[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: Why 3D Redux?
From: Bill Kearney [mailto:wkearney@i...] >I'd argue that for disconnected communications 3D has been impossible. In >face-to-face communication, however, 3D plays a much larger role. If just from >the perspective of gestures and other physical cues. Which is why there has been a lot of research into systems for coding the gestural and other human-centric information for transformation into 3D representations. It opens a very big can o' data responsibilities but it isn't undoable and could be one of the more useful applications of semantic web technology. This is also one where composable libraries have to play a role. Not oddly, one of the HumanML members is working that from the aspect of museums, AnthML and so on. >That current CMC tools have no ability to exchange 3D data says more negative >things about the tools than the lack of value of 3D data. It's quite accurate >to say existing tools have contributed to learned behavior. I'm not sure that >justification for not using 3D visualization tools. It is simply important to visualize a 3D thing, not just create amorphous shapes for data viz as some systems do. In short, 3D suffers from a lack of well-accepted metaphors, the tropes or semiotic systems of a 3D content language. One thing 3D is fairly bad at is displaying lots of readable text, not that it can't but just that are cheaper ways to get that done. What 3D does well is provide viewpoints as icons in both the physical display and in the sense that an icon indexes a lot of data. When that icon is animatible, it is like having a dynamic superquery that is very easy for the user to manage as long as what it views is recognizable. Consider that the main complaint of non-wizard QBE interfaces is the 'lost in space' phenomena which is why the web is so reliant on Back and Next. One can do that with viewpoints to but one can also make the move virtually continuous instead of discrete, and because of interpolation, one can move to a new point of view without changing the viewpoint. >I'm not arguing one over the other here, just pointing out that just because the >tools people have now doesn't mean they wouldn't use others if they developed. The tools exist. The sign systems don't in the general population. Even though a 3D street sign for curves can be more informative, they aren't that useful. For single point of information displays, 3D isn't always that useful. For continuous dynamic spatio/temporal information, they can be. >What I have found is that very few populations of users see 3D data >visualizations in the same way. Some folks 'get it' while others do not. Smiling faces work in every known culture. One doesn't need 3D to display those, but is is easy to do. Again, it is an issue of a semiotic for real time 3D. len
|
PURCHASE STYLUS STUDIO ONLINE TODAY!Purchasing Stylus Studio from our online shop is Easy, Secure and Value Priced! Download The World's Best XML IDE!Accelerate XML development with our award-winning XML IDE - Download a free trial today! Subscribe in XML format
|