't expect people to use this kind of thing as a substitute
>>> for web browsing.
>> For some kinds of browsing, it might be more efficient.
>
> For browsing based on *actual* geography, e.g. finding content related
> to specific real-world locations, it's useful.
>
> That's about it.

That YOU can think of. There are countless ways of organizing data and
meta-data that neither of us have thought of. Some efficient ones might
lend themselves to a Google-Earth-like system. Or perhaps not. I just
remember Andy Grove's alleged corollary to Moore's Law: "...and every
two years people come up with stuff to do with it you never imagined was
possible."




>
>>>>> The tools are primitive because there's no good use case for the format,
>>>>> not the other way around.
>>>>>
>>>> VRML has given way to X3D which is the new basis for MPEG-4 3D scenes.
>>>> There's even an Ajax3D based on Ajax + X3D. I think that the situation
>>>> you describe is about to change. The current generation of low-end video
>>>> cards (even the built-in graphics of the Mac Mini!) are more than
>>>> capable of handling Second Life type graphics. X3D is an XML-based
>>>> language. I don't know that there is a binary version, but likely one
>>>> will be devised if the text version proves too slow for Virtual Worlds use.
>>> Because, you know, when a technology stagnates for a decade, coming up
>>> with a buzzword-compliant replacement with a new name always turns
>>> things around.
>>>
>> VRML was XML based also.
>
> VRML predates XML by 3 or 4 years.
>
>> My point was about the binary format. And there ARE uses for VRML,
>> even.
>
> Not widespread ones.
>


Things change.