2008 LEF Grant - First Steps

This is my first blog! I will we use this blog to document my investigation of X3D (ISO/IEC 19775) for the next generation of enterprise applications. I believe 3D multimedia features in enterprise applications will be a next step for the web application developers and customers will be seeking virtual reality technologies in their enteprise solutions to optimize their tangible reality.

My investigation is not basic research to solve fundamental technical challenges of bringing the 3D experience to users--developming materials for pliable/flexible large and tiled displays, tuning parallel programs, optimizing distributed computers running in parallel, precision control with haptic devices, refactoring object-relational databases for supply-chain applications, etc. Instead what you will read here are the research notes of specifying and engineering X3D-enabled solutions to tie a chain of maturing technologies so the life span of tangible goods (and some services) and groupings of them have a virtual implementation and value that are more accessible (i.e., interactive), portable, self-describing, and animated for viewers, managers, and owners. It will be the successful integration of X3D, Computer-Aided Design tools, Computer-Aided Engineering programs, Payment Card Industry networks, GPUs, CPUs, massively dense memory devices, High-Order Languages (e.g., JAVA and ECMAScript), and TBD others that will effectuate the next killer 3D enterprise applications.

I read X3D: Extensible 3D Grpahics for Web Authors by Brutzman and Daly prior to applying for the grant. Unfortunately, their book does not cover the CAD Distillation Format, which is the source of the digital content I will be investigating for integration. How to create content with development tools for art or the imagination is not my focus. Nevertheless, I will take a quick look at the effort to complexity ratios of X3D models from a consultancy perspective.

I've downloaded the leading X3D browsers and free digital content creation applications. My evaluation of them is ongoing. I completed the Skillsoft courses on Javacript language basics to understand the capabilities of client-side scripting in the context of compiled program languages capabilities like JAVA, which X3D has bindings for. I will have to allocate functions and features to 3GLs, Scripts, X3D and other technologies as part of the systems engineering. Moreover, I will attempt to identify necesary changes to the technologies best suited but still lacking in features to integrate an abstract lifecycle solution for an enterprise. Business barriers will be identified too.

As a systems thinker, I will take several moments to describe the demonstration I intend to make available and the outline of the report. My subsequent efforts limited budget will be focused on delivering those two products and I should be able to keep my inquiries brief in the enticing and related VR technologies like haptics, spatialized audio, geomatics (i.e., GeoVRML --> X3D Earth), humaniod animation (i.e., H-anim), and computer hardware and network gizmos.