Interview: Nicole Yankelovich, Sun's Project Wonderland Lead (Read more...)

Project Wonderland is a 100% Java and open source toolkit for creating collaborative 3D virtual worlds. Within those worlds, users can communicate with high-fidelity, immersive audio, share live desktop applications and documents and conduct real business. Wonderland is completely extensible; developers and graphic artists can extend its functionality to create entire new worlds and new features in existing worlds.

Nicole Yankelovich is the Project Wonderland Lead at Sun Microsystems Laboratories. She explains us what is Project Wonderland and what interesting things it has to offer for developers and users.

 https://lg3d-wonderland.dev.java.net/

 
Photo by cogdog

- Is Wonderland written 100% in Java?

-Yes. The Project Wonderland server, client, and voice bridge are all 100% Java.

- What features does Wonderland have that are related to social virtual worlds?

-Wonderland is a toolkit for building virtual worlds, so you could build a social virtual world using the toolkit.

- And to gaming, ecomerce, others...?

- Same answer. You can create any sort of virtual world using the toolkit. Wonderland is completely extensible. With our upcoming v0.5 release, developers can write extensions to Wonderland in the form of modules. These can extend either the client, the server, or both. In addition, modules are a mechanism for integrating with external systems or data sources. In the ecommerce example, a developer could write a module that integrates a micro-payment system with Wonderland. You can learn more about building Wonderland modules here:
https://wonderland.dev.java.net/index2.html
Developer releases of Wonderland v0.5 are currently available. While this version is still a work in progress, enough of the system is in place for developers to begin creating new modules.

- How many people work in the building of Wonderland?

- There is a small group of around 8 developers in Sun Labs who do most of the core development work and then many people in the open source community who are writing modules.

 
Photo by m4rlonj

- What is X3D used for inside Wonderland?

- X3D is used as the format for importing models into Wonderland v0.4. In v0.5, we have switched to Collada and will no longer be supporting X3D.

- Does Wonderland collaborate with other Java projects?

- Yes. Wonderland is based on a number of open source projects. Project Darkstar provides the communications and persistence infrastructure, jVoiceBridge provides all the audio support and telephony integration,  Java Monkey Engine, combined with our new extension for multi-threading, MTGame, make up the graphics framework, and Glassfish is used for web integration. In addition, we take advantage of many other open source projects such as JAXB, Jersey, Hudson, JOGL, and webdavclient4j.

Photo by m4rlonj

- Can Wonderland be used for commercial use or for personal use? What are the use limitations?

- Yes, Wonderland can be used for both commercial and personal use. It is licensed under a GPL license. The license for v0.5 is more flexible for than the one for the v0.4 release. In the newer version, developers can apply either a commercial or an open source license to their modules, which allows them to keep modules propriety, if so desired. Any changes to the core of the system need to be contributed back to the open source community if the developer wishes to distribute the software. We expect, however, that most module developers will not need to make core changes, and if they do, those changes are likely to be small. You can learn more about Wonderland licensing from our licensing FAQ:
https://wonderland.dev.java.net/license-faq.html

- What are the future plans for Wonderland?

- In the short term, we will continue to do approximately monthly developer releases of Wonderland v0.5. We hope to have something suitable for end users in the summer timeframe. After that, we will continue to work on core features that enhance the developer experience, making it easier to build collaborative 2D and 3D applications and enabling a variety of deployment options, including deploying the system on a grid or cloud infrastructure.

The3dStudio Now Includes Blogs (Read more...)

All members of The3dStudio.com can now use this a new free blogging tool, fully customizable. Bloggers will be able to network their blogs and share traffic. In addition they can have free advertising and link with The3dStudio.com website.

Blog topics are not limited to just 2D or 3D related topics—bloggers may blog on any topic they choose. Artists from around the world can post examples of their work, works in progress, tutorials, or just chat about daily life in their country.

Members who sell resources on The3dStudio.com will have their blogs linked back to their product profiles which will provide additional exposure to the resources they sell while also putting a face and personality on their resources.

Any member can join The3dStudio.com Blog Network--membership at The3dStudio.com is always free. Start blogging now: http://www.the3dstudio.com/blog

The3dStudio.com is one of the oldest 3D resource sites on the Internet. It began as a free site in 1996 and has grown into one of the largest 3D resource sites, with over 235,000 free and priced resources—and more are added every day. Resources include 3D models, textures, tutorials, plugins, gallery art, stock photos, and more. Expert custom work and free file conversion are also offered.

When Do Computer Languages Die? (Read more...)

Unless we think, as in a popular movie, that "Death is only the beginning", computer languages don't die, as long as people continue using them.

Contrary to what many people think, a computer language is not "dead" or "outdated" simply because it was originated many years ago.

These are the years in which some popular computer languages were born:

• C: 1972. Used in the majority of computer software. 
  
• Java: 1995. One of the youngest.
  
• Fortran: 1957. Widely used in scientific and engineering communities.Believe it or not.
  
• Pascal: 1970. Object Pascal comes from this, and is from 1986.
  
• Cobol: 1959. One of the oldest, but Cobol programmers continue using it in business applications.
  
• JavaScript: 1995. Everybody uses JavaScript.
  
• BASIC: 1964. Visual Basic: 1991.

You see that all these languages are from 50 to 14 years old.

Comparing to these, the first VRML is from 1994, and X3D is from 2004.

This is a graphic that shows the growth of forum posts listed in BoardReader for X3D:

And this is the graph for VRML:

Comparing the popularity of both languages, you can see, looking to the numbers on the left, that VRML is 3 times more popular than X3D.

This is something that Web3D should think about. Being much more older, people still use VRML much more than X3D. People don't see real advantages in their day-to-day to switch to X3D. And X3D has not reached the popularity of VRML. We may discuss the reasons in a future article.

If we go to Google trends and compare the popularity of VRML and X3D in searches, we get:

 

You can see that the searches that look for VRML are more than X3D. Curiously, in the year of launch of X3D, what people searched most was VRML. I think the reason is because there was no abundance of info and content about X3D, so people searched for VRML.

The bad news is again that X3D has been unable to reach the popularity of VRML in searches.

The graph also displays how X3D appears more often in the news but VRML still is more popular.

And if we contrast VRML and ActiveWorlds, we see that VRML is still more popular. We also see that the re-birth of ActiveWorlds can be noticed since 2007, as the "news reference volume" for AW grows.

ActiveWorlds is considered as a living and modern platform for virtual worlds, a technology that is very veteran but still very competitive. Why then, being more popular, is VRML considered as something from the past?

And finally, compared to Second Life:

Considering the enormous popularity of Second Life, this is a great achievement for VRML.

Second Life has passed through a similar cycle as VRML. In the beginning, everybody hyped about it, reached a top, and a demystification and criticism.

Now, Second Life has reached its maturity, and begins a stable level of popularity, because it reached a critical mass.

You can see that VRML reached this critical mass long time ago, and the line is straight. The same for the volume of news that reference to VRML, that keep a stable level.

There's more. Any decent 3D application exports to VRML, and it is still one of the main formats in science and architectural visualization.

In addition to all the exciting contents of Hiperia3D News, I will feature from time to time the comments that also appear on Twitter about VRML and X3D. These also offer some interesting information, and may be valued by VRML fans.

Big numbers of people got great satisfaction since its beginning saying that VRML was dead. Now we know they were not right.

 

Conclusions

Most of the computer languages that we use are very old. And as I said, a computer language is not "dead" or "outdated" simply because it was originated many years ago,.

The lesson that we get from this study is that a language (or a technology) is not dead if people continue using it.

Another lesson: people may choose to keep on using an old version of a technology. The reasons may be that the new one does not offer advantages for most people, or they are just ignorant of them, or the new one has something that discourages its use.

So if you liked VRML, next time that someone tells you that it is a dead technology, just say them that it is still mentioned, used and loved by a huge part of humanity.

Solipsis: Free Platform For Massive P2P Virtual Worlds (Read more...)

Solipsis is a free P2P platform for virtual worlds that can support a massive number of users online.

Here in Hiperia3D News we have introduced other similar platforms. For example, remember VastPark, which recently launched their player application, or Cobalt, based on Croquet, and RealXtend, which is similar to Second Life.

Its aim is:

"Create a public, massively-shared and user-generated unbound digital universe, sustained by a dedicated Peer-to-Peer protocol, with a modern day rendering engine and some great and accessible 3D modelling tools.
In other words: a decentralized Metaverse platform." -Solipsis site.

Most of the code of Solipsis is LGPL, thus suitable for personal AND commercial developments. This is: completely free for all, as long as you report possible enhancements of the core of the application. You can integrate it and use it in a bigger app.

Solipsis us es technologies like OGRE for rendering and LUA for scripting, and Tokamak and ODE for physics. It supports voice chat.

Avatars and worlds are created with your 3D modeler and then exported in OGRE format. For example, you can use Unwrap 3D (remember the article about LithUnwrap) to import it from another format and export to OGRE.

If you are curious about Solipsis, install it, test it and come to the gathering that will take place on The Space Station of Solipsis on April 22, 2009. Read the article here (in French).

Some resources that you may value are:

• Their blog (in French): http://www.solipsis.org/blog/
  
• Their forum: http://solipsis.forumotion.com/forum.htm

http://www.solipsis.org/

JavaFX Coding Challenge (Read more...)

Now you can be the winner of a JavaFX Coding Challenge and win $25,000.

There are also other prizes: 10,000 and 5,000 dollars, and also up to 100 honorable mention prizes of a $25 Amazon Gift certificate will be rewarded.

Read the rules here. Contest deadline is May 29th, 2009.