Let's talk about Adobe Atmosphere.

Certainly it is not my intention to start a thread that seems negative in it's tone. I think Adobe is trying to do an admirable thing with Atmosphere... and I will be happy if it turns out I am wrong and they really make it work. With the release of AvLab from CL it looks like Atmosphere is going to be something with a fair amount of presence in the Poser community so I think it might be worth talking about it and related topics.

I don't have an axe to grind here - and I am not trying to impede Adobe or CL in any way. This is something I feel fairly strongly about not because I don't think 3D worlds are the future... but because I know that they are. And I want that to happen. It is important that we evaluate new technologies to see if they are of any value so we can support the ones that will actually move us forward.

So at it's core - what is Atmosphere .. and what can it actually become... and what is it we might be thinking it will be? Let's look at these in a different order.

What is it we wish Atmosphere would be?

I want a 3D web badly. Really badly. I have been dedicated to working with large scale interactive environments for my whole life it seems - since I was 13 and that is a while ago :) I have written MUD's and MUSH's. I wrote BBS's and I wrote some large scale multi-player interactive games (space combat simulators, the old conquer the galaxy style games where multiple servers communicated with each other via email to simulate a large universe).

I want nothing more than to create an environment where people can come and interact... they can interact with each other and the environment itself. And we are working on that - we have modelers and animators working with us on some projects to bring such an environment to reality for a game we have in mind. We looked at Atmosphere for this... and we have looked at it's precursors in their turn (remember VRML?). In the end it became clear that to deliver a really engaging experience we needed to get the heavy hitters in play.

Fortunately, the folks at LithTech have a 6 month trial period. So we have 4 more months to decide if we want to pay them 250,000$. For that matter, the gang over at Netimmerse are doing amazing things.

In short - we all wish that Atmosphere would be a tool that heralds the coming of that new time. That Atmosphere is the tool that will bring interactive 3D worlds to the masses and that we are seeing now the beginning of that revolution.

This is important to understand - that we must not let how much we want that future to become somehow tied into Atmosphere itself. The dream was there before Adobe, and the dream will be there after Atmosphere is long gone.

What is Atmosphere?

So if we know what we want it to be... then lets take a look at what it is. Atmosphere is a 3D server/client system that allows for relatively easy publishing of a world on a web page and as a download. From what I can gather the rendering engine is a sort of grown up version of the one commonly known as the "Viewpoint" viewer. It allows multiple people to be on the server and be seen as "Avatars" and to interact in a limited way.

The pros:

• Atmosphere has Adobe behind it, so it has some pretty heavy dollars in play.
• The AvLab product from CL seems to make Avatar development fairly easy.
• It is fairly easy to publish an Atmosphere world.
• There is a free tool from Adobe (for now) to build Atmosphere worlds.
• Fairly low powered computers can view the worlds.

The cons:

• The rendering engine is far behind the state of the art. From what I can tell anyway (detailed tech info is limited). Compare the visuals to those of a modern 3D engine and you'll see what I mean.
• Interactivity is fairly limited. Yes, Atmosphere does have a JavaScript based scripting system.. but JavaScript is not a particularly strong choice for this sort of work - and without some fairly sophisticated support in the engine itself it will be limited in what it can change in the world.
• The experience is weak. This is a combination of the above issues, but worth mentioning on it's own. In order for this to achieve critical mass it has to attract and hold users - adding some definite value to their experience. Atmosphere doesn't look capable of this - especially given that the end users who want 3D worlds are expecting something like the ones they know - games - in quality. Even Adobe's own demo world is unimpressive - one would think they had a strong incentive to show us what they technology can actually do.
• This engine is far from your only option. There are several good ways to create and publish rich 3D worlds .. Atmosphere is not the easiest or the best of these. If you want something that looks really good... use the engine from a successful 3D game. You can publish your own Quake or Unreal levels for free.. and anyone who has Quake or Unreal can play them for free. Nothing but the game to buy.
• No, we don't expect you to buy a 250,000$ graphics engine to power your web page. We just wish that Adobe was committed enough to have done so. To ignore the most powerful engines out there is to show that they don't fundamentally understand the issues.

So then, what is Atmosphere really?

I think Atmosphere is a neat toy. I think ti will help open some peoples eyes to the possibility and is a good tool to get your feet wet with very little effort. Certainly the integration between AvLab and Poser means we will see some talented Poser people pushing the limits of Atmosphere.

However, Atmosphere is simply not a platform for building sophisticated environments. it won't be useful for building a system that is to be a popular and successful game for example.

In the end, Atmosphere may well be a catalyst - but it won't be what brings this kind of environment to
the people".

Use it, work with it, play with it. Gain experience... but then translate that experience into the more powerful tools if you are planning on really shaking things up. Think of Atmosphere as a gateway to this sort of technology.

In that way... it is a lot like Poser itself.

I wish Adobe and CL all the luck int he world with this stuff - and I think it will be a success at raising consciousness of this type of interaction.. and maybe that is all we need it to be.

I enjoyed Adobe atmosphere when the beta was first released. As a modeler and animator I had the best time making all sorts of avatars and little worlds. Heck I got to chat with all sorts of industry people including 'Kupa' himself. One main drawback I found was as the worlds and avatars became more diverse it became harder to chat on just a 56K modem. Most of my time was spent in perpetual downloading. It has a lot of potential. Imagine using worlds as Renderosity chat rooms. You become your own art. Your avatar a graphic show on display. (Besides I think Renderosity members would appreciate the creative effort.) Maybe that's something to ponder in the future. Here's wishing CL and Adobe the best.

I think my feelings are similar. I know the next generation of web sites will have a large 3D content. Adobe Atmosphere and Av Lab are a large step in that direction. They will certainly increase awareness and enable folks to get familiar with the elements, and at a cost that is most acceptable. The Atmosphere builder and browser are currently free, Av Lab runs at $69 and those with the Pro Pack can already export in the MTX format required by the builder.

For those that want to try it out my world is still on line. Its best to use the browser as a stand alone rather than embedded in a web page due to a bug. The applications are still in public beta. Just type this into the text input box:-

/goto http://www.philc.net/worlds/world3/world3_1public.aer

Have fun :)

Soulhuntre. an interesting note on licensing- Adobe has licensed the Havoc physics engine, it's in place today, for Atmosphere. As far as opportunity goes- They've left a lot of open points for other developers to be able to plug-in into the system at nearly every level. That said, I am very pleased by your comments here. I wish I had more time to reply this morning, but I have a meeting to battle with operations issues. I'd like to talk to you further in this context, but as well would really like to talk to you in email. Could you indulge me there? Thanks, Steve Cooper Curious Labs.

I think one of the restrictions that will have to be overcome to achieve what you describe is the problem with too diverse a collection of hardware. Even in the PC world alone there are so many types of video cards with 2 major video chip mfg. & 2 major cpu flavors and on top of that several different os's and versions of the major os. What would be great is if a transportable machine language graphics handler could be produced with a modular driver for the major 3d cards that would allow as compact a band width as possible for transfer of data, sorta like what is being done now to offload the brunt of the graphic number crunching directly to the vid card and not tie up the cpu with the computations required to produce 3d graphics on your monitor. The quantity of data required to render a frame is the major bottle neck at this point. If you could develope a program that runs on the local machine and only requires a minimum of data transfer, then the quality of such worlds would increase.

I do see great potential in these worlds. As for the quality and all the perks of a bigger engine, well that's got to be hard to supply to the vast amounts of 56k modem users. Yes I too would like to see the beauty of a Quake-style world, but for that to happen it would again be hard to supply over a low speed connection (And BTW even Quake jumped on the MAC band wagon, I still hope to see this come to the MAC. But as I've seen in the past (VRML for one), 3D content was extreamly slow to become MAC friendly or non exsistant). Getting back to the potential ... Imagine showing off your work in a 3D environment, gathering your out-of-state and out-of-country friends to come sip a cup of virtual coffee and talk about things to come, latest software, discoveries and techniques you've figured out. Rooms filled with your latest artwork, rooms to sit and ponder the view and maybe a room dedicated to tutorials ... the possibilities I assume can be endless. I too trully hope that this time, the 3D web experiance takes off. Going back to a statement I had made in another thread. I remember the "Palace" experience. A visual chat room with 2D graphics. It was so nice to have visuals instead of text only. I saw grat potential in that too, but it never took off as expected. Best of luck to Adobe and CL. I would like to see this soar. And I hope that it stays inexpensive so that the hobbiest can create as well as participate. Thanks PhilC for also pointing out that one can export from Poser Pro Pack. But there is no manual for the plugin and it would be nice to know what parameters to use when exporting and if the plugin could tell you the vertice count instead of just a percentage. BTW a small bug, or not in the plugin -- it seems that you can only export the geometry at 80%, but that's a CL or ViewPoint question. But I guess that's wht AL was created ;-) I just don't have the extra $70.00 for AL at this time and I'd like to wait if the MAC version ever sees the light of day. James Steve: Who can I get to answer all the questions I have posed in the other thread?

"Soulhuntre. an interesting note on licensing- Adobe has licensed the Havoc physics engine"

That's good to know... now if they hook it to Python and the Serious Same lighting engine... :) Seriously, there may be more to this thing than we see ... Adobe is being kind of tight lipped with information on the deep voodoo so it is hard to tell.

"I'd like to talk to you further in this context, but as well would really like to talk to you in email. Could you indulge me there?"

soulhuntre@soulhuntre.com... anytime! (that goes for anyone here as well)

"Even in the PC world alone there are so many types of video cards with 2 major video chip mfg. & 2 major cpu flavors and on top of that several different os's and versions of the major os."

It's not as bad as all that, for two reasons.

DirectX handles the interface to 3D hardware for you. It renders in software when needed and hardware when possible. This greatly simplifies the task fro the PC. The Max has a similar system in Quickdraw 3D.

The older PC's and less capable systems can simply be ignored. I know this sounds harsh but it is simply true. You will never be able to provide a sophisticated 3D experience to uses on a slow machine and a tiny connection. There is simply no compelling reason to limit your potential to try and do it.

The game market shows us that those people with an interest in 3D technology have or will purchase upgraded systems in order to be able to handle they software. The market is large and each compelling advance has expanded it.

In other words... give us a good 3D web system and people will upgrade to be able to use it.

"If you could develope a program that runs on the local machine and only requires a minimum of data transfer, then the quality of such worlds would increase."

They have - all of the larger engines have systems in place for the user to have local copies of 99% of the environment and only download the latest changes or dynamic objects.

"Yes I too would like to see the beauty of a Quake-style world, but for that to happen it would again be hard to supply over a low speed connection"

It would simply have to be compellingly presented. A world could be as small as a few megabytes and the important thing is that the user could download the file before entering the universe itself. For slow connections the idea of dynamically downloading the world on entry has to be abandoned.

I think for now we need to consider Atmosphere in the same light as Macromedia's Flash. It's not the best means of delivering animation, but it's pretty darn good in the context of delivering it on the web. Adobe faces the same challenge that Macromedia conquered - getting the browser (player) into the hands of web browsers whether they need it or not. I'm not an online gamer, but how does Atmosphere compare to EverQuest and the like? If only we could hop into a world as immersive as Stephenson's Metaverse.

"I'm not an online gamer, but how does Atmosphere compare to EverQuest and the like? If only we could hop into a world as immersive as Stephenson's Metaverse."

It doesn't. The engine is simply not up to it graphically - and the servers are as far as I can tell, completely unsuited for such an application even if the graphics got better.

That is sort of my point - there has been millions of dollars of research into what it takes to create an engaging system... and it turns out the game engines are the result. You don't have to have guns in Quake 3 - you can use the engine to present architecture - but the graphic power and flexibility are crucial.

When I see what the state of the art is, I just think that those engines hold the future. Atmosphere kind of (to me) shows it's roots as a simple application to show simple 3D objects inside a browser.

Adobe needs to hire Carmack (doom to RTCW) to create the engine. Might as well get it as close to right the first time.

Carmack has a good head on his shoulders... but I think they should just pick up one of the several engines that are already set up to be licensed :)

Soulhuntre, The Palace was just an overly commercialized variation of WorldsAway, which was a better version of Habitat. We've been creating areas for people to socialize for decades now. (I've been in the games industry for 15 years.) The graphics in UT and Quake are very rich, but the interaction is exceedingly limited. I realize that the engines are capable of doing more, however, anybody using one of those engines has to prune out a lot of code... even from the artist's viewpoint. If we are to build true 3D worlds (and I've been building mazes and haunted houses and such since I was a kid, so I'm more than eager for the day), the graphics will have to stand up to prolonged viewing AND people will have to be offered more choices than "stand & chat" or "run & die" which seem to be the main options. I think if we monitor The Sims to see which activities are preferred after the novelty wears off, we might have a handle on what people really like. I suspect that people will most want to be themselves... as they see themselves from the inside. Carolly

"The graphics in UT and Quake are very rich, but the interaction is exceedingly limited. I realize that the engines are capable of doing more, however, anybody using one of those engines has to prune out a lot of code... even from the artist's viewpoint." Well, certainly the graphics engines don't have code that needs prunign out - ther scritping systems are what make them shooters as opposed to anything else (art galleries etc). "AND people will have to be offered more choices than "stand & chat" or "run & die" which seem to be the main options." I agree... this is why I think the higher end engines offer the best chance.

Soulhuntre, You are familiar with CSG? If an engine is lacking those basic primitives which an artist needs to build reasonably organic shapes, but has 4 different kinds of staircases, it is balanced towards the creation of games with lots of corridors and levels. I can't mention names (nondisclosure), but I assure you that a licensed engine can be extremely limited unless you have dedicated tools programmers on staff to rewrite it. If we are to allow full movement in a world, though, we will need higher level engines. Carolly

"You are familiar with CSG? If an engine is lacking those basic primitives which an artist needs to build reasonably organic shapes, but has 4 different kinds of staircases, it is balanced towards the creation of games with lots of corridors and levels. I can't mention names (nondisclosure), but I assure you that a licensed engine can be extremely limited unless you have dedicated tools programmers on staff to rewrite it."

That depends on what you use "CSG" as an acronym for :)

We are currently developing on the LithTech engine and we are working with the V12 engine (the one that powers Tribes 2).

I agree that these engines are geared to non-organic shapes - but that isn;t the same thign as saying they are limited to only producing a certain type of game... that was my point. The limitations fo the engine are real - the limitations of the uses they can be put towards is a different discussion to me...

But I suspect you and I mostly agree in what we are saying.

The reality remains that the Lithtech or Netimmerse engines are much better suited to Avatar based systems than it seams from what I have seen Adobe's engine is. Now, I have been coming to understand why Adobe made the choices they did - but I still wouldn't have made those choices.

CSG is short for Constructive Solid Geometry... I first encountered it with DKB (rewritten later as POV-ray when they added the Graphic User Interface). It is great for buildings, but a real pain for spaceships or anything with complex curves. DKB had real reflections and refractions (which I sorely miss), but rendering took forever and without the GUI, most artists threw up their hands. (I was the only one on the floor who could use it.) Is there another CSG art tool? We really are in agreement over the basic premise. Our tools could be better. However, I think we both remember what was available when we started and can see steady improvement. Carolly

sigh I remember the old days with POV and some other command line ray tracers on my Amiga. I also remember hand coding VRML :)