{"id":1249,"date":"2007-04-19T14:00:31","date_gmt":"2007-04-19T18:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/?p=1249"},"modified":"2007-04-23T21:01:17","modified_gmt":"2007-04-24T01:01:17","slug":"protonmedias-protosphere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/?p=1249","title":{"rendered":"ProtonMedia’s ProtoSphere"},"content":{"rendered":"

Getting caught up, I found an entry on Raph Koster’s blog (Link)<\/a> of interest. In it, he refers to a review by Tom Crawford (Link)<\/a> for an apparently new entry into the virtual world platform race: ProtonMedia’s “ProtoSphere” (Link)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Interesting and worth keeping in mind because some of what Crawford mentions in his Pro’s and Con’s sound reasonable and commendable (I’ve not tested this so I don’t know how accurate his comments are, but will take him at his word).
\n
\nFor example, I’ve always liked application sharing and ProtoSphere seems to handle that nicely based on the ProtonMedia video. But… it’s not really new. Within 3D virtual spaces, Croquet<\/a> allows for similar functionality, so one assumes Qwaq<\/a> has it as well.<\/p>\n

I still like it so I’m not complaining. However, remaining objective about this I probably come off a bit less enthusiastic. Specifically, it’s this broad conclusion in Crawford’s post that makes me wince and which I would be hesitant to echo:<\/p>\n

While ProtonMedia still has some areas to grow such as the ability for user (or even expert) content creation, and extended capabilities for scenario development, they have created an integrated platform that extends the common tools with the use of 3D visualization. For groups such as designers, manufacturers, claims adjusters, and others that need 3D, this is the easy choice.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’d venture that neither designers like myself nor the manufacturers with whom we work would consider this service based on what I’m seeing on their website and reading in Crawford’s comments regarding content creation. If it doesn’t have the ability to utilize existing content – most often in the form of proprietary CAD formats – then that’s a big strike against it from my perspective. I don’t believe ProtoSphere does that. If it does and I’ve missed it, someone please correct me. I’d change my tune in a heartbeat.<\/p>\n

Instead, assuming I’m correct and that if\/when content creation features are implemented there will be additional effort required in exporting CAD data to some “dead” geometry file for use inside ProtoSphere, it becomes less compelling imo.<\/p>\n

This is the reason I follow UGS, PTC and Dassault. They’re working on similar solutions to what I believe I’m seeing here, but which allow the use of native content their current design and manufacturing customers already generate as part of their business operation. They’re heading down this same path toward virtual 3D space interaction and are presently the only real option for designers and manufacturers unless businesses intend to invest in an effort to generate additional content for use inside these other systems. With everything still so wide open and without there being a widely-supported, standardized universal CAD format, that’s a risk I doubt many will take. Unfortunate but true; and the reason I keep harping on the need for an open source 3D format that bridges the gap between manufacturing CAD and videogame\/virtual world content.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Getting caught up, I found an entry on Raph Koster’s blog (Link) of interest. In it, he refers to a review by Tom Crawford (Link) for an apparently new entry into the virtual world platform race: ProtonMedia’s “ProtoSphere” (Link). Interesting … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-administrative"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1249\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}