I disagree. The timeframe, depending on individual involvement, is
something more around a year. And the appropriate technologies are
currently available. Most of these technologies *are* considered bleeding
edge, but that should really be an incentive more than anything. IF we were
the first people to successfully mature and develop these technologies, it
would not only generate a lot of media coverage, but it could be very
profitable as well. It would be extremely likely that other companies would
want us to use our techniques and technologies to develop worlds for them.
This is the way things usually work in the Valley, at least.
>my advice would be to form a small architecture team, 2 to 3 people at
most, and agree
>on the basic design. this team would establish the basic archtitecture
"rules of the game"
>and probably build the main world. other themed worlds could be farmed out
to individuals
Agreed. We would need an Architecture & Standards Team that could
coordinate and standardize the software interfaces and general architecture.
Preferably this team would include people who are thoroughly familiar with
most of the technologies involved. This would require extensive
documentation as well. Beside the software/protocol architecture, we would
also need higher level architects to design the actual world. This should
probably not be the same people who built the software.
>who sign up. this could be manageable, maybe, if these rules are in
place. i would think
>they would need to address standards for object persistency, security,
model scale, etx.
>i think there would probably need to be some consistent user interface
items each world
>would be expected to follow.
The Architecture & Standards team would also require a set of requirements
and specs for the capabilities of this world. Who will be responsible for
generating the requirements and specs? Maybe we should start generating a
comprehensive list of what people want to include, and then have the
technology people whittle away at the list until we have a feasible,
extensible set of design specifications.
>as someone who has seen many s/w projects fail or succeed, i would
emphatically suggest
>to keep it very, very simple at first. also, my experiences with web
sites, simulations and
>vr has told me that the artistic stuff is the hard part. we will need lots
of help in that area.
>unless you want something that looks like a bunch of s/w weenies did it.
Agreed! I am good with software, but terrible with graphical stuff. Since
content will drive this thing, it will be very important to have a large
number of the non-software people working on the design and development of
content.
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com