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Bill Gates has announced his vision of the future – and a large part of that vision is in Three Dimensions

On his 50th Birthday, Bill Gates, Microsoft founder and multibillionaire, let his guard down and loosely spoke about his vision of the future. And when Gates announces his vision of the future, everyone should take notice, because with money, control, and a company like his, the future will be whatever the man wills it to be.

A lot of the futuristic 2015 things that Gates mentioned are interesting, but have nothing to do with DCC. Included is the coming obsolescence of paper, aided by high-speed wireless internet, and cell phones that can translate signs in foreign countries.

His more immediate vision does concern DCC, however. Gates wants to do away with the 2D, flat way that information over the web is delivered to us. Super fast internet connections and improvements in hardware will make possible a world wide web that gives us information in 3D.

Gates explained his vision of a 3D future as the ability to access distant places from your living room: "You'll be walking around in downtown London and be able to see the shops, the stores, see what the traffic is like. Walk in a shop and navigate the merchandise," he said. "Not in the flat, 2D interface that we have on the web today, but in a virtual reality walkthrough."

In fact, according to Gates, Microsoft is already spending "hundreds of millions of dollars" to create a photorealistic 3D map of the whole world in which we can all interact.

Sound familiar? It should. Google already has a 3D map program, called Google Earth. Google Earth allows you to zoom through the streets of San Francisco and a few other cities that the Google team has 3D scanned. If you haven’t already, you should try it out. The program has 3D boxes that represent real buildings in the area.

It seems that Google and Microsoft are on to the same thing. They want to make it so your web surfing experience is focused to a geographical location. That way, we can get the benefits of both the web and real life – the web has the ability to take you anywhere instantaneously, and real life is, well… real.

Microsoft’s vision definitely one-ups what is currently in place with Google Earth. Google Earth only lets you see gray boxes that represent buildings. One would presume that in Gates’ world, not only would the buildings be realistic, but you could actually “walk into” the stores, which would be the analog of clicking on a lick to go to a website.

If (and when) Gates’ vision is finally realized, it will lead to a whole growth industry in 3D modeling. Then there will be enormous demand for a newly designed 3D website that allows users to navigate the stock of a store as they would in real life. The layout and placing would no longer be constricted by things in the real world. For example, jewelry may float in the air instead of stay behind glass cases. This gives the 3D designers in charge of making these online storefronts much more flexibility.

In fact, ideas like this have been tried before – but they have failed because it was technologically before their time. With Quicktime VR, an Apple product, and some other similar programs, people took panoramic pictures and put it on the web, which allowed web users to get a 360-degree view of whatever view the designer could photograph. There were also efforts at creating a 3D store on a few websites that fell flat on their faces in a matter of moments. (They were never truly 3D, just some 3D renders of a fictional storefronts that you could navigate through as if you were in the game Myst).

What will make this 3D future possible in the near future are massive advancements in technology. Ultra-fast internet connections will now allow for the high amounts of 3D data to be transferred over the web at bearable speeds. At the same time, hardware in the form of graphics cards and processors will be able to process the information and display it seamlessly. Finally, software will be able to compress the information on one side and decompress it on another so the 3D information is highly accessible.

These improvements in technology are happening today at a rapid pace. It seems that it will only be a matter of years until these three trends make technology ready for Gates’ vision. And when they do, we can expect that the entire way we’ve been doing business online will be dramatically changed.

Last Week’s DCC News in Brief


3D Modeling Tools

Alias(R) announced that its Maya(R) software has been chosen as the chief 3D animation technology at Lucasfilm Animation Singapore. The animation studio, which opened today, is gearing up to produce digital animated content - including films and television for global audiences. The choice of Maya not only gives the company access to world-leading 3D modeling, animation and visual effects technology, it assists them in drawing top animation talent to their facility. [ Read more...]

Autodesk, Inc. announced that its media and entertainment systems and software are shaping more than 40 television shows for the 2005-2006 television programming season. From returning favorites such as Lost and Nip/Tuck to provocative new shows like Prison Break and Rome, Autodesk's technology is relied upon by broadcasters and post-production facilities to realize edge-of-your-seat entertainment. [ Read more...]

Eovia™ Corporation, developer and publisher of leading 3D software tools, introduced Carrara™ 5, the powerful, approachable, complete 3D solution. Carrara 5 delivers a robust suite of modeling, animation and rendering tools in a freshly updated user interface. The highly-affordable Carrara 5 will enable users to create more freely and deliver high-caliber results under even the tightest deadlines. [ Read more...]


In response to customers' needs, Autodesk, Inc. is empowering DWG users with new, free tools: DWG TrueView for viewing DWG files, and DWG TrueConvert for translating DWG files between newer and older versions. DWG TrueView and DWG TrueConvert are available to download for free* from the company Web site. [ Read more...]


Graphics Cards

NVIDIA Corporation, a worldwide leader in programmable graphics processor technologies, announced that the Company is working with Hybrid Graphics Ltd. to deliver a one-stop, native-accelerated 3D API stack for mobile phone manufacturers and developers. [ Read more...]

An independent team of Finnish over-clockers has made world history by over-clocking a graphics processor to engine clock levels above 1 GHz. The record was set on the recently-announced Radeon(R) X1800 XT graphics processor from ATI Technologies Inc. [ Read more...]

NVIDIA Corporation, the worldwide leader in programmable graphics processor technologies, announced that the Company is the exclusive provider of all graphics cards offered on the first PCI Express platform from Apple(R). The NVIDIA-powered Apple Power Mac G5 platform can drive an incredible amount of screen real estate, providing four expansion slots that can support multiple graphics cards to drive an array of up to eight displays. [ Read more...]


Music Media Production

VirtuosoWorks, Inc., makers of NOTION™ music composition and performance software, announces two new orchestral scores and special holiday pricing on bundles with NOTION software. [ Read more...]


Studio News

Law offices of Brodsky & Smith, LLC announces that a securities class action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of shareholders who purchased the common stock and other securities of Pixar. ("Pixar" or the "Company") between January 18, 2005 and June 30, 2005, inclusive (the "Class Period"). The class action lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. [ Read more...]

At a ceremonial opening of Lucasfilm Animation Singapore, AMD announced that the digital backbone of the new Lucasfilm Animation Singapore digital animation center is powered by AMD64 processor technology - the gold standard for 64-bit computing. [ Read more... ]



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-- Jacob Heller, DCCCafe.com Contributing Editor.

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